Our five favorite dunks from Drake’s label over his ‘Not Like Us’ lawsuit

Universal Music Group has finally responded to Drake’s claims that the label damaged his reputation with Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us,” and there are some spicy tidbits in there.

UMG, which represents both artists, broadly argues that the court should dismiss Drake’s lawsuit because he’s just the sore loser of an ugly rap battle and can’t back up any of his claims. “Instead of accepting the loss like the unbothered rap artist he often claims to be, he has sued his own record label in a misguided attempt to salve his wounds,” UMG says in the filing.

But that’s only the start of UMG’s response. Here are a few points that stuck out.

Drake previously agreed prosecutors shouldn’t use lyrics against rappers

Though Drake is now suing UMG for defamation, the artist previously agreed that rappers shouldn’t be criminalized because of their lyrics. In 2022, Drake, along with several other prominent artists, signed a letter in support of Young Thug, a rapper whose lyrics were used against him at trial. “The trend of prosecutors using artists’ creative expression against them is happening with troubling frequency,”  the letter said.

That irony isn’t lost on UMG: “As Drake recognized, when it comes to rap, ‘[t]he final work is a product of the artist’s vision and imagination.’ Drake was right then and is wrong now.”

Everyone expected a big reaction from Lamar

UMG says Drake can’t claim that “Not Like Us” is defamatory, as the broader context surrounding the song meant the audience was anticipating the use of aggressive lyrics.

It cites the “seven preceding tracks in which Drake and Lamar hurled increasingly vitriolic allegations at each other,” including claims that Lamar’s son isn’t his and that he’d abused his fiancé. “If ever there was circumstance for the audience to ‘anticipate the use of epithets, fiery rhetoric or hyperbole,’ this is it,” UMG says.

Drake used fiery lyrics, too

As stated above, Drake is no stranger to rapping similarly vitriolic lyrics. UMG claims it “engaged in the same conduct” when it distributed Drake’s song, “Family Matters,” which “is a scathing attack on Lamar, laden with hyperbolic slurs.”

The label goes on to refute allegations that “Not Like Us” issued a “call to violence,” as Drake’s security guard was shot outside the rapper’s home days after the song’s release. UMG claims that “Drake attempts to contort violent metaphors in the lyrics into incitement.” 

It adds that fiery lyrics are “par for the course” in rap music — especially on diss tracks.  “Rappers know that their lyrics are exaggerated and nonfactual; that is part of the craft,” the label argues. “Drake’s own diss tracks employed imagery at least as violent, such as gunshot sounds.”

Drake acknowledged the controversies in “Not Like Us”

UMG claims that the controversies mentioned in Lamar’s diss track are “well-known,” saying that “facts and criticism concerning Drake’s relationships with minors predate ‘Not Like Us’ and have been widely reported.”

The label also says that Drake acknowledged and perpetuated these allegations in his song, “Taylor Made Freestyle,” which features an AI-generated version of Tupac’s voice suggesting Lamar should “talk about [Drake] likin’ young girls.”

Drake also affirmed that he understood Lamar’s statements in “Not Like Us” to refer to the Millie Bobby Brown controversy, stating, “This Epstein angle was the shit I expected” and “Only fuckin’ with Whitneys, not Millie Bobby Browns, I’d never look twice at no teenager.” Clearly, Drake himself understands that Lamar’s lyrics refer to well-known issues.

UMG says Drake doesn’t have evidence to back up his bots and payola claims

UMG pushes back on Drake’s accusations that the label artificially inflated streams of “Not Like Us” by using bots and payola. The label claims Drake based his bots theory on an allegation espoused by an anonymous individual on Twitch, who claimed Lamar’s label paid him to boost the diss track’s streams on Spotify.

However, this “already a dubious source” later claimed that he was specifically hired by Lamar’s manager — not UMG or its subsidiary, Interscope. “To be clear, UMG disputes the contention that anyone paid for or otherwise used bots to inflate streams of ‘Not Like Us,’  as there is no evidence of any such stream manipulation,” UMG says. “But the specific claim that someone affiliated with UMG did so is entirely unsupported by the very source Drake cites.”

UMG goes on to say that Drake’s pay-for-play allegations are made on information and believe “without stating the basis therefor.” It also refutes Drake’s claims of injury and causation. “Drake’s theory — that ‘every time the Recording was played, Drake lost the opportunity for one of his songs to be played,’ — is wildly speculative and not cognizable,” the filing says.

Drake’s lawyer, Mike Gottlieb, isn’t backing down from the artist’s initial claims. “UMG wants to pretend that this is about a rap battle in order to distract its shareholders, artists and the public from a simple truth: a greedy company is finally being held responsible for profiting from dangerous misinformation that has already resulted in multiple acts of violence,” Gottlieb told NBC. “This motion is a desperate ploy by UMG to avoid accountability, but we have every confidence that this case will proceed and continue to uncover UMG’s long history of endangering, abusing and taking advantage of its artists.”