Kyrie Irving ‘Grateful’ For Kendrick Lamar Anti-Vax Reference On New Album: ‘Can We Just Appreciate The Art?’

Al Bello/Getty Images

If you haven’t heard or scrolled through Twitter in the last 12 hours global superstar Kendrick Lamar dropped his highly-anticipated album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers last night, setting off the hip-hop world and momentarily crashing Apple Music and Spotify.

If you got through the crashes, congratulations, you got to hear the Compton-born rap icon lay down some fresh verses in his first album since 2017. Along with a new album comes new controversy as Lamar covered a wide variety of topics, including basketball star Kyrie Irving and the anti-vaccine community on the song “Savior” [featuring Baby Keem and Sam Dew].

Take a listen at the 1:30 mark of the song as “K-Dot” speaks on the Covid-19 vaccine.

Seen a Christian say the vaccine mark of the beast
Then he caught covid and prayed to Pfizer for relief
Then I caught covid and started to question Kyrie
Will I stay organic or hurt in this bed for two weeks

Luckily we live in 2022 so a reaction from Irving was almost guaranteed, who stayed up late streaming another session of GTA V on Twitch Thursday.

The two events overlapped as Irving gave his reaction to the controversial lyrics from Lamar on the stream, seemingly grateful to be included in the project.

“So…he’s GOAT-ed. We know that. That’s definitely going to go over people’s heads, but that’s part of art. It sparks conversation. It sparks conversation. I love it. You know what I’m saying? He’s goated. I’m not…I’m not mad. I’m not indifferent. I’m just grateful. How about that?” Irving said Thursday night.

Not all of the viewers seemed to like that answer from the anti-vaxxer as Irving responded to the chat, chuckling and saying “can we just appreciate the art?” and “that joint is tough.”

Oh well Kyrie, can’t please them all.