“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”: Universal Music hits back in Drake defamation case

Universal Music has made moves to dismiss the defamation suit Drake took out against it, describing it as “a misguided attempt” by the Canadian rapper to “salve his wounds” after he was viewed to have “lost a rap battle” with Kendrick Lamar.

In the motion, filed in a New York district court, Universal - which represents both Drake and Lamar - claimed that Drake “lost a rap battle that he provoked and in which he willingly participated.

“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. Plaintiff’s complaint is utterly without merit and should be dismissed with prejudice.”

It’s coming up to a year since Drake and Lamar first began trading diss tracks on what initially seemed like a daily basis. But the immense success of Lamar’s Not Like Us - breaking Spotify records, winning Grammys and becoming a global talking point - has proved unanswerable.

Kendrick Lamar - Not Like Us - YouTube

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Instead, Drake decided to file a lawsuit against Universal, claiming that it “approved, published and launched a campaign to create a viral hit out of a rap track” that was “intended to convey the specific, unmistakable, and false factual allegation that Drake is a criminal pedophile, and to suggest that the public should resort to vigilante justice in response.”

Universal, in the motion to dismiss the case, argues that Not Like Us “conveys non-actionable opinion and rhetorical hyperbole, not fact.” It also points out that Universal has promoted Drake’s own diss tracks against Lamar, and indeed other rappers.

Drake’s action, it argues “disregards the other Drake and Lamar diss tracks that surrounded Not Like Us as well as the conventions of the diss track genre… diss tracks are a popular and celebrated artform centred around outrageous insults, and they would be severely chilled if Drake’s suit were permitted to proceed.”

The Canadian rapper doesn’t appear to giving up, though. In a statement released to Variety, his attorney Michael J. Gottlieb responded by saying: “UMG (Universal) 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.”

It’s hard to see what Drake stands to gain by pursuing the case. Any victory, in the unlikely event that it ever comes to court, will surely be pyrrhic. As ever, the only winners will be the lawyers.