Universal Music Group has filed a motion to dismiss rapper Drake’s lawsuit against them.
The Toronto rapper born Aubrey Drake Graham, sued the label for defamation and harassment claims over Kendrick Lamar’s widely popular diss track “Not Like Us.”
He claimed that the song “intended to convey the specific, unmistakable, and false factual allegation that Drake is a criminal pedophile, and to suggest that the public should resort to vigilante justice in response.”
In a motion filed on Monday in the the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, UMG slammed those claims saying that the song wasn’t defamatory, but a “rhetorical hyperbole” that’s protected by the First Amendment, according to Variety. They also claimed he filed this in the first place because he lost the 2024 rap beef with Lamar, that he started.
Both rappers are signed by the entertainment group.
The label alleged he “lost a rap battle that he provoked and in which he willingly participated. Instead of accepting the loss like the unbothered rap artist he often claims to be, he has sued his own record label in a misguided attempt to salve his wounds. Plaintiff’s Complaint is utterly without merit and should be dismissed with prejudice.”
Considering it was a rap beef, the motion says the lawsuit “disregards the other Drake and Lamar diss tracks that surrounded ‘Not Like Us’ as well as the conventions of the diss track genre.” They said that “diss tracks are a popular and celebrated artform centered around outrageous insults, and they would be severely chilled if Drake’s suit were permitted to proceed.”
The motion also notes the hypocrisy of the lawsuit because, in 2022, Drake signed a petition that condemned prosecutors for using an artist’s lyrics against them in criminal cases.
“Drake was right then and is wrong now,” the filing said. “Complaint’s unjustified claims against UMG are no more than Drake’s attempt to save face for his unsuccessful rap battle with Lamar.”
In the song, the Compton native says “Say Drake, I hear you like them young” and then references the “DeGrassi: The Next Generation” star’s 2021 album “Certified Lover Boy” and calls him a “certified pedophile.” The artwork for the single showed an aerial view of Drake’s Toronto mansion with sex offender markers surrounding it.
“No reasonable viewer would believe that the image of Drake’s Toronto mansion with 13 sex offender markers is real; the image is hyperbolic and exaggerated,” UMG said. “Moreover, assessment of the broader context makes clear that ‘Not Like Us’ relates to well-known controversies that Drake himself acknowledged and perpetuated,” including in previous lyrics.
The New York Times noted one of Drake’s songs he made earlier in the beef called “Taylor Made Freestyle,” where the hip-hop star used AI to rap in Tupac Shakur’s voice. In the song, the faux-Pac advises Lamar to: “Talk about him liking young girls, that’s a gift from me / heard it on the Budden podcast, it’s gotta be true.”
In a statement to the outlet, Drake’s attorney Michael J. Gottlieb said that the label “wants to pretend that this is about a rap battle in order to distract its shareholders, artists and the public from a simple truth: a greedy company is finally being held responsible for profiting from dangerous misinformation that has already resulted in multiple acts of violence.”
He went on to say that “this motion is a desperate ploy by UMG to avoid accountability, but we have every confidence that this case will proceed and continue to uncover UMG’s long history of endangering, abusing and taking advantage of its artists.”
In February, Lamar took home five Grammys for “Not Like Us,” including Song of the Year. He also performed the hit during halftime of Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans.
The song, released in May of 2024, was on Billboard’s Hot 100 that year for two weeks.
