Drake Sues UMG For Defamation Over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’

Drake has filed a lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) over allegations that the music giant defamed him by promoting Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us,” claiming the label boosted a “false and malicious narrative” that the star rapper was a pedophile and put his life in danger.

Hours after his attorneys withdrew an earlier petition, they filed a full-fledged defamation lawsuit Wednesday against his longtime label – claiming UMG knew Lamar’s “inflammatory and shocking allegations” were false but chose to place “corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists.”

“UMG intentionally sought to turn Drake into a pariah, a target for harassment, or worse,” the star’s lawyers write in a complaint filed in Manahttan federal court. “UMG did so not because it believes any of these false claims to be true, but instead because it would profit from damaging Drake’s reputation.”

In one of the lawsuit’s most vivid accusations, Drake claims that the release of “Not Like Us” has subjected him to risk of physical violence, including a drive-by shooting on his Toronto area home just days after the song was released.

“UMG’s greed yielded real world consequences,” his lawyers write. “With the palpable physical threat to Drake’s safety and the bombardment of online harassment, Drake fears for the safety and security of himself, his family, and his friends.”

Notably, the case does not target Lamar himself — a point that Drake’s attorneys repeatedly stress in their filings.

“UMG may spin this complaint as a rap beef gone legal, but this lawsuit is not about a war of words between artists,” Drake’s attorneys say.

A spokesman for UMG did not immediately return a request for comment.

Wednesday’s lawsuit is yet another dramatic escalation a high-profile beef that saw Drake and Lamar exchange stinging diss tracks last year, culminating in Lamar’s knockout “Not Like Us” — a track that savagely slammed Drake as a “certified pedophile” and became a hit in its own right.

Drake shocked the music industry in November when he filed petitions suggesting he might sue over the fued — accusing UMG and Spotify of an illegal “scheme” involving bots, payola and other methods to pump up Lamar’s song, then claiming that the song had been defamatory. But those cases were not quite full-fledged lawsuits, and Drake withdrew one of them late on Tuesday.

Now it’s clear why: In Wednesday’s lawsuit, he formally sued UMG over the same alleged scheme, claiming the label “unleashed every weapon in its arsenal” to drive the popularity of Lamar’s track even though it knew the lyrics were “not only false, but dangerous.”

“With his own record label having waged a campaign against him, and refusing to address this as a business matter, Drake has been left with no choice but to seek legal redress against UMG,” his lawyers write.

The filing of the case represents a deepening of an ongoing rift between Drake and UMG, where the star has spent his entire career — first through signing a deal with Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint, which was distributed by Republic Records, then by signing directly to Republic.

This is a breaking news story and will continue to be updated with additional details as they become available.