A federal judge has thrown out Drake’s defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us.”
Drake sued his own label UMG earlier this year, accusing the label of having “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 pedophile, and to suggest that the public should resort to vigilante justice in response.”
However, in her opinion issued Thursday, Judge Jeannette Vargas ruled that a “war of words” during a “heated rap battle” did not violate the law. Vargas wrote that “even statements that are offensive or insulting are not defamatory when a reasonable listener would understand them as opinion, parody, or artistic expression rather than fact,” adding that “within the cultural context of a rap battle — especially one of this magnitude — the average listener does not reasonably believe the lyrics to be literal accusations of criminal conduct.”
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“Not Like Us” was released on May 4th, 2024, as the penultimate song in a series of back-and-forth diss tracks between Kendrick and Drake. Throughout the song, Lamar describes Drake and some of his associates as “certified pedophiles” who should be “registered and placed on neighborhood watch.”
This is a developing story…