Drake has filed a brand new federal lawsuit towards his label Common Music Group for defamation and harassment over its launch and promotion of Kendrick Lamar’s diss monitor “Not Like Us.”
As reported by The New York Occasions, the go well with was introduced forth within the US District Court docket for the Southern District of New York and accuses Common of getting “authorized, printed, and launched a marketing campaign to create a viral hit out of a rap monitor” that was “meant to convey the precise, unmistakable, and false factual allegation that Drake is a prison pedophile, and to recommend that the general public ought to resort to vigilante justice in response.”
The lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Drake is Michael J. Gottlieb, who beforehand represented the proprietor of Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria threatened by “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorists in the course of the 2016 presidential election. Gottlieb has additionally represented the election employees falsely accused of trying to steal the 2020 presidential election by Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Certainly, the criticism describes the backlash to the track as “the 2024 equal of ‘Pizzagate’,” citing a taking pictures at Drake’s house after its launch and two tried trespasses. The quilt artwork for “Not Like Us” is a photograph of Drake’s Toronto residence overlaid with purple markers usually used to establish registered intercourse offenders.
“Not Like Us” was launched on Could 4th because the penultimate track in a sequence of back-and-forth diss tracks between Kendrick and Drake. All through the track, Lamar describes Drake and a few of his associates as “licensed pedophiles” who needs to be “registered and positioned on neighborhood watch.”
As such, Drake’s lawsuit claims the monitor “cloaks cleverly harmful lyrics behind a catchy beat and alluring hook.” It’s value noting that the criticism doesn’t identify Kendrick as a defendant, however is “completely about UMG, the music firm that determined to publish, promote, exploit, and monetize allegations that it understood weren’t solely false, however harmful.”
It additional alleges that UMG’s promotion of “Not Like Us” was meant to “[devalue] Drake’s music and model” and “acquire leverage to drive Drake to signal a brand new deal on phrases extra favorable” to the label.
The submitting comes forward of two main occasions on Kendrick’s docket. On February 2nd, “Not Like Us” can be up for 5 Grammy Awards, together with Document of the 12 months and Track of the 12 months. Kendrick will then headline the Tremendous Bowl halftime present in New Orleans one week later.
On Tuesday, Drake dropped a pre-file declare in New York state court docket towards Common Music Group and Spotify claiming the 2 firms labored collectively to artificially enhance streams of “Not Like Us.” Per TMZ, Drake’s choice to withdraw that authorized motion was executed to clear the way in which his new federal lawsuit towards UMG.
On the time of his preliminary declare, Common launched an announcement saying: “The suggestion that UMG would do something to undermine any of its artists is offensive and unfaithful. We make use of the very best moral practices in our advertising and marketing and promotional campaigns. No quantity of contrived and absurd authorized arguments on this pre-action submission can masks the truth that followers select the music they need to hear.”