Nearly a year after the rap battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake first kicked off, Drake’s still catching strays. Now, they’re from his own label, in a motion to dismiss his defamation lawsuit over Lamar’s hit diss, “Not Like Us.” Drake “lost a rap battle that he provoked and in which he willingly participated,” attorneys for Universal Music Group, which distributes “Not Like Us” along with Drake’s music, argue. “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.” Ouch! Of course, Drake has already attempted to volley back, with his lawyer calling the motion “a desperate ploy by UMG to avoid accountability.”
UMG’s motion expands on the conglomerate’s original defense after Drake filed the suit: that “Not Like Us” can’t be defamatory because Lamar’s lines accusing Drake of being a pedophile are not meant to be taken as fact. The motion argues that “diss tracks are a popular and celebrated art form centered around outrageous insults, and they would be severely chilled if Drake’s suit were permitted to proceed.” UMG notes that Drake also made “similarly incendiary attacks at Lamar,” and that in 2022, Drake himself even signed a petition against using rap lyrics as legal evidence. “As Drake recognized, when it comes to rap, the final work is a product of the artist’s vision and imagination,” UMG’s lawyers argue. “Drake was right then and is wrong now.” Further, UMG notes that Drake (in the AI-generated voice of Tupac) goaded Lamar to “talk about him likin’ young girls” on “Taylor Made Freestyle,” and later acknowledged the rumors about him texting a teenage Millie Bobby Brown on “The Heart Part 6.” “Clearly Drake himself understands that Lamar’s lyrics refer solely to well-known issues,” UMG writes.
Elsewhere in the motion, UMG also bats down Drake’s claim that UMG distributed “Not Like Us” knowing it would incite violence. Additionally, UMG says Drake’s claims that the label used bots to stream “Not Like Us” and paid radio stations for airtime are “entirely bogus.” In response, Drake’s attorney said, “UMG 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.” UMG is seeking to dismiss the whole lawsuit with prejudice, which would not allow it to be refiled.
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“Drake was right then and is wrong now.”
