Earlier this year, Drake and Kendrick Lamar gave hip-hop fans a prolific feud. The back-and-forth did not end well for Drake, who found himself on the receiving end of a wildly successful diss track with a beat infectious enough to break streaming records. Lamar will get to take yet another victory lap when he performs the Super Bowl Halftime show in February, but until then, Drake and his huge pants are still trying to have the last word. This week — shortly after Lamar released a new album that suggested he’d moved on from the Drake beef — Drake filed two petitions against the artists’ shared music label, Universal Music Group, accusing UMG of defamation and falsely inflating the popularity of “Not Like Us” in order to “maximize their own profits.”
According to a petition filed Monday in New York, Drake believes UMG and Spotify used a series of manipulative strategies, including bots and pay-to-play agreements, to “saturate the streaming services and airwaves” with “Not Like Us.” He also claims UMG conspired with Apple to have Siri direct users to “Not Like Us” when they asked to play Drake’s album Certified Lover Boy. Drake, who is also signed to UMG, claims in the petition that he suffered “economic harm” from the label’s choice to “saturate the music market” with “Not Like Us,” at the expense of himself and other artists. According to his filing, the label has refused to take responsibility for its alleged sins and has gone so far as to fire employees who are “perceived as having loyalty to Drake.”
UMG has adamantly denied Drake’s claims, telling Variety in a statement, “The suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue,” adding that “fans choose the music they want to hear.”
On Tuesday, Billboard reports, Drake’s lawyers followed up the New York filing with new Texas paperwork that added radio-station owner iHeartMedia to its defendants, suggesting UMG paid iHeart to promote “Not Like Us” on its stations. The documents also take UMG to task for choosing to release a track that “falsely” accuses Drake of “being a sex offender,” and contend Drake’s lawyers may have grounds for a defamation suit. The Cut has reached out to UMG for comment and will update this post if we hear back.
I don’t know much about insidious record-company marketing tactics, so I couldn’t tell you just how outlandish Drake’s claims are. But it is hard to falsely inflate the volume of a Los Angeles crowd screaming the lyrics to “Not Like Us” six times in a row. Does Drake have a lawsuit for that?
This post has been updated.
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