Universal Music Group is requesting to dismiss Drake’s federal defamation lawsuit against the label over Kendrick Lamar’s blockbuster song Not Like Us, saying in a legal filing that the rapper’s lawsuit is a “misguided attempt to salve his wounds” after he “lost a rap battle that he provoked.”
The eye-popping comments from Universal Music Group (UMG) came in a filing submitted Monday in which the company asked a judge to dismiss the defamation lawsuit, which Drake filed in January.
“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,” the filing read.
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Drake is currently represented by Republic Records, a division of UMG, and Lamar – who is not directly named in the lawsuit – is currently represented by Interscope Records, also a division of UMG.
In a statement to CNN on Tuesday, Mike Gottlieb, Drake’s lead attorney, called UMG’s motion a “desperate ploy” to “avoid accountability.”
“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,” the statement read.
CNN has reached out to representatives for UMG for comment.
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The dispute stems from last year’s feud wherein Drake and Lamar traded increasingly personal and unverified insults in a series of songs. The lawsuit specifically pertains to Not Like Us, in which Lamar claimed Drake was a “certified pedophile,” an allegation the Canadian rapper denies.
The label argued Drake’s lawsuit must be dismissed because Lamar’s chart-topping diss track wasn’t defamatory – rather, “it clearly conveys nonactionable opinion and rhetorical hyperbole.”
“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 petition read.
The label’s lawyers also noted that Drake “had no concerns using UMG’s platform to publish slurs about Lamar during their rap feud,” including unproven claims of domestic violence.
How we got here
Drake filed a pre-action petition in November that preceded his defamation suit, in which he alleged UMG “conspired” to artificially boost Lamar’s Not Like Us on Spotify, according to a copy of the petition, obtained by CNN.
The petition does not accuse Lamar of any wrongdoing.
In it, Drake claimed that UMG “launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves” with Lamar’s song “in order to make that song go viral,” and that the label used “bots” and “pay-to-play agreements” to achieve that.
“To be clear, UMG disputes the contention that anyone paid for or otherwise used bots to inflate streams of ‘Not Like Us,’ as there is no evidence of any such stream manipulation, and the record evidence—filed in a separate legal proceeding that Drake initiated against UMG but then abandoned earlier this year—is to the contrary,” UMG’s rebuttal this week read.
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The song is part of what became a public feud between Lamar and Drake that started in October 2023 and played out over the following year. Not Like Us was the breakout song of the so-called rap battle, debuting at No. 1 on the Hot 100 when it was released in May 2024 and going on to win five Grammys in January. Lamar also performed the song in February during his Super Bowl Halftime Show in New Orleans.
Drake’s defamation lawsuit, filed in January against the label, accuses UMG of defaming him in the publishing and promotion of Not Like Us. He is seeking compensatory and punitive damages.
In the suit, Drake cites an attempted break-in that occurred at his Toronto home that resulted in a security guard he employed getting shot.
He claims that the incident occurred as a result of UMG launching a campaign to make “a viral hit out of a rap track that falsely accuses Drake of being a pedophile and calls for violent retribution against him.”
Drake also claims that while UMG “enriched itself and its shareholders by exploiting Drake’s music for years and knew that the salacious allegations against Drake were false, UMG chose corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists.”
In a statement to CNN at the time, UMG denied Drake’s claims and called his allegations “illogical” and “frivolous,” and said they plan to “vigorously defend this litigation.”
“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 read.
“He now seeks to weaponise the legal process to silence an artist’s creative expression and to seek damages from UMG for distributing that artist’s music.”
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