Rap superstar Drake is suing Universal Music Group (UMG) for defamation and harassment, over its release of the Kendrick Lamar diss track Not Like Us last year.
The song, which formed part of a furious back and forth between the two stars, accused Drake and his entourage of being “certified paedophiles” who should “be registered and placed on neighbourhood watch”.
In papers filed in New York, Drake’s lawyers accused the record label of launching “a campaign to create a viral hit” out of a song that made the “false factual allegation that Drake is a criminal paedophile, and to suggest that the public should resort to vigilante justice in response”.
Universal has yet to respond to the allegations.
The move comes just 24 hours after Drake withdrew a separate legal action against UMG and Spotify, in which he accused the two companies of conspiring to artificially boost streams of Not Like Us, at the expense of his own music.
In that case, he argued that Universal had licensed the song “at drastically reduced rates to Spotify” and used bots to generate extra plays, generating “the false impression that the song was more popular than it was in reality”.
In a statement at the time, Universal told the BBC: “The suggestion that [the company] would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue.”
It added that “no amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments… can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear.”
Spotify also responded that there was “no economic incentive for users to stream Not Like Us over any of Drake’s tracks”.
The Swedish streaming company later filed an opposition brief to Drake’s petition, stating that it “should be denied”.
His lawyers withdrew the case on Tuesday, after meeting with representatives from both companies, according to court papers.
That appeared to draw a line under the legal action – until the story took a dramatic twist on Wednesday morning.
In a lawsuit filed at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Drake accused Universal – which distributes both his music and Lamar’s – of prioritising “corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists”.
His lawyers noted that the artwork for Not Like Us was based on an aerial photograph of Drake’s $100m Toronto mansion, dotted with red markers that are often used to represent the presence of registered sex offenders.
The court documents link that artwork to a shooting at the property shortly after the release of Kendrick’s song, calling it “the 2024 equivalent of ‘Pizza gate'”.
The comment referenced a conspiracy theory about a US child sex ring operating out of a Washington pizza restaurant, which led to a gunman opening fire on the eatery in 2016.
Not Like Us was widely regarded as the decisive blow in a long-running feud between Drake and Lamar, which dates back to the early 2010s.
In the lyrics, Lamar alleges that Drake “likes ‘them young” and accuses him of using other, more credible rappers, to boost his profile.
Drake responded with a track called The Heart Part 6, where he rejected the allegations, saying, “I never been with no one under age”. He also claimed to have fed Lamar “false” information through a double agent.
However, his retort failed to attract the same attention as Not Like Us, which debuted at number one in the US chart and attracted more than 1 billion streams on Spotify.
The song is nominated for five prizes, including record and song of the year, at the Grammy Awards on 3 February. A week later, Lamar will headline the Super Bowl halftime show.
However, the new lawsuit is not aimed at Lamar himself, according to Drake’s lawyers.
“This lawsuit is not about the artist who created Not Like Us,” the court documents says.
“It is, instead, entirely about UMG, the music company that decided to publish, promote, exploit, and monetize allegations that it understood were not only false, but dangerous.”
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