Drake’s label slams rapper as “astoundingly hypocritical”
Universal Music Group have called Drake a “hypocrite” after he appealed the dismissal of his ‘Not Like Us’ lawsuit.
In January 2025, Drizzy sued his label for defamation over Kendrick Lamar’s chart-topping diss track. He accused the company of valuing “corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists” in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
He alleged the label “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 paedophile, and to suggest that the public should resort to vigilante justice in response.”
The lawsuit was dismissed in October 2025, but Drake appealed the decision in January.
In a new appellate brief, obtained by Rolling Stone, UMG claimed that Drake’s arguments are so flawed and “nonsensical” that he’s trying to “turn the law upside down.”
“[Drake] seeks to strip words from their context and deem them actionable defamation if anyone, anywhere, might treat them as factual,” the brief reads. “That is not the law, and Drake’s view would critically undermine a highly creative art form built on exaggeration, insult, and wordplay.”
UMG added that “Drake’s argument is also astoundingly hypocritical.” They cited the petition’s claim that “more than any other art form, rap lyrics are essentially being used as confessions in an attempt to criminalise Black creativity and artistry,” and that the use “is un-American and simply wrong.”
The judge found that Kendrick’s lyrics were a “direct callback to Drake’s lyrics” as part of “a heated rap battle with incendiary language and offensive accusations hurled by both participants.”
She said that any reasonable listener would think that he was “rapping hyperbolic vituperations” and not “verifiable facts.”