Drake “lost a rap battle that he provoked and in which he willingly participated,” according to a court filing from Universal Music Group.
The Canadian rapper’s allegations are “no more than Drake’s attempt to save face for his unsuccessful rap battle” with Kendrick Lamar, according to a move to dismiss Drake’s defamation lawsuit against it filed by Universal Music Group.
In a court filing on Monday, UMG claimed that Drake “lost a rap battle that he provoked and in which he willingly participated.” “In a misguided attempt to patch things up, he has sued his own record label rather than embracing the loss like the unconcerned rap artist he frequently portrays himself as.”
Lamar and Drake are both signed to UMG, albeit they are in different departments. (NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News, is not affiliated with UMG.)
Following a fruitful year-long diss track spat in which Drake and Kendrick Lamar released numerous songs directed at one another throughout 2024, the filing was made. With “Not Like Us” becoming the best-selling rap song of 2024, many fans, nevertheless, proclaimed Lamar the victor of the feud. This year’s Grammy Awards saw the artist win five awards, including record of the year and song of the year. Lamar’s momentum continued when he sang “Not Like Us” during the February Super Bowl halftime show, to a boisterous audience.
In November, Drake, whose real name is Aubrey Drake Graham, accused UMG of planning to “artificially inflate” Kendrick Lamar’s song “Not Like Us” on Spotify, including by boosting the song with iHeartRadio through a pay-per-click scheme. Drake’s claims against UMG are still pending despite a deal he reached with iHeartMedia last month. The “suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue,” according to an earlier statement from UMG to NBC News.
Drake filed an 81-page lawsuit against the record label in January, claiming that UMG had defamed him by disseminating a “false and malicious narrative” when it promoted Kendrick Lamar’s diss track. The action was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit does not name Lamar.
The claims have been refuted by UMG. UMG’s lawyers stated in their declaration on Monday that Drake’s allegations are “completely without merit and should be dismissed with prejudice.”
“UMG 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,” stated Mike Gottlieb, Drake’s lead attorney, in response to the filing.
“We have complete faith that this case will go forward and continue to uncover UMG’s long history of endangering, abusing, and taking advantage of its artists, even though this motion is a desperate ploy by UMG to avoid accountability,” he continued.
