Universal Music Group (UMG) is firing back at Drake’s appeal seeking to revive his lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” arguing the superstar is trying to “critically undermine” the art of hip-hop because he’s upset he lost a rap beef.
Drake’s case accused UMG of defaming him by releasing Lamar’s Grammy-winning diss track, which blasted the rival rapper as a “certified pedophile.” But a judge dismissed it in October by ruling fans wouldn’t think insults in a rap battle were statements of fact.
Last month, the superstar appealed that ruling in an effort to overturn it. But in its brief on Friday, UMG said that appeal was a non-starter because it aimed to “strip words from their context.”
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“That is not the law, and Drake’s view would critically undermine a highly creative art form built on exaggeration, insult, and wordplay,” UMG’s attorneys write. Lamar released “Not Like Us” in May 2024 as the knock-out punch in a series of bruising diss tracks between the two stars. The song was not only seen as a final rhetorical victory, but also went on to become a chart-topping hit in its own right, cleaning up at the Grammy Awards and forming the centerpiece of Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show.
Drake sued UMG in January 2025, stunning the music industry. Few expected a rapper to respond to a diss track with a lawsuit — a move that drew ridicule in the hip-hop world. Fewer still expected him to file it against UMG, his longtime label and the biggest music company in the world.
Making matters worse for Drake, Judge Jeannette Vargas dismissed the case in October. She said Kendrick’s insulting lyrics were the kind of “hyperbolic” opinions that cannot be considered defamatory because reasonable listeners would not think they were “sober” statements of fact that could be proven true or false.
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In his appeal in January, Drake’s lawyers argued that “millions of people” took the lyric literally, causing “countless individuals around the globe to believe that Drake was a pedophile.” They said the ruling “brushes aside the risk of concrete reputational harms” simply because allegedly defamatory statements came in a rap track.
But in their response on Friday (May 27), UMG said that such context was all-important. The “pedophile” statement came after Drake himself had accused Kendrick of “beating his fiancée and not fathering one of his children,” in a genre that is built on such bombastic insults.“’Not Like Us’ falls within a genre typified by inflammatory putdowns, epithets, fiery rhetoric, vulgarity, and hyperbole,” UMG’s lawyers write. “Drake’s attempt to rip the words he now dislikes from their immediate and broader context has no support in governing law.”
The case will be argued before the appeals court in the months ahead, with a ruling expected at some point in the next year. An attorney for Drake did not immediately return a request for comment.
