When a US judge last year dismissed Drake’s defamation lawsuit against Universal Music in relation to Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’, she set a “dangerous” precedent, according to a new court filing by Drake’s lawyers. That precedent is that rap diss tracks can never contain ‘statements of fact’, basically making rappers immune from any claims of defamation when it comes to their lyrics.
Drake is appealing the decision of Judge Jeanette A Vargas to dismiss the lawsuit he filed against his long-time record label partner. When dismissing that litigation, Vargas concluded that - while Lamar does indeed accuse Drake of being a pedophile in the lyrics of ‘Not Like Us’ - in the context of a rap diss track, people couldn’t “reasonably” assume that that claim was being presented as a matter of fact.
However, “if rap diss tracks cannot contain statements of fact”, Drake’s appeal filing declares, then those tracks are “inoculated from any liability for defamation no matter how direct and damaging the defamatory statements they contain - this case illustrates that”. And that’s your dangerous precedent.
‘Not Like Us’ was the stand out in a series of diss tracks released by Drake and Lamar in 2024, allowing Lamar to declare victory in the rap beef between the two artists, both of whom are signed to Universal labels.
Drake initially accused Universal of employing dodgy marketing tactics to boost his rival’s track, before filing his defamation lawsuit in January last year, insisting that the record company had facilitated the distribution of a defamatory statement that caused him damage.
It always seemed ambitious to sue for defamation over the lyrics in a diss track. And when responding to the lawsuit, Universal was able to present itself as the gallant protector of free expression, standing up for artists everywhere (minus one of course). If Drake’s lawsuit was successful, the major argued, it would “severely chill” the “popular and celebrated artform” that is the rap diss track.
With that in mind, it wasn’t a surprise when Vargas dismissed Drake’s lawsuit in October, based on that conclusion that people listening to Lamar’s track couldn’t “reasonably” assume the pedophile line was a statement of fact.
Except, insists Drake’s team in their new legal filing, “millions of people” did actually assume that ‘Not Like Us’ “conveyed factual information, causing countless individuals around the globe to believe that Drake was a pedophile”.
“It is hard to imagine a statement more damaging to one’s reputation and safety than being labeled a ‘certified pedophile’, which elicits intense vitriol and can spur violent retaliation”, Drake's lawyers continue. And Vargas dismissing the lawsuit “brushes aside the risk of concrete reputational harms that can, and here did, spill over into violence”.
Drake’s original lawsuit last year described multiple incidents at the musician’s Toronto home just days after the release of ‘Not Like Us’, including a shooting during which a security guard was hospitalised. Suggesting those incidents were a direct result of Lamar’s lyrical allegations, the lawsuit stated, “in the two decades leading up to May 2024 nothing remotely like these events had ever happened”.
Universal will presumably argue that Drake’s latest legal filing simply repeats all the arguments that were made a year ago, which Vargas has already dismissed.
But Drake's lawyers insist that the repeated references to pedophilia in Lamar’s song, and the nature of the accompanying artwork and video, plausibly “convey a false statement of fact”, and that alone means a jury rather than a judge should consider Drake’s defamation claim.