Drake is reigniting his beef with fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar, this time trading in lyrics for the legal system.
This week Canadian rapper accused Universal Music Group (UMG) of inflating Kendrick Lamar’s streaming numbers and launched a defamation suit against the record label for publishing Lamar’s diss track.
On Monday, Drake accused UMG of falsely boosting streaming numbers on services like Spotify for Lamar’s song “Not Like Us.”
In a legal filing obtained by The Independent, Drake hurled several serious accusations against UMG. He said the record label used bots and “pay-to-play” schemes — where streaming services’ users are paid to stream a song over and over again — to “manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves” with “Not Like Us.”
Drake’s and Lamar’s bitter feud played out publicly earlier this year through a series of fiery diss tracks riddled with insults.
In “Not Like Us” — which was recently nominated for five Grammy Awards — Lamar accused Drake of being a sex offender through lyrics like, “Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A-minor.”
The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and music journalists agree Lamar won the feud.
On Tuesday, according to Billboard, Drake again took legal action against UMG, this time accusing the company of defamation and said the label could have stopped the release of a song “falsely accusing him of being a sex offender.”
“UMG … could have refused to release or distribute the song or required the offending material to be edited and/or removed. But UMG chose to do the opposite,” Drake’s lawyers wrote in the filing.
“UMG designed, financed and then executed a plan to turn ‘Not Like Us’ into a viral mega-hit with the intent of using the spectacle of harm to Drake and his businesses to drive consumer hysteria and, of course, massive revenues. That plan succeeded, likely beyond UMG’s wildest expectations.”
The Toronto Star reached out to UMG and a spokesperson told the publication, “The suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue.”
“We employ the highest ethical practices in our marketing and promotional campaigns. No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear.”
