Drake launches 2nd legal action over Kendrick Lamar's song. What could happen next?
CBC
Drake has launched a second legal action against Universal Music Group, accusing the music giant of defamation and claiming it could have halted the release of Kendrick Lamar's song Not Like Us for "falsely accusing him of being a sex offender."
It follows an initial petition launched Monday alleging UMG, the distributor for the record labels of both Drake and Lamar, and streamer Spotify conspired to falsely boost the popularity of Lamar's diss track amid a beef between the two hip-hop superstars. None of the allegations have been proven in court.
Experts have called the petitions unprecedented and say they could have not only legal, but significant cultural implications for Drake and the world of hip-hop.
The first thing to understand about all of this is that no lawsuits have been filed yet.
A petition, which is what both of Drake's filings are, comes prior to a lawsuit and is aimed at preserving and obtaining information from figures that might support Drake's accusations in a future lawsuit, according to Bryan Sullivan, a founding partner at the law firm Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae who specializes in risk management in the entertainment industry.
Spotify has declined to comment to The Associated Press on the filings.
UMG told the AP in a statement that the "suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue."
"We employ the highest ethical practices in our marketing and promotional campaigns. No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear."
The newest filing claims UMG "could have refused to release the song or required the offending material to be edited and/or removed," but "chose to do the opposite."
Lamar's Not Like Us, released on May 4, is a diss track against Drake, one of several that the rappers exchanged earlier this year. In it, he questions the Canadian rapper's authenticity and claims he is a sexual predator. It was seen as the breakout hit of the feud, and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In addition to calling Drake a "certified pedophile," Lamar says in the song: "Say, Drake, I hear you like 'em young, You better not ever go to Cell Block 1."
In the first legal action, Drake's lawyers claimed that UMG "conspired with and paid currently unknown parties" to "artificially" boost the prominence of Not Like Us through bots and undisclosed "pay-to-play" schemes.
The filings claim that an individual alleged on a popular podcast that UMG paid him to use bots to achieve 30 million streams on Spotify when Not Like Us was released.
The song has more than 900 million streams on Spotify.
