Drake is “astoundingly hypocritical” and his legal arguments “nonsensical”, as he tries to “turn the law upside down”, all because he’s still bitter about that 2024 diss battle where Kendrick Lamar delivered the “metaphorical killing blow”.
If only Universal Music’s lawyers could make their legal filings in the ‘Not Like Us’ defamation case rhyme, the back and forth in this litigation could be as good as the diss battle that caused the big fallout between Drake and his long-time label partner.
The major has now formally responded to Drake’s bid to appeal his unsuccessful defamation claim against the record company over its role in releasing Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’, which included the lyrical accusation that Drake is a pedophile.
That track, of course, was the standout release in what Universal’s new legal filing refers to as “perhaps the most infamous rap battle in the genre’s history”. Drake claims Lamar’s pedophile lyric was defamation and Universal is liable for releasing and marketing the defamatory record.
However, Universal says, Drake continues to strip Lamar’s lyrical allegations of all context, even though context is everything in defamation cases. As Judge Jeanette A Vargas clearly stated when she dismissed Drake’s defamation claim last year.
Yes, Lamar called Drake a “certified pedophile”, but - Vargas ruled - in the context of a rap diss track, people couldn’t “reasonably” assume that that claim was being presented as a matter of fact. Which means there isn’t a case for defamation against either Lamar or Universal.
Universal summarises Vargas’s ruling as follows in its new filing. “Applying settled New York law, it recognised that whether statements convey fact or opinion depends on full context, including forum, tone, language and surrounding circumstances”.
Based on that, “the court correctly held that ‘Not Like Us’ - a diss track released during a rhetoric-drenched rap feud and full of hyperbole, boasts and insults - would be understood by a reasonable listener as opinion”.
When appealing Vargas’s ruling, Drake argued that the judge’s assumption about the reasonable listener was unjustified, because “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”.
Universal, unsurprisingly, is dismissive of that argument, insisting that Drake is “seeking to strip words from their context” and “deem them actionable defamation if anyone, anywhere, might treat them as factual”. But, it argues, “that is not the law”, and - as Vargas concluded, context is everything.
The “hypocrisy” claim in Universal’s new filing relates to Drake’s argument that, when Vargas concluded that the lyrics of a diss track shouldn’t be seen as a statement of fact, that ignores that “rap lyrics are regularly used as evidence in criminal cases”, which means “rap music can convey factual assertions”.
The major insists that that is irrelevant, because what a jury should consider in a defamation case is different to what a jury is asked in a criminal case. Plus, of course, many record labels and artists argue rap lyrics should not be used as evidence in criminal cases exactly because what rappers say in their songs is often not intended as a statement of fact.
And among the artists that have made that argument in recent years is a certain Drake. “In November 2022, Drake signed a petition criticising ‘the trend of prosecutors using artists’ creative expression against them’ by treating rap lyrics as fact”, Universal’s new court filing explains.
That petition “decries that ‘more than any other art form, rap lyrics are essentially being used as confessions in an attempt to criminalise black creativity and artistry”, and that the “use of lyrics against artists in this way is un-American and simply wrong”.
Which makes it “astoundingly hypocritical” that Drake is now relying on the use of rap lyrics in criminal cases - something he opposes - when it suits him in the context of his defamation claim.
Drake’s bid to hold Universal liable for defamation over Lamar’s lyrical allegations always seemed optimistic legally speaking, but the back and forth between him and Universal remains entertaining.