It appears that Drake’s ” target=”_blank”>withdrawal of his pre-action court requests was the exact opposite of a change of heart. According to TMZ, he’s dived in headfirst, filing a defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group in New York federal court. That means he’s decided to forego his initial bid to secure a court order for UMG’s records pertaining to “Not Like Us” and skip straight to suing the major label.
At the heart of his contention is Kendrick Lamar’s diss song, “Not Like Us,” on which the Canadian superstar says Kendrick calls him a pedophile. (For those keeping score at home, the exact line goes, “They tell me Chubbs the only one that get your hand-me-downs / And Party at the party playin’ with his nose now / And Baka got a weird case, why is he around? / Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophiles.” Take from that what you will.)
Drake contends that in pushing “Not Like Us,” UMG — which is the distributor for both Drake, via Republic, and Kendrick, via Interscope — sought to devalue his music, which would give the label the upper hand in future contract negotiations. Drake reportedly signed a renewal of his record deal with Republic worth up to $400 million in 2022, although the terms were never publicly revealed.
According to Drake’s suit, UMG went to such lengths to promote the song as hiring a bot farm and employing a payola scheme with at least one radio station. Finally, Drake even asserts that “Not Like Us” put him in physical danger; there have been shootings reported near his home since its release, with at least one injuring his security guard.
Drake takes pains to stress that the lawsuit isn’t meant to be a response to the rap battle itself; rather, he wants to punish the label for promoting it, knowing about the claims Kendrick made. “This lawsuit is not about the artist who created ‘Not Like Us’,” the suit reads. “It is, instead, entirely about UMG, the music company that decided to publish, promote, exploit, and monetize” the song which it knew contained false claims.”
That being said, this probably won’t help his tattered reputation among rap fans, and may end up having the effect he feared “Not Like Us” and UMG’s plan to promote it would have. Maybe he really is done with music, and he’s just burning all the bridges on the way out.
