Key Takeaways:
- Drake’s legal team is escalating a defamation case tied to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”
- The lawsuit claims United Music Group promoted damaging allegations and used bots to boost the diss track’s reach.
- The case highlights how viral moments like the Super Bowl can influence legal and cultural narratives in Hip Hop.
On Monday (June 30), Drake’s legal team appeared in a Manhattan federal courtroom, urging a judge to let his defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group move ahead.
UMG, of course, would love to see the entire case get thrown out, but Drake’s side clearly isn’t backing down without a fight. In their initial suit, the Toronto rapper’s attorneys claimed that the world’s biggest music company decided to “publish, promote, exploit and monetize” allegations of pedophilia in Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”
Some of the lyrics, including Lamar’s “certified pedophiles” bar, were even cited in court, according to VIBE. A spokesperson for the “God’s Plan” rapper later issued a statement expanding on their position. “UMG is desperate to see this case not move forward because the company can’t hide its misconduct in a courtroom the way it does in the boardroom,” they wrote on Tuesday (July 1).
It continued, “Soon, in addition to facing concerned regulators and investors, the leadership of music’s most powerful label will have to answer for the damage it has caused to every artist that has been silenced, exploited, endangered or discarded.”
Among the other claims in the suit, Drake accused UMG of “approving, publishing and launching a campaign to create a viral hit from a rap track” using bots. He also alleged that his and Lamar’s shared label worked to paint him as a “criminal pedophile.”
Though Lamar isn’t the one being sued, “Not Like Us” is clearly at the center of it all. The diss spent three non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, got a massive boost from the Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show, and later swept up five Grammy Awards that same February.