Drake’s legal professionals have alleged that Kendrick Lamar’s diss observe “Not Like Us” has led “tens of millions of individuals” to consider their shopper is a pedophile, in a authorized response to Common Music Group’s movement to dismiss his defamation lawsuit.
As reported by Billboard, Drake’s attorneys filed their movement on Thursday, countering UMG’s argument that Kendrick’s lyrics are protected by the First Modification as a result of “hyperbolic and metaphorical language” widespread in diss tracks.
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“UMG fully ignores the grievance’s allegations that tens of millions of individuals, all around the world, did perceive the defamatory materials as a factual assertion that plaintiff is a pedophile,” his legal professionals wrote. “UMG additionally ignores [the lawsuit’s claim] that the statements in query (and surrounding context) implied that the allegations have been primarily based on undisclosed proof and the viewers understood as a lot.”
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Only a day after claiming Drake resorted to authorized motion solely after “[losing] a rap battle that he provoked,” UMG’s attorneys adopted up by asking the decide to halt discovery within the case. They argued that Drake was demanding “extremely commercially delicate paperwork,” resembling Kendrick’s file contract, which might “be rendered moot” if the movement to dismiss have been to be granted.
Drake’s legal professionals, nevertheless, contend the latter movement “doesn’t come shut” to demonstrating why the invention is an “undue burden”: “UMG has not said how lengthy it expects discovery to take, the prices related to discovery, or some other indicator which may display why discovery will likely be overly burdensome.”
Filed in January, Drake’s lawsuit accuses Common of getting “accredited, revealed, and launched a marketing campaign to create a viral hit out of [‘Not Like Us’]” that was “meant to convey the precise, unmistakable, and false factual allegation that Drake is a legal pedophile, and to recommend that the general public ought to resort to vigilante justice in response.”
UMG’s motions to dismiss the go well with and halt discovery symbolize their first authorized responses within the case. In a press release, Drake’s lead legal professional, Mike Gottlieb, labeled the movement to dismiss as “a determined ploy to keep away from accountability” and pledged to “proceed to uncover UMG’s lengthy historical past of endangering, abusing, and making the most of its artists.”