Rap superstar Drake has filed a defamation and harassment lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) over the release of Kendrick Lamar’s diss track Not Like Us last year.
The song, part of a heated feud between the two artists, accused Drake and his entourage of being “certified paedophiles” who should “be registered and placed on neighbourhood watch.”
In legal documents submitted in New York, Drake’s lawyers claim that UMG orchestrated “a campaign to create a viral hit” using a song that falsely alleged Drake was a criminal pedophile and incited vigilante justice against him.
Universal has yet to issue a response to these allegations.
This legal action follows Drake’s withdrawal of a separate lawsuit against UMG and Spotify just a day prior.
That case accused the companies of artificially inflating streams of Not Like Us to the detriment of Drake’s music.
Drake’s lawyers argued that Universal licensed the song to Spotify at reduced rates and employed bots to boost its popularity, creating a misleading impression of its success.
Universal denied the claims, calling them “contrived and absurd,” while Spotify asserted it had no economic incentive to prioritize the track over Drake’s catalog.
Drake’s decision to drop the initial case appeared to resolve the dispute until he filed a new lawsuit on Wednesday morning at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
This suit accuses UMG of prioritizing “corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists.”
His legal team highlighted that the artwork for Not Like Us featured an aerial photo of Drake’s $100 million Toronto mansion, marked with red symbols resembling those used to denote registered sex offenders.
The lawsuit links the artwork to a shooting at the property shortly after the song’s release, likening the incident to the conspiracy-fueled Pizzagate shooting of 2016.
Not Like Us is seen as the pivotal blow in Drake and Lamar’s longstanding rivalry, dating back to the early 2010s.
The song, which accuses Drake of exploiting other rappers to elevate his profile, achieved massive success, debuting at number one in the US charts and garnering over a billion Spotify streams.
It is now nominated for five Grammy Awards, including Record and Song of the Year.
Drake responded with his track The Heart Part 6, where he denied the allegations, stating, “I never been with no one under age,” and claimed to have misled Lamar with false information through a double agent.
However, his response failed to match the impact of Not Like Us.
Drake’s latest lawsuit, however, does not target Lamar directly.
According to his legal team, “This lawsuit is not about the artist who created Not Like Us. It is, instead, entirely about UMG, the music company that decided to publish, promote, exploit, and monetize allegations that it understood were not only false, but dangerous.”
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