Haley Joel Osment Reacts To Kendrick Lamar’s Name Drop In “Euphoria”: “It’s No Mistake”
Hollywood star Haley Joel Osment recently shared his thoughts on being name-dropped in Kendrick Lamar’s latest track, Euphoria. The twist? Kendrick seemed to mix him up with celebrity pastor Joel Osteen, but Haley isn’t convinced it was a simple slip-up.
At the Los Angeles premiere of his new film, Blink Twice, Haley, best known for his iconic roles in The Sixth Sense and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, opened up about the buzz surrounding Kendrick’s lyrics. When asked if he’d been keeping tabs on the ongoing feud between the rapper and Drake, the 36-year-old actor admitted he had — at least “a little bit.”
The actor humorously noted that his phone had been flooded with messages since the song’s release. “I got like a hundred texts in the middle of the night,” he recalled, adding, “I was like, what is going on?”
In Kendrick’s track, “Euphoria,” the rapper drops the lines, “Am I battlin’ ghost or AI? N—- feelin’ like Joel Osteen. Funny, he was in a film called A.I. / And my sixth sense tellin’ me to off him.”
Fans were left scratching their heads, as neither The Sixth Sense nor A.I. Artificial Intelligence featured Joel Osteen, a well-known televangelist. However, both films famously starred a young Haley, leading to speculation about Kendrick’s intentions.
Haley, while amused by the mix-up, thinks there’s more to it. “Kendrick’s too precise to just make a mistake like that, I think,” he stated after saying, “I mean, I don’t know for sure, and I’m not gonna assume that he knows my exact name. But the way I’ve heard people talk about that and certain analysis that I’ve read about it, I think that it’s an intentional scrambling of my name and that other guy’s name.”
The actor suggested that Kendrick might be making a clever play on words, possibly hinting at the controversies surrounding both Joel Osteen and Drake. In the past, both men have faced accusations of using ghostwriters, which could tie into Kendrick’s line about battling “ghost or AI.”
Kendrick’s Euphoria was his fiery response to Drake’s Taylor Made Freestyle, where the Canadian rapper took a jab at Kendrick, calling him a “coward.” The diss track also stirred controversy for featuring AI-generated vocals from hip-hop legends Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur, adding another layer of intrigue to the rap battle.
