Kendrick Lamar - Somebody That I Used To Know -... Apr 2026

That would be a funeral for a former self. What do you think? Could Kendrick pull off the melancholy of Gotye, or is this a bridge too far? Drop your dream mashup in the comments.

In the Kendrick version, this verse wouldn't be a female singer. It would be —perhaps sampled from a voicemail left by a real person in his past, or voiced by SZA in her most wounded, accusatory register. Kendrick Lamar - Somebody That I Used To Know -...

He wouldn't sing about a romantic partner. He would sing about Whitney (his fiancée), or Top Dawg (his former label head), or even the old Kendrick —the “Compton Humble” persona he killed on To Pimp a Butterfly . “I saw you walkin' down the street at the Grammy party / You looked right through me like I was still writin' in the dark / You said ‘K. Dot, you sold your soul for the industry arc.’ / Nah, baby. I just grew up. You stayed in the park.” The chorus would hit differently. Instead of a whimper, it would be a growl . Kendrick doesn't do passive resentment. He does biblical fury. “Now you're just somebody that I used to know... / But you forget the blood we bled to build that road / You took the picture frame, but left the crucifix / Now I'm standin' at the altar with a loaded paradox.” The Kimbra Verse: A Necessary Counterpoint In the original, Kimbra’s bridge is the killer: “You say that we are nothing but you still hold my hand.” That would be a funeral for a former self

But look closer. Beneath the surface, this is a match made in purgatory. Here is why Kendrick Lamar is the only artist alive who could truly own that song—and what it would sound like. Gotye’s original (featuring Kimbra) is a conversation between two people who can no longer see each other clearly. The narrator feels erased; the response feels gaslit. It’s about the civil war of a breakup where nobody wins. Drop your dream mashup in the comments

We live in an era of the “mashup” and the “cover,” but some artistic collisions exist only in our collective imagination. One such phantom track that refuses to leave my brain is this: Kendrick Lamar performing a rendition of Gotye’s 2011 indie-pop masterpiece, “Somebody That I Used to Know.”

Kendrick Lamar has spent a decade singing that exact ache over jazz beats and funk basslines. To hear him sing it over those four iconic xylophone notes? That wouldn't just be a cover.

But the exercise matters because it reveals a truth about both artists: It’s about the horror of looking at a face you once kissed, or a city you once repped, or a version of yourself you once loved—and feeling absolutely nothing except a dull, metallic ache.