Kendrick Lamar’s Drake Diss Mixed Up Televangelist Joel Osteen With The Actor From ‘Sixth Sense’ And Now Everybody Is Making ‘Abbott Elementary’ Jokes

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Kendrick Lamar’s new song “Euphoria” has rap fans on social media buzzing, but not just for its inventive Drake disses. While the song’s references to Drake’s foibles and flaws have fans dissecting their favorite lines, one in particular has them scratching their heads instead.

Although pop culture references have never been Kendrick’s strong suit, he name-checks the child actor from the films The Sixth Sense and AI: Artificial Intelligence to undercut Drake’s use of AI to utilize deceased rapper Tupac’s voice in his “Taylor Made Freestyle.” At least, he thinks he does — because the name Kendrick actually checked is Joel Osteen, the controversial televangelist whose Texas megachurch drew negative headlines for how it handled its Hurricane Harvey response in 2017. The name he apparently meant to say is Haley Joel Osment, who achieved cultural ubiquity for his reading of the iconic line “I see dead people” in the 1999 thriller The Sixth Sense.

As fans remark on the hilarious mix-up, one joke that keeps recurring is the similarity to Abbott Elementary character Barbara Howard. One of the show’s teachers played by Sheryl Lee Ralph, Mrs. Howard is the center of a running gag in which she regularly confuses white celebrities’ names, but everyone else can usually figure out who she really means. Examples include Brian Austin Green (Bryan Tyree Henry), Carrie Underwood (Keri Washington), and Tommy Lee Jones (James Earl Jones). Check out some more responses below: