Drake drops legal action over Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us

Former rapper Drake is suing Universal Music Group (UMG) for defamation and harassment, over the release of Kendrick Lamar’s diss track Not Like Us last year.

The song, which created an angry episode between the two stars, accused Drake and his group of being “official pedophiles” who should be “registered and put on close watch”.

In documents sent to New York, Drake’s lawyers accused the registrants of launching a “viral campaign” from the song that created “false facts that Drake is a criminal, and that people should wait for justice in response”.

Universal has yet to respond to the allegations.

The move comes just 24 hours after Drake dropped a lawsuit against UMG and Spotify, accusing the two companies of conspiring to promote Not Like Us, based on his music.

In that case, he argued that Universal had licensed the song “at a much lower price than Spotify” and had used bots to generate additional plays, giving “the false impression that the song was more popular than it actually was”.

In a statement at the time, Universal told the BBC: “The idea that [the company] he would do anything to confuse all his artists with insults and lies. “

It added that “no amount of fanciful and frivolous legal arguments … can obscure the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear.”

Spotify also responded that “there is no financial incentive for users not to be like Us on any of Drake’s tracks”.

The Swedish advertising company later filed a brief opposing Drake’s request, saying it “must be denied”.

His lawyers dropped the case on Tuesday, after meeting with representatives of both companies, according to court papers.

That seemed to mark the bottom line in the lawsuit — until the story took a dramatic turn on Wednesday morning.

In a lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Drake accused Universal – which distributes his and Lamar’s music – of prioritizing “corporate greed over the safety and livelihood of artists”.

His lawyers noted that the Not Like Us artwork was based on an aerial view of Drake’s $100m mansion in Toronto, with red markings often used to represent the presence of registered offenders.

Court documents link the footage to the shooting at the scene shortly after Kendrick released the song, calling it “the 2024 equivalent of ‘Pizzagate'”.

The report reported a conspiracy theory about a US child sex ring operating in a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. which caused the terrorist to shoot at the restaurant in 2016.

Not Like Us was considered a major blow to the long-running feud between Drake and Lamar, which began in the early 2010s.

In the statement, Lamar says Drake “likes ‘young'” and accuses him of using other rappers to boost his reputation.

Drake responded with a song called The Heart Part 6, in which he denied the claim, “I’ve never been with someone under the age of one”. He also said he fed Lamar “lies” through two agents.

However, his comeback failed to attract the same attention as Not Like Us, which debuted at number one on the US chart and attracted more than 1 billion streams on Spotify.

The song was nominated for five awards, including record and song of the year, at the Grammy Awards on 3 February. A week later, Lamar will headline the Super Bowl live show.

However, the new lawsuit isn’t just about Lamar himself, according to Drake’s lawyers.

“This case does not involve the artist who created Not Like Us,” the court documents state.

“In fact, it’s about UMG, a music company that decided to publish, promote, exploit, and monetize what sounds like not just fake, but dangerous.”