Drake Sues UMG for Defamation, Harassment Over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’
Drake has formalized his contentious battle against Kendrick Lamar‘s diss track “Not Like Us” by going after Universal Music Group, filing a defamation and harassment lawsuit against the major music conglomerate on Wednesday.
The Canadian-born rapper, whose real name is Aubrey Drake Graham, claims UMG “unleashed every weapon in its arsenal” in the company’s campaign to turn the diss-track into a “viral hit,” according to the 81-page complaint obtained by Rolling Stone. Drake claims the song itself was “intended to convey the specific, unmistakable, and false factual allegation that Drake is a criminal pedophile.”
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The two A-list rappers have been duking it out since spring 2024, taking sly swipes at one another in various tracks. However, things erupted into a full-blown lyrical war when Drake released “Family Matters” in May, insinuating that Lamar had cheated on his fiancée and was physically violent with her. Lamar immediately responded with the back-to-back drops of “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us,” with the latter’s hook of “Certified Lover Boy, certified pedophile” becoming an instant slam dunk in their feud.
Notably, Drake is not suing Lamar over the song and its lyrics, clarifying that the lawsuit “is not about the artist who created “Not Like Us.” Instead, he claims taking legal action is “entirely about UMG, the music company that decided to publish, promote, exploit, and monetize allegations that it understood were not only false, but dangerous.”
“As UMG knows and has known at all relevant times, the Recording, Image, and Video’s allegations are unequivocally false,” the court papers continue. “Drake is not a pedophile. Drake has never engaged in any acts that would require he be ‘placed on neighborhood watch.’ Drake has never engaged in sexual relations with a minor. Drake has never been charged with, or convicted of, any criminal acts whatsoever.”
Drake claims UMG defamed him by waging an “unrelenting campaign” to boost the song and its false statements because “it understood that the Recording’s inflammatory and shocking allegations were a gold mine.”
“Drake filed a lawsuit against his label, Universal Music Group, to hold UMG accountable for knowingly promoting false and defamatory allegations against him,” the rapper’s legal team at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP said in a statement provided to Rolling Stone. “Beginning on May 4, 2024 and every day since, UMG has used its massive resources as the world’s most powerful music company to elevate a dangerous and inflammatory message that was designed to assassinate Drake’s character, and led to actual violence at Drake’s doorstep. UMG wants the public to believe that this is a fight between rappers, but this lawsuit is not brought against Kendrick Lamar. This lawsuit reveals the human and business consequences to UMG’s elevation of profits over the safety and well-being of its artists, and shines a light on the manipulation of artists and the public for corporate gain.”
A spokesperson for UMG fired back in a statement, saying the notion that the company would intentionally seek to harm any artist’s reputation, especially Drake, was flat out ridiculous. “We have invested massively in his music and our employees around the world have worked tirelessly for many years to help him achieve historic commercial and personal financial success,” they said.
“Throughout his career, Drake has intentionally and successfully used UMG to distribute his music and poetry to engage in conventionally outrageous back-and-forth ‘rap battles’ to express his feelings about other artists,” the statement continued. “He now seeks to weaponize the legal process to silence an artist’s creative expression and to seek damages from UMG for distributing that artist’s music.
“We have not and do not engage in defamation—against any individual. At the same time, we will vigorously defend this litigation to protect our people and our reputation, as well as any artist who might directly or indirectly become a frivolous litigation target for having done nothing more than write a song,” UMG’s statement concluded.
In addition to the song’s lyrics, Drake took offense to the song’s cover art, which shows a satellite view of his Toronto mansion, filled with red markers that are presumably meant to represent registered sex offenders living at the address. Identifying where Drake lived and accusing him of being a pedophile was the “2024 equivalent of Pizzagate,” the lawsuit claims.
After the song’s release, Drake claims there were three separate intruder incidents at his home, including a break-in attempt and someone open firing at the property, injuring his security guard. “These events were not coincidental,” the lawsuit claims. “UMG’s greed yielded real world consequences.”
Drake is represented by attorney Michael J. Gottlieb, who notably represented Washington D.C. pizza shop owner James Alefantis, whose store was targeted by a Pizzagate conspiracy theorist who opened fire in the shop in December 2016.
The lawsuit comes a day after Drake’s company Frozen Moments voluntarily withdrew his pre-action filings against UMG and Spotify from November in favor of the new federal filing. Drake originally attempted to rope in Spotify in his forthcoming legal battle, accusing UMG of enacting a “scheme” to use bots and payola to boost the song on radio and streaming services. Spotify, meanwhile, was “recommend[ing]” the song to users and/or allowing bots to “artificially inflate” the song’s streams, Drake claimed in court filings.
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