Photo Credit: Drake by Charito Yap for The Come Up Show / CC by 2.0
Can a diss track go too far? Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” caused the public to view Drake “as another Jeffrey Epstein” – at least according to Drake himself, who’s come out swinging against Universal Music Group in their high-stakes appeal battle.
Drake just recently doubled down on his push to revive the billion-dollar complaint, which a district court dismissed this past October. The Toronto-born artist promptly fired off a 117-page appeal, and UMG closed out March by taking aim at the positions therein.
Admittedly, neither filing covered much new ground. As things stand, Drake remains adamant that UMG defamed him by releasing Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” with the track’s “core pedophilia message” having allegedly caused listeners to believe that the plaintiff “sexually abuses children.”
And in the opposite corner, UMG maintains that “Not Like Us,” besides constituting nonactionable opinion, is par for the diss-track course. Furthermore, Drake “seeks to strip words from their context and deem them actionable defamation if anyone, anywhere, might treat them as factual,” per the major.
Back to Drake’s fresh retort, he and his counsel are of the belief that the “case against UMG is in its infancy” – with the district court’s allegedly premature dismissal having purportedly denied the “One Dance” creator the “opportunity to contest the evidence” and invoke discovery findings.
The way Team Drake sees the situation, the lower court was incorrect in replacing “the reasonable listener with a rap aficionado” and “failing to recognize UMG’s republications to different audiences.”
On the former front, while rap diehards are familiar with the ins and outs of diss tracks, casual fans are not, per Drake. Although UMG “might be finely attuned to the history and norms of rap diss tracks, nothing in the pleadings (or common sense) suggests the average listener would be,” the legal text spells out.
Consequently, a “reasonable listener could (and countless did) construe” the Lamar mega-hit “as factually asserting that Drake sexually abuses children.”
Regarding UMG’s alleged adjacent moves to bring “Not Like Us” to different audiences, Drake’s filing points to Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show performance as “a republication far outside the original rap battle, including to football fans who had ‘never before heard the song or any of the songs that preceded it.’”
(That Lamar omitted the word “pedophile” from the Halftime Show set “implicitly concedes that viewers would take the lyrics literally,” per Drake.)
“Drake need not show that no one was aware of the broader rap battle; he need only show that the reasonable viewer would not necessarily have known the details of its back-and-forth or interpreted the Recording’s allegations the way the Court did,” the filing emphasizes.
“Given the cultural context, listeners were primed to, and did, take the Recording’s allegations as factual and view its subject as another Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs, or R. Kelly,” a separate section reads.
What about the argument (from UMG and others) that Drake’s claims threaten First Amendment-protected artistic expression and “the future of rap” itself?
“This fearmongering is baseless: many facets of defamation law and the First Amendment adequately protect artistic expression,” the relevant text indicates. “For example, as a public-figure plaintiff, Drake must show actual malice—that UMG acted with knowledge of falsity or a reckless disregard of the truth, which is not at issue here. That this case involves rap does not give UMG a free pass for defamation.”
With that, it’ll be worth continuing to track the appeal-court showdown. Meanwhile, the “Not Like Us” suit isn’t Drake’s only ongoing legal dispute. The 39-year-old is also grappling with an ugly complaint alleging, among other things, largescale streaming fraud.
That refers in part to what the plaintiffs describe as purported “significant and irregular” stream-volume spikes on years-old Drake tracks.
