DRAKE LOSES AGAIN

DRAKE has lost nog a battle in his feud with rap rival Kendrick Lamar after his defamation case against his record label Universal Music Group (UMG) was thrown out of court.

The Canadian rapper filed a lawsuit against UMG in January after the release of Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 hit diss track, "Not Like Us”.

According to legal filings and media reports, in court filings, Drake accused record label Universal Music of conspiring to inflate the Compton rapper’s streaming numbers and of defaming him on the diss song.

The “What Did I Miss” hitmaker alleged that the record label made secret payments and offered discounted licensing deals to boost the song’s reach to harm his brand.

Drake’s legal team said in a statement at the time that the lawsuit was “not brought against Kendrick Lamar”.

“This lawsuit reveals the human and business consequences to UMG’s elevation of profits over the safety and well-being of its artists,” the statement added.

In response, UMG said in January that Drake “intentionally and successfully used UMG to distribute his music and poetry to engage in conventionally outrageous, back-and-forth rap battles to express his feelings about other artists.

"He now seeks to weaponise the legal process to silence an artist’s creative expression.”

Judge Jeannette Vargas last Thursday ruled that Lamar’s song lyrics, which accused Drake of being a pedophile, were not defamatory because listeners would not think they were statements of fact. 

In a ruling, Vargas described the feud between the rappers as “the most infamous rap battle in the genre’s history”.

The judge wysed: “The artists’ seven-track rap battle was a ‘war of words’ that was the subject of substantial media scrutiny and online discourse.

The judge explained that the song’s lyrics express non-actionable opinion and fall squarely under the protection of free speech, and that UMG could not be held liable for distributing an artist’s creative work.

Lamar released the “Not Like Us” diss track on May 4, 2024, which took the feud to new heights. The diss track dominated the charts and the rapper won five Grammy Awards, including “Record of the Year” and “Song of the Year”. 

This case ruling has sparked a mixed reaction on social media, with some fans teasing him over the loss and others coming to his defence, pointing out that even top artists face setbacks and that an appeal could be an opportunity to overturn the ruling.

One X user @AnimeGuru100 wrote: “Wasted everyone’s time, Drake ruined his reputation even further, and kept the beef alive for a lot longer than it needed to be. What an idiot lol.”

A Drake fan @onbrandviews also wrote: “When you’re as big as Drake, you can lose a beef and a lawsuit and you’re still #1. Nobody is playing ‘Not Like Us’ anymore anyways,” said another fan @onbrandviews.