{"id":3811,"date":"2025-01-22T01:28:33","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T01:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/drake-umg-lawsuit-tiktok-ban-nelly-case-more-music-legal-news\/"},"modified":"2025-01-22T01:28:33","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T01:28:33","slug":"drake-umg-lawsuit-tiktok-ban-nelly-case-more-music-legal-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/drake-umg-lawsuit-tiktok-ban-nelly-case-more-music-legal-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Drake UMG Lawsuit, TikTok Ban, Nelly Case & More Music Legal News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tThis is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from <\/em>Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tThis week: Drake sues Universal Music Group for defamation over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us\u201d; the Supreme Court upholds a ban on TikTok but President Donald Trump says he\u2019ll delay it; Nelly demands punishment for a \u201cfrivolous\u201d lawsuit over <\/em>Country Grammar; and more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE BIG STORY: Drake v. UMG\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tTwo months after Drake shocked the music industry with court filings suggesting he might file a lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s \u201cNot Like Us, the superstar rapper did exactly that \u2014 seemingly unswayed by public ridicule that he had hired lawyers during a rap beef.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a case filed in Manhattan federal court, Drake accused Universal Music Group of defaming him by promoting Lamar\u2019s song \u2014 a brutal diss track that savaged Drake as a \u201ccertified pedophile\u201d and became a chart-topping hit in its own right. The star claimed that his own label had \u201cwaged a campaign against him,\u201d boosting a \u201cfalse and malicious narrative\u201d even though it knew it was false.<\/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. \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\tCan Drake really sue over a diss track? While the term \u201cslander\u201d gets thrown around a lot these days, actual legal defamation is pretty hard to prove in America. Drake would need to show that Lamar\u2019s statements were provably false \u2014 a tricky task in a lyrical context where listeners have come to expect bombastic boasting and obvious exaggerations.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe public \u2026 has to believe that the speaker is being serious, and not just hurling insults in a diss fight,\u201d Dori Hanswirth, a longtime media law attorney, told me last year. \u201cIf the statements are not taken literally, then they are rhetorical hyperbole and not considered to be defamatory. The context of this song-by-song grudge match tends to support the idea that this is rhetorical, and a creative way to beef with a rival.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s essentially the same argument that UMG made when it responded to Drake\u2019s \u201cillogical\u201d lawsuit: That all parties involved in rap beefs, from the artist to the labels to the fans, have always known that it\u2019s all part of a game \u2014 until now.<\/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 in its response. \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\tFor more, go read our entire story on the lawsuit, featuring a detailed breakdown of the allegations and a link to Drake\u2019s full complaint.<\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE OTHER BIG STORY: TikTok Ban\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tThe TikTok rollercoaster continues. After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal law effectively banning TikTok over national security concerns, newly-inaugurated President Donald Trump<\/strong> quickly claimed to have delayed the ban \u2014 a move that restored the app for users but left plenty uncertain.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a unanimous ruling Friday, the high court said the law \u2014 set to go into effect on Sunday (Jan. 19) \u2014 was fair game because the U.S. government has valid fears about China\u2019s control over TikTok, a service with 170 million American users that has become a key promotional tool for the music industry.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs a result of that ruling, TikTok briefly went dark for users on Saturday and vanished from Google\u2019s and Apple\u2019s app stores. Service was restored on Sunday after Trump announced that he was planning an executive order to delay the ban.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an order issued Monday (Jan. 20), Trump (who once led the charge against TikTok but later reversed course) instructed his attorney general not to enforce the ban for 75 days to give his administration time to \u201cdetermine the appropriate course forward.\u201d Trump had previously said he would \u201cnegotiate a resolution,\u201d potentially for an American company to buy TikTok \u2014 the explicit goal of the ban.<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump\u2019s move was a win for TikTok and its many U.S. fans, but it raises difficult legal questions.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnder the Constitution\u2019s separation of powers, the president cannot outright ignore laws passed by Congress. In practice, enforcement priorities can sometimes be a bit discretionary \u2014 like with federal drug laws in states that legalized cannabis \u2014 but does that leeway extend to flatly refusing to enforce a national security law? The TikTok law does contain a provision allowing for a 90-day delay if a sale is imminent, but it\u2019s unclear if Trump\u2019s order triggered that option, or if he was even legally eligible to do so.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor now, that uncertainty has left things in limbo. Trump\u2019s assurances clearly allayed fears, but the app remains unavailable for download on the app stores \u2014 likely because the law threatens huge financial penalties against service providers like Google and Apple that violate the ban.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat happens next? A lawsuit challenging Trump\u2019s executive order? An act of Congress to repeal the ban? A sale of TikTok to an American firm? Stay tuned\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\t\tOther top stories\u2026\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tNELLY NOT PLAYING <\/strong>\u2013 Nelly (Cornell Haynes) asked a judge to issue legal sanctions in a copyright lawsuit filed by his former St. Lunatics bandmate Ali over Nelly\u2019s 2000 debut album Country Grammar<\/em>. The case claims that Nelly has failed to pay his former St. Lunatics bandmate Ali for his work on the album, but the star\u2019s lawyers argued in the new filings that those decades-old allegations are so \u201cfrivolous\u201d that Ali and his lawyers must face penalties for filing them: \u201cPlaintiff\u2019s claims should never have been brought in the first place,\u201d Nelly\u2019s attorneys wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTHOROUGHLY ENJOYED HERSELF\u201d<\/strong> \u2013 Attorneys for Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs argued in new legal filings that key evidence disclosed by prosecutors \u2014 videos of the alleged \u201cfreak off\u201d parties at the center of case \u2014 show only consensual sex and \u201cfundamentally undermine\u201d the charges against him. Far from the \u201csensationalistic media reports,\u201d Diddy\u2019s attorneys wrote, the videos at issue \u201cunambiguously\u201d show that the alleged victim \u201cnot only consented but thoroughly enjoyed herself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGYM MELEE LAWSUIT <\/strong>\u2013 Tekashi 6ix9ine (Daniel Hernandez) filed a lawsuit against LA Fitness, claiming the gym chain is legally responsible for a 2023 \u201cviolent assault\u201d in which he was attacked in the sauna at one of the company\u2019s South Florida locations \u2014 and owes him at least $1 million in damages for his trouble. The lawsuit claimed the assailants were members of the Latin Kings criminal gang and that LA Fitness should have had measures in place to prevent the entry of \u201caffiliates of violent gangs\u201d and people with \u201caggressive and dangerous propensities.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[524,294,441,303,136,593,3487,310,182,1109],"class_list":["post-3811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-ban","tag-case","tag-drake","tag-lawsuit","tag-legal","tag-music","tag-nelly","tag-news","tag-tiktok","tag-umg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3811","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=3811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}