Kendrick Lamar appeared for the first time during last night’s Grammys ceremony midway through the broadcast, when he ascended the stage—with a barely contained smile—to accept record of the year honors for his death-blow diss track “Not Like Us.”
Dedicating the win to his hometown of Los Angeles—“This is my neck of the woods that held me down since I was a young pup,” he said—Lamar looked notably, if not bitingly, laidback in a faded blue denim jacket by Maison Margiela, which he wore buttoned over a white T-shirt, with blue jeans and Martine Rose black leather dress shoes. (The last time Lamar graced the Grammys stage in 2023, he wore a full Martine Rose look.) He accessorized with a diamond-covered Jesus piece and a custom denim Dodgers cap, which also featured the logo of the rapper’s creative agency pgLang, custom-made by tailor Christina Marie Rivera.
But don’t let the casualness fool you. This outfit, like several of those Lamar has worn publicly in the last eight months, suggests a pointed glee. The choice to wear a denim-on-denim ensemble, a look commonly referred to as a Canadian tuxedo, to accept a Grammy for a hit song maligning a certain Canadian rapper—who is currently suing their shared label, Universal Music Group, over the track’s promotion—certainly seems like a sly dig.
Kendrick Lamar, in a Maison Margiela denim jacket, at the 67th Grammys Awards on Sunday.
Jason Armond/Getty Images
Indeed, in spite of what its moniker might connote, this particular Canadian tuxedo (an ensemble Drake has also worn) feels antithetical to the famously friendly sensibility that many Americans associate with our northern brethren. To paraphrase a line from the film Anatomy of a Fall, this particular Canadian tuxedo may conceal something dirtier and meaner.
Lamar and his stylist Taylor McNeill—who also cleverly dressed the actor Timothée Chalamet throughout his recent press tour—have made shrewd style moves throughout the Kendrick-Drake beef. From the fashion parade of the “Not Like Us” music video (which also won a Grammy last night) to the hater-ific Nike Shox he wore during his “Pop Out” concert in Los Angeles, KDot’s niche designer clothes became the fancy footwork behind his lyrical jabs. Prior to Sunday’s ceremony, the rapper already took a sartorial victory lap in a pseudo championship belt customized by the designer Eli Russell Linnetz, which he wore on his GNX album cover. In this case, the double denim was the supplemental kick in the ribs after the fight.
(Not unrelatedly, Kanye “Ye” West, a longtime evangelist of the Canadian tuxedo, shared a now-deleted photo of Lamar in his joutfit on Instagram with the caption, “Gemini season 🐐.” McNeill re-shared the post.)
However, the look could also offer its own sort of treaty—or at least a clearing of the slate. According to GQ style editor (and real-life Canadian) Yang-Yi Goh, a Canadian tuxedo can also be something of a palate cleanser. “No matter what you wear underneath,” as he once put it, “there’s a purpose-driven clarity to pairing jeans and a jean jacket.” We’ll have a better sense of where the Angeleno-Torontonian rift stands this weekend, during Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show.
