The concert served as the ultimate victory lap in what many have called a crushing win against Drizzy in their recent rap battle -- and the reason is pretty clear ... KL played "Not Like Us" 5 times in a row, and the instrumental even closed out the show!

Kendrick made sure Juneteenth 2024 will go down in history ... West Coast DJs Hed and Mustard opened the show and offered no shortage of cameos and hype music for the crowd.

BTW ... it was a star-studded event too -- outside of music stars ... lots of athletes were in attendance too. NBA stars LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, DeMar DeRozan and James Harden were in attendance, as were anti-Drake delegates The Weeknd and Rick Ross.

Tyler, The Creator, YG, and Ty Dolla $ign were the headliners during the DJ sets -- which also highlighted 310babiii, OhGeesy, KalanFrFr and "krump" legend Tommy The Clown.

K. Dot eventually hopped onstage and wasted no time reminding the world he came at Drake's neck ... the rapper opened his set with his instant classic diss "Euphoria" -- which was a harsh review of Drake and his rep in the game (from Kendrick's POV anyway).

His TDE and Black Hippy groupmates -- Jay Rock, ScHoolboy Q and Ab-Soul -- also joined Ken onstage, where he blazed through one of his other Drake darts “6:16 in LA."

The biggest surprise came courtesy of Kendrick's Compton OG mentor, Dr. Dre ... who not only rocked the Kia Forum with his classic records “Still D.R.E.” and “California Love" ... but also led right into Kendrick's most scathing diss track against Champagne Papi.

The "Chronic" creator exited stage left whispering the "Psst... I see dead people" intro that set off the "Not Like Us" onslaught -- like we said, Kendrick played the track several times ... and the crowd was into it each and every time. He did censor himself though ... refraining from saying the word "pedophile."

Rap beef aside, the crowning moment came when Kendrick unified several L.A. gangs onstage … emotionally stating the city’s been “f***ed up” since Nipsey Hussle and Kobe Bryant died.

Bloods, Crips, Pirus, Hoovers and everyone in between all stood together in solidarity and posed for pictures onstage ... a push to hopefully end the gang culture’s never-ending war.