Drake sues his label UMG for defamation over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ [UPDATE]
The pop star filed legal actions against his record label and the streaming giant alleging that they made us listen to “Not Like Us” more than we otherwise would.
In one of the more surprising moves of 2024 and on the heels of Kendrick Lamar’s release of his latest album, “GNX,” Drake filed legal actions against both his record label, Universal Music Group, and Spotify, alleging that the companies, in essence, colluded to inflate the streaming numbers and thus popularity of Kendrick Lamar’s hit single, “Not Like Us.” But while it looked like Drake, the certified loverboy, was backing away from a legal war by withdrawing his petition, he has officially come back with a defamation lawsuit.
Let’s start from the beginning.
According to Rolling Stone, on January 14th, Drake’s company — Frozen Moments — voluntarily withdrew their petition, suggesting that Drake would no longer be pursuing pre-legal actions against the companies. To be clear, Drake never sued UMG or Spotify; the pre-legal actions were intended to gather information in support of the idea that there might be grounds for a lawsuit surrounding the success of Kendrick Lamar’s summer anthem, “Not Like Us.”
As you no doubt remember, “Not Like Us,” is the bop that Kendrick Lamar dropped that effectively put an end to the monthslong back-and-forth musical feud between he and Drake that started years prior but turned into a mainstream duel with the March release of the number one single “Like That,” from Metro Boomin and Future’s album “We Don’t Trust You.” In that record, Kendrick made it clear that he doesn’t believe in any Big 3 of rap (coined by J. Cole on Drake’s song “First Person Shooter” in 2023).
There is no word yet as to why the legal action was withdrawn, but Drake was criticized very heavily for engaging the legal system to begin with in their musical back and forth.
Drake, as of this writing, still has a pre-legal action outstanding against iHeartRadio filed in Texas, but if this first action is any indication, perhaps the other petition will also be withdrawn.
Is this the end of the feud? Only time will tell. Hopefully, he and Kendrick can both get back to giving us more of the music that has changed the culture and kept both of their fanbases dancing and jamming for nearly two decades.
[UPDATE: 10:52AM]
We now safely can guess why Drake decided to drop his petition against UMG and Spotify; according to TMZ he’s suing UMG in federal court for defamation! Drake filed suit in New York City on Wednesday against his label UMG for releasing and promoting “Not Like Us,” a song that Drake claims is full of shocking and damaging allegations that stand to damage his brand and career. He alleges that UMG knows the song contains false claims and still decided to promote and monetize the song, despite the damage to Drake.
It looks like 2025 is heating up!
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
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