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LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 30: Drake attends Drake's Till Death Do Us Part rap battle on October 30, 2021 in Long Beach, California.
Legal News
Drake Appeal in ‘Not Like Us’ Case Slammed by Legal Scholars: ‘It Is Dangerous’
As Drake appeals his case, law professors say he can't sue over a fight he picked himself: "Consent is an absolute defense to defamation."
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Legal scholars are harshly criticizing Drake’s bid to revive his lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” arguing that he cannot sue after he “consented” to the war of words — and that litigation over rap lyrics is “dangerous.”
Drake is currently appealing an October ruling that dismissed his case, which accused Universal Music Group (UMG) of defaming him by releasing Lamar’s Grammy-winning diss track that tarred him as a “certified pedophile.”
But according to law professors from Yale University, the case ought to stay dismissed. In a brief filed Friday (April 3), they say Drake clearly granted “consent” — not only for the exchange of diss tracks generally, but specifically by goading Lamar to rap about him “likin’ young girls.”
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“Suppose a self-assured boxer challenges the world champion to a prize fight, is knocked out on live television, and, with bruised ego and body, files a lawsuit for battery,” the Yale scholars write. “That lawsuit would fail at the outset for a simple but important reason: the challenger consented to the fight, and consent is a classic defense to an intentional tort.”
Having given consent to the rhetorical bout — and having made his own bombastic claims about Lamar — Drake was not allowed to go to court when he lost, according to the professors. “Lamar won in the court of public opinion,” they say. “Having lost in that forum, Drake turned to another.”
Lamar released “Not Like Us” in May 2024 amid a war of words with Drake that saw the two UMG stars release a series of bruising diss tracks. The song, a knockout punch that blasted Drake as a “certified pedophile” over an infectious beat, became a chart-topping hit in its own right and won five Grammy Awards, including record and song of the year.
In January, Drake stunned the music business by taking UMG to court over the song, claiming his own label had defamed him by boosting its popularity. The lawsuit, which didn’t name Lamar himself as a defendant, alleged that UMG “waged a campaign” against its own artist to spread a “malicious narrative” about pedophilia that it knew to be false.
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But just 10 months after Drake filed it, Judge Jeannette Vargas dismissed the case. Ruling that diss tracks are often filled with “figurative and hyperbolic language,” the judge said listeners would not have taken Kendrick’s insults as literal statements of fact.
With Drake currently appealing that ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, outside groups are now weighing in on the case — a common step in high-profile legal battles.
In addition to the Yale scholars, Friday also saw the filing of a separate brief from a group of scholars who have extensively studied the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal cases — a controversial tactic sometimes employed by prosecutors. Urging the judge to reject Drake’s case, they warned that his approach would lend fuel to the fire.
“Drake’s defamation claim rests on the assumption that every word of ‘Not Like Us’ should be taken literally, as a factual representation,” the professors write. “This assumption is not just faulty — it is dangerous. When rap lyrics are admitted, it is because they are treated as literal. This in turn opens the door to racial bias and stereotypes in the courtroom.”
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The brief’s signatories include Erik Nielson, a University of Richmond professor who wrote a book on rap lyrics in criminal cases; Charis E. Kubrin and Jack I. Lerner, professors at the University of California, Irvine, who conducted widely-cited empirical studies of rap in trials; and prominent professors from several other schools who have studied the issue.
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“Diss tracks are an emblematic and long-standing feature of the history and cultural context of rap,” they write. “They are understood by audiences not to represent factual assertions about the opposing artist, but rather to demonstrate skill and dominance meant to build allegiance and win competitions through clever wordplay, hyperbole, bluster, and demonstrations of disrespect.”
Both Drake and UMG have already filed their own briefs in the case (read more about Drake’s here, and UMG’s here.) 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 on Friday’s amicus briefs.
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