{"id":4765,"date":"2025-03-17T17:03:18","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T17:03:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/umg-responds-to-drake-lawsuit-over-kendrick-lamars-not-like-us\/"},"modified":"2025-03-17T17:03:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T17:03:18","slug":"umg-responds-to-drake-lawsuit-over-kendrick-lamars-not-like-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/umg-responds-to-drake-lawsuit-over-kendrick-lamars-not-like-us\/","title":{"rendered":"UMG Responds To Drake Lawsuit Over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tU<\/span>niversal Music Group has filed a scathing first court response to Drake<\/a>\u2019s defamation lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar<\/a>\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us,\u201d blasting the case as \u201cno more than Drake\u2019s attempt to save face\u201d after losing a rap beef.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a motion filed Monday seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, attorneys for the music giant argued that Drake\u2019s allegations against the company were clearly \u201cmeritless\u201d \u2013 and that he had gone to court simply because he had been publicly embarrassed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlaintiff, one of the most successful recording artists of all time, lost a rap battle that he provoked and in which he willingly participated,\u201d UMG\u2019s lawyers write. \u201cInstead 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the filing, UMG pointedly noted that Drake himself had leveled his own \u201chyperbolic insults\u201d and \u201cvitriolic allegations\u201d during the same exchange of stinging rap tracks, including accusing Lamar of domestic abuse and questioning whether the rival had really fathered his son.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDrake has been pleased to use UMG\u2019s platform to promote tracks leveling similarly incendiary attacks at Lamar,\u201d the company\u2019s attorneys write. \u201cBut now, after losing the rap battle, Drake claims that \u2018Not Like Us\u2019 is defamatory. It is not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement to Billboard <\/em>on Monday, Drake\u2019s attorney Michael J. Gottlieb responded to the new filing: \u201cUMG 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. This motion is a desperate ploy by UMG to avoid accountability, but we have every confidence that this case will proceed and\u00a0continue to uncover UMG\u2019s long history of endangering, abusing and taking advantage of its artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLamar released \u201cNot Like Us\u201d last May amid a high-profile beef with Drake that saw the two stars release a series of bruising diss tracks. The song, a knock-out punch that blasted Drake as a \u201ccertified pedophile\u201d over an infectious beat, eventually became a chart-topping hit in its own right and was the centerpiece of Lamar\u2019s Super Bowl halftime show.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn January, Drake took the unusual step of suing UMG over the song, claiming the label had defamed him by boosting the track\u2019s popularity. The lawsuit, which doesn\u2019t name Lamar himself as a defendant, alleges that UMG \u201cwaged a campaign\u201d against its own artist to spread a \u201cmalicious narrative\u201d about pedophilia that it knew to be false.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in Monday\u2019s response, UMG says the lyrics to Lamar\u2019s song are clearly the kind of free speech that are shielded from defamation lawsuits by the First Amendment. The song contains over-the-top insults, the company argued, but so do all such tracks, including those by Drake.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDiss tracks are a popular and celebrated artform centered around outrageous insults, and they would be severely chilled if Drake\u2019s suit were permitted to proceed,\u201d the company wrote. \u201cHyperbolic and metaphorical language is par for the course in diss tracks \u2014 indeed, Drake\u2019s own diss tracks employed imagery at least as violent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn technical terms, UMG is arguing that Lamar\u2019s lyrics are either \u201crhetorical hyperbole\u201d or opinion \u2013 the kind of statements that might sound bad but cannot actually be proven false. Since defamation only covers false assertions of fact, statements of hyperbole and opinion can\u2019t form the basis for such lawsuits.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo make that point, UMG cites Drake\u2019s own public support for a 2022 petition<\/a> criticizing prosecutors for using rap lyrics as evidence in criminal cases. That letter, also signed by Megan Thee Stallion<\/a>, 21 Savage<\/a> and many other stars, criticized prosecutors for treating lyrics as literal statements of fact.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs Drake recognized, when it comes to rap, \u2018the final work is a product of the artist\u2019s vision and imagination\u2019,\u201d UMG\u2019s lawyers write. \u201cDrake was right then and is wrong now. The complaint\u2019s unjustified claims against UMG are no more than Drake\u2019s attempt to save face for his unsuccessful rap battle with Lamar. The court should grant UMG\u2019s motion and dismiss the complaint with prejudice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDrake\u2019s attorneys will file a court response to UMG\u2019s motion in the weeks ahead, and the judge will rule on the motion at some point in the next few months. If denied, the case will move ahead into discovery and toward an eventual trial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Universal Music Group has filed a scathing first court response to Drake\u2019s defamation lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us,\u201d blasting the case as \u201cno more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[441,402,4327,303,1530,1109],"class_list":["post-4765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-drake","tag-kendrick","tag-lamars","tag-lawsuit","tag-responds","tag-umg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4765","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=4765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}