When US judge Jeanette A Vargas dismissed Drake’s defamation lawsuit against Universal Music over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ last year, she said that - in defamation cases - context is everything. Drake agrees. But what context? In his latest filing with the Second Circuit Appeals Court, Drake says that Vargas “committed multiple errors in considering the relevant context” in this case.
First, instead of considering how a regular “reasonable listener” might view the track, she replaced them “with a rap aficionado” who would understand the track was part of wider beef between the two rappers, and one part of a series of diss tracks that the two artists put out as part of that beef.
She also “ignored the broader social context” of Lamar calling Drake a “certified pedophile” and “failed to recognise” the importance of Universal’s “republications” of Lamar’s diss track to “different audiences”, including the massive audience that saw it during the Super Bowl halftime show in 2025.
And rather than deal with and respond to those problems with Vargas’s decision, Universal - as part of its response to Drake’s appeal in this case - has simply “doubled-down” on the judge’s errors.
The new filing is the latest in the long-running and high-profile back and forth in the courts between Drake and Universal, which is label partner for both him and Lamar. Those legal proceedings all stem from Lamar’s infamous dubbing of Drake as a ‘certified pedophile’ in the lyrics of 'Not Like Us', released as part of that equally high profile back and forth of diss tracks released by the two rappers in 2024.
However, Vargas said last year, Lamar’s lyrical pedophile claim, when taken in the context of a diss track or rap battle, where hyperbole and outlandish claims are the norm, should be judged as a ‘statement of opinion’ rather than a ‘statement of fact’, and therefore can’t be defamatory.
But in his latest filing, Drake says that when Universal released and marketed ‘Not Like Us’ as a standalone track, with dedicated artwork and accompanying music video, alongside the song’s subsequent performance at the Super Bowl, this took the ‘certified pedophile’ lyric way beyond the context of a simple diss track.
“Unlike impromptu statements made at a public hearing or in a live rap battle”, Drake argues, Universal’s release and marketing of Lamar’s track, as well as the video and artwork, “was the product of some deliberation and thus more likely to signal assertions of fact”.
As a result, a “reasonable listener” might think that ‘Not Like Us’ was “factually asserting that Drake sexually abuses children” - something which, the rapper’s lawyers say, “countless” people did indeed believe.
And while Universal claims that ‘Not Like Us’ - and the beef it was part of - contained “a series of hyperbolic disses” on “many subjects”, the district court acknowledged that the key lyrics of ‘Not Like Us’ itself “explicitly named Drake and his associates as pedophiles”. More importantly, Drake’s filing argues, most people who heard ‘Not Like Us’ were not exposed to the rest of the two artists’ back and forth..
The filing claims that the second most popular recording from the series of diss tracks had just 4.1% the number of views that ‘Not Like Us’ received. Taken alongside the fact that the track was also performed as part of Lamar’s set in front of “the largest Super Bowl audience in history”, the “reasonable listener” had little context beyond the track itself, and was unlikely to be aware of the bigger picture.
In fact, say Drake’s lawyers, based on that stat, Universal and Vargas’ definition of a “reasonable listener” represents “at most 4.1% of listeners”, adding that “the law does not permit the court to counterfactually declare” that the other 95% of listeners are unreasonable - meaning it’s the reaction of the 95% that should be considered when deciding whether the pedophile claim is defamatory or not.
That’s probably true, though it remains to be seen if the Second Circuit accepts that kind of legal numberwang. And either way, holding Universal liable for defamation over a lyric in a diss track still seems somewhat ambitious. And, some would argue, “dangerous”.
That was the conclusion of a group of US legal academics who recently filed an amicus brief in this case. They argue that the idea that rap lyrics should be taken literally and have legal consequences could set a “dangerous” precedent.
Partly because it would restrict the freedom of expression of rappers, and partly because the literal interpretation of rap lyrics is already an issue in the US criminal courts where prosecutors have repeatedly tried to use lyrics as evidence against rappers accused of committing crimes.
On the flip side, says Drake’s filing, if Vargas’s ruling is allowed to stand, that could create a special rule that makes diss tracks a “demation-free zone”, no matter the context, something which could be just as dangerous.