Drake has filed an amended lawsuit in his defamation legal battle with Universal Music. The new filing adds a stack of extra information about how the major has further amplified Kendrick Lamar’s allegedly defamatory track ‘Not Like Us’ since Drake first filed his lawsuit in January, including at the Grammys and the Super Bowl.
“Defamatory portions” of Lamar’s track “were played to the live audience and televised to over 15 million viewers” at the Grammy Awards, the lawsuit states.
Meanwhile Lamar’s performance of the song at the Super Bowl “solidified the public’s belief” that Drake is a pedophile, as claimed in Lamar’s lyrics. Even though the word “pedophile” was excluded from that particular performance because “nearly everyone understands that it is defamatory to falsely brand someone a ‘certified pedophile’”.
According to Drake’s lawyer Michael Gottlieb, the amended complaint “makes an already strong case stronger”. Universal's “PR spin” and failed attempts to stop the discovery process from beginning in this legal battle “cannot suppress the facts and the truth”, the attorney insists.
He then adds, “With discovery now moving forward, Drake will expose the evidence of UMG’s misconduct, and UMG will be held accountable for the consequences of its ill-conceived decisions”.
The new version of Drake’s lawsuit also revises the allegations that Universal employed dodgy marketing tactics when promoting ‘Not Like Us’. The major previously said that Drake’s team had conceded that some of their original claims in that domain were incorrect. Those concessions have resulted in those specific claims being removed, although the core allegations of stream manipulation and payola remain.
Drake wants to hold Universal, his own label, liable for defamation for its role in releasing and promoting ‘Not Like Us’ - the stand out from a back and forth of diss tracks between him and Lamar - because of the lyrical allegations that Drake is a pedophile.
In its response, Universal has been keen to position Drake - one of the major’s most successful artists of the last decade - as a bitter loser in a classic hip hop diss battle. It adds that ‘Not Like Us’, like any hip hop diss track, contains “a series of hyperbolic insults” that “clearly convey non-actionable opinion”, making the defamation claim invalid.
Drake repeats his arguments for why Universal should be held liable for defamation in his new court filing, before arguing that the major’s continued marketing of the track has only added to the damage caused by the defamatory lyrics it has released and distributed.
The major “conferred benefits and leveraged existing business relationships” to secure ‘Not Like Us’ and its video “Grammy nominations and eventually wins”, the amended lawsuit claims. Having the track played and broadcast at the Grammys show would not have been possible “without Universal's consent”, it adds.
Just a week after the Grammys, Universal then “facilitated a live performance of the recording during the Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show in New Orleans”. The major “conferred financial benefits on the parties in charge of the Super Bowl performance and leveraged existing business relationships to secure the headliner-spot” for Lamar, it continues.
Universal “sought out, negotiated for, greenlit and promoted the Super Bowl performance after the filing of this complaint”, the filing goes on. And not only that, but “after months of notice that the allegations in the defamatory material were false, that they were being believed as true by the public and that they were causing harm to Drake”.
And although the word ‘pedophile’ was excluded from the Super Bowl performance, that “failed to cure the performance of conveying the recording’s central defamatory meaning”. Not least because the high profile Super Bowl show also prompted another slew of social media commentary pushing the narrative that Lamar’s lyrical claims about Drake were true.