UMG disses Drake in savage motion to dismiss defamation lawsuit

Universal Music Group (UMG) has launched a broadside against Drake, one of the label's biggest artists, in its motion to dismiss the Canadian rapper's defamation lawsuit over the release of Kendrick Lamar's diss track "Not Like Us." The motion, obtained by independent journalist Meghann Cuniff, was filed on March 17 in the Southern District of New York. Drake sued UMG for defamation and harassment in federal court in January over lyrics in "Not Like Us" accusing him of pedophilia.

Fittingly, UMG's motion starts off like its own diss track. It opens with a line from Drake's 2009 song "Successful: “Yeah, I want it all, that’s why I strive for it / Diss me, you’ll never hear a reply for it.” The motion goes on to paint Drake as a hypocrite "who lost a rap battle that he provoked and in which he willingly participated."

"Instead of accepting the loss like the unbothered rap artist he often claims to be," the motion continues, "he has sued his own record label in a misguided attempt to salve his wounds." UMG calls the lawsuit "utterly without merit and should be dismissed with prejudice."

UMG claims that Drake's lawsuit "ignores the context of the dispute" between Lamar and Drake, as well as the larger history of diss tracks, suggesting that the art form itself would be "severely chilled" if Drake were to prevail. The motion describes Lamar's "Not Like Us" lyrics targeting Drake as "nonactionable opinion and rhetorical hyperbole."

Drake, of course, launched his own diss tracks at Lamar over the course of their feud, including "Family Matters." The song alleges that Lamar "beat up" his fiancee Whitney Alford and that Dave Free, Lamar's partner in their creative development company pgLang, is the father of his son. These allegations are referenced in UMG's motion: "Drake has been pleased to use UMG’s platform to promote tracks leveling similarly incendiary attacks at Lamar... But now, after losing the rap battle, Drake claims that 'Not Like Us' is defamatory. It is not."

Drake's lawsuit against UMG accuses the label of having “approved, published, and launched a campaign to create a viral hit out of a rap track... intended to convey the specific, unmistakable, and false factual allegation that Drake is a criminal pedophile, and to suggest that the public should resort to vigilante justice in response.”

Mike Gottlieb, Drake's lead attorney, shared the following statement with The FADER: “UMG wants to pretend that this is about a rap battle in order to distract its shareholders, artists and the public from a simple truth: a greedy company is finally being held responsible for profiting from dangerous misinformation that has already resulted in multiple acts of violence. This motion is a desperate ploy by UMG to avoid accountability, but we have every confidence that this case will proceed and continue to uncover UMG’s long history of endangering, abusing and taking advantage of its artists.”