{"id":3752,"date":"2025-01-19T07:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-01-19T07:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/umg-calls-defamation-case-illogical\/"},"modified":"2025-01-19T07:05:08","modified_gmt":"2025-01-19T07:05:08","slug":"umg-calls-defamation-case-illogical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/umg-calls-defamation-case-illogical\/","title":{"rendered":"UMG Calls Defamation Case “Illogical”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tUniversal Music Group (UMG) is firing back at Drake\u2019s lawsuit accusing the music giant of defaming him by promoting Kendrick Lamar\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us,\u201d calling the case \u201cillogical\u201d and accusing Drake of trying to \u201cweaponize the legal process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a strongly-worded statement issued Wednesday afternoon (Jan. 15), UMG flatly denied the allegations in Drake\u2019s lawsuit \u2014 filed earlier in the day in New York federal court \u2014 and sharply criticized its superstar artist for bringing it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNot only are these claims untrue, but the notion that we would seek to harm the reputation of any artist\u2014let alone Drake\u2014is illogical,\u201d the company wrote. \u201cWe have invested massively in his music and our employees around the world have worked tirelessly for many years to help him achieve historic commercial and personal financial success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit claims that UMG knew that \u201cinflammatory and shocking allegations\u201d in Lamar\u2019s scathing diss track were false, but chose to place \u201ccorporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in UMG\u2019s response, the music giant said that Drake himself had often engaged in rap beefs featuring bombastic claims about his opponents \u2014 the very thing that he now claims is illegal.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThroughout his career, Drake has intentionally and successfully used UMG to distribute his music and poetry to engage in conventionally outrageous back-and-forth \u2018rap battles\u2019 to express his feelings about other artists,\u201d UMG wrote. \u201cHe now seeks to weaponize the legal process to silence an artist\u2019s creative expression and to seek damages from UMG for distributing that artist\u2019s music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDrake\u2019s case repeatedly makes clear that he is not suing Lamar himself, and that he holds UMG responsible for releasing a song that it allegedly knew was defamatory.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn its statement, UMG denied that claim \u2014 and said it would defend Lamar or any other artist if they were hit with such a lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0\u201cWe have not and do not engage in defamation\u2014against any individual,\u201d UMG said in the statement. \u201cAt the same time, we will vigorously defend this litigation to protect our people and our reputation, as well as any artist who might directly or indirectly become a frivolous litigation target for having done nothing more than write a song.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDrake and Lamar exchanged stinging diss tracks last year, culminating in Lamar\u2019s knockout \u201cNot Like Us\u201d \u2014 a track that savagely slammed Drake as a \u201ccertified pedophile\u201d and reached the top of the charts. In November, the star filed stunning legal petitions suggesting that he planned to sue UMG, claiming that the company had artificially boosted a song that contained defamatory statements about him.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier on Wednesday, Drake made good on those threats \u2014 filing a federal lawsuit that claimed UMG had boosted a \u201cfalse and malicious narrative\u201d that the star rapper was a pedophile, severely harming his reputation and even putting his life in danger.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUMG intentionally sought to turn Drake into a pariah, a target for harassment, or worse,\u201d the star\u2019s lawyers wrote in their complaint. \u201cUMG did so not because it believes any of these false claims to be true, but instead because it would profit from damaging Drake\u2019s reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe accusations \u2014 and Wednesday\u2019s response statement \u2014 represent a remarkable rift between the world\u2019s largest music company and one of its biggest stars. Drake has spent his entire career at UMG, first through signing a deal with Lil Wayne\u2019s Young Money imprint that was distributed by Republic Records, then by signing directly to Republic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Universal Music Group (UMG) is firing back at Drake\u2019s lawsuit accusing the music giant of defaming him by promoting Kendrick Lamar\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us,\u201d calling the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3336,294,720,4326,1109],"class_list":["post-3752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-calls","tag-case","tag-defamation","tag-illogical","tag-umg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}