Drake set to drop key allegations made in his Universal defamation lawsuit
It has been announced that Drake has made some changes to the defamation suit he filed against Universal Music Group at the beginning of this year. Last year, Drizzy filed two pre-action petitions in New York state’s Supreme Court alleging that UMG “launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves with a song, ‘Not Like Us’…by using ‘bots’ and pay-to-play agreements.” Furthermore, he accused the label of aiding defamation.
Still, in January of this year, he decided only to pursue the defamation claim and retracted his petition concerning bots. Many assumed Drake only filed the lawsuit to prevent Kendrick Lamar from performing ‘Not Like Us’ at the Super Bowl Halftime show. That said, since Lamar’s performance, Drizzy has not ceased legal action but has made some changes.
The initial 81-page lawsuit filed by Drake on January 15th aimed at UMG for promoting ‘Not Like Us’ and highlighted the defamatory language the track contains, explaining that the track propagates “false and defamatory accusations of paedophilia.” However, according to Universal Music Group’s attorney, Drake has now edited the initial documentation and dropped some “key allegations” from the lawsuit.
The record label’s attorney, Rollin A. Ransom, recently wrote a letter to the court requesting that the pretrial conference (currently scheduled for April 2nd) be delayed so they can consider a new motion to dismiss the case UMG plans on filing.
Ransom’s letter also unveiled that some of the allegations Drake made in his initial lawsuit would soon be removed, writing, “[P]ursuant to separate correspondence, Plaintiff has agreed to withdraw certain key allegations in his complaint.” Although Ransom’s letter now confirms that Drake will drop some of the allegations, people are extremely curious about which accusations he will retract as he made a lot of claims concerning UMG’s business practices.
Drake accused the record label of “whitelisting” reaction videos by well-known Twitch streamers and YouTubers so they could publicly promote the video without copyright claims. However, he also accused them of doing the same thing with TikTok influencers and, Drizzy argued that the music group directly paid influencers on social media platforms such as Instagram and X (formerly Twitter.)
Even in the face of a lawsuit, Universal has remained strong. When they were first made aware of the defamation case, they hit back at Drake and were militant with their wording. With every development, UMG has insisted the ‘Hotline Bling’ rhymer’s claims are illogical. In one statement, they wrote, “Not only are these claims untrue, but the notion that we would seek to harm the reputation of any artist — let alone Drake — is illogical.”
They continued, “We have invested massively in his music, and our employees around the world have worked tirelessly for many years to help him achieve historic commercial and personal financial success.”