Common Music Group has lastly responded to Drake’s claims that the label broken his status with Kendrick Lamar’s diss observe “Not Like Us,” and there are some spicy tidbits in there.
UMG, which represents each artists, broadly argues that the court docket ought to dismiss Drake’s lawsuit as a result of he’s simply the sore loser of an unsightly rap battle and may’t again up any of his claims. “As a substitute of accepting the loss just like the unbothered rap artist he typically claims to be, he has sued his personal file label in a misguided try to salve his wounds,” UMG says within the submitting.
However that’s solely the beginning of UMG’s response. Listed below are a couple of factors that caught out.
Drake beforehand agreed prosecutors shouldn’t use lyrics towards rappers
Although Drake is now suing UMG for defamation, the artist beforehand agreed that rappers shouldn’t be criminalized due to their lyrics. In 2022, Drake, together with a number of different distinguished artists, signed a letter in assist of Younger Thug, a rapper whose lyrics had been used against him at trial. “The development of prosecutors utilizing artists’ artistic expression towards them is occurring with troubling frequency,” the letter mentioned.
That irony isn’t misplaced on UMG: “As Drake acknowledged, in terms of rap, ‘[t]he last work is a product of the artist’s imaginative and prescient and creativeness.’ Drake was proper then and is mistaken now.”
Everybody anticipated a giant response from Lamar
UMG says Drake can’t declare that “Not Like Us” is defamatory, because the broader context surrounding the tune meant the viewers was anticipating using aggressive lyrics.
It cites the “seven previous tracks by which Drake and Lamar hurled more and more vitriolic allegations at one another,” together with claims that Lamar’s son isn’t his and that he’d abused his fiancé. “If ever there was circumstance for the viewers to ‘anticipate using epithets, fiery rhetoric or hyperbole,’ that is it,” UMG says.
Drake used fiery lyrics, too
As said above, Drake is not any stranger to rapping equally vitriolic lyrics. UMG claims it “engaged in the identical conduct” when it distributed Drake’s tune, “Household Issues,” which “is a scathing assault on Lamar, laden with hyperbolic slurs.”
The label goes on to refute allegations that “Not Like Us” issued a “name to violence,” as Drake’s safety guard was shot outside the rapper’s home days after the tune’s launch. UMG claims that “Drake makes an attempt to contort violent metaphors within the lyrics into incitement.”
It provides that fiery lyrics are “par for the course” in rap music — particularly on diss tracks. “Rappers know that their lyrics are exaggerated and nonfactual; that’s a part of the craft,” the label argues. “Drake’s personal diss tracks employed imagery no less than as violent, resembling gunshot sounds.”
Drake acknowledged the controversies in “Not Like Us”
UMG claims that the controversies talked about in Lamar’s diss observe are “well-known,” saying that “information and criticism regarding Drake’s relationships with minors predate ‘Not Like Us’ and have been broadly reported.”
The label additionally says that Drake acknowledged and perpetuated these allegations in his tune, “Taylor Made Freestyle,” which options an AI-generated model of Tupac’s voice suggesting Lamar ought to “discuss [Drake] likin’ younger women.”
Drake additionally affirmed that he understood Lamar’s statements in “Not Like Us” to seek advice from the Millie Bobby Brown controversy, stating, “This Epstein angle was the shit I anticipated” and “Solely fuckin’ with Whitneys, not Millie Bobby Browns, I’d by no means look twice at no teenager.” Clearly, Drake himself understands that Lamar’s lyrics seek advice from well-known points.
UMG says Drake doesn’t have proof to again up his bots and payola claims
UMG pushes again on Drake’s accusations that the label artificially inflated streams of “Not Like Us” by utilizing bots and payola. The label claims Drake based mostly his bots principle on an allegation espoused by an nameless particular person on Twitch, who claimed Lamar’s label paid him to spice up the diss observe’s streams on Spotify.
Nevertheless, this “already a doubtful supply” later claimed that he was particularly employed by Lamar’s supervisor — not UMG or its subsidiary, Interscope. “To be clear, UMG disputes the competition that anybody paid for or in any other case used bots to inflate streams of ‘Not Like Us,’ as there isn’t any proof of any such stream manipulation,” UMG says. “However the particular declare that somebody affiliated with UMG did so is totally unsupported by the very supply Drake cites.”
UMG goes on to say that Drake’s pay-for-play allegations are made on data and imagine “with out stating the premise therefor.” It additionally refutes Drake’s claims of damage and causation. “Drake’s principle — that ‘each time the Recording was performed, Drake misplaced the chance for one in every of his songs to be performed,’ — is wildly speculative and never cognizable,” the submitting says.
Drake’s lawyer, Mike Gottlieb, isn’t backing down from the artist’s preliminary claims. “UMG desires to fake that that is a couple of rap battle to be able to distract its shareholders, artists and the general public from a easy reality: a grasping firm is lastly being held accountable for making the most of harmful misinformation that has already resulted in a number of acts of violence,” Gottlieb told NBC. “This movement is a determined ploy by UMG to keep away from accountability, however we’ve got each confidence that this case will proceed and proceed to uncover UMG’s lengthy historical past of endangering, abusing and profiting from its artists.”