Drake’s record label sought on Monday to dismiss the rapper’s defamation lawsuit, arguing he should accept his loss in a diss track battle with Kendrick Lamar “like the unbothered rap artist he often claims to be.”
Drake sued over Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” claiming the song defamed and harassed him with a lyric like “Drake, I hear you like ’em young” and by invoking the term “certified pedophiles.”
“Not Like Us” won the Grammy for song of the year in 2025. Lamar performed it at the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show to a record audience, and Saturday Night Live parodied it in its recent 50th anniversary special.
UMG said the song is not defamatory but “rhetorical hyperbole” protected by the First Amendment and argued “diss tracks are a popular and celebrated artform centered around outrageous insults, and they would be severely chilled if Drake’s suit were permitted to proceed.”
UMG also cast Drake as a sore loser of a two-month public rap battle with Lamar, during which the two artists exchange vitriolic and incendiary diss tracks.
“The Complaint’s unjustified claims against UMG are no more than Drake’s attempt to save face for his unsuccessful rap battle with Lamar,” UMG’s filing said.
Drake’s lawsuit seeks damages, and his attorney said UMG is only trying to avoid accountability.
“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. This motion is a desperate ploy by UMG to avoid accountability, but we have every confidence that this case will proceed and continue to uncover UMG’s long history of endangering, abusing and taking advantage of its artists,” the attorney, Michael Gottlieb, said in a statement.
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