Drake sues record label for defamation over Kendrick Lamar diss track

Toronto rap superstar Drake is suing his record label, Universal Music Group, over rival Kendrick Lamar's diss track Not Like Us. 

Drake filed the defamation suit on Wednesday morning in New York City federal court, blaming UMG for publishing and promoting the song, which "falsely accuses Drake of being a pedophile and calls for violent retribution against him."

Drake and Lamar are both signed to the label.

It comes a day after Drake's team withdrew his November petition against UMG and Spotify in which he alleged the companies inflated the song's numbers.

The latest court filing, obtained by CBC News, details multiple break-ins and attempts at Drake's Toronto home following the song's release, including an incident in which his security guard was shot. 

"During the nearly 30 minutes it took for the ambulance to arrive, Drake and others laboured to keep the man alive by applying pressure to the gunshot wound with towels. Blood was everywhere," the filing reads. The suit says nothing like those incidents had happened to Drake or his family in the previous two decades he had been in the public eye. 

"They immediately followed, and were proximately caused by, UMG's actions leading up to and on May 4, 2024," the filing says, referencing the date Not Like Us was released.

Police have not made any arrests in the shooting, and a Toronto Police Service spokesperson said the investigation is ongoing.

According to the suit, the rapper tried to inform the label about the harm caused by the song — the cover art includes an image of Drake's house — including having to remove his son from school "due to safety concerns." It claims Drake was told, however, that he "would face humiliation if he brought legal action."

Drake and Lamar's feud resurfaced in March, with the two rappers exchanging diss tracks before Lamar dropped Not Like Us, in which he calls Drake a "certified pedophile" and a "colonizer" who is appropriating Black American hip-hop culture.

The song became the first diss track to reach one billion streams on Spotify and was Apple Music's No. 1 overall track of 2024.

It spent two weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart and is nominated for five Grammy Awards, including song and record of the year.

Drake has claimed that the track's popularity was not organic, and that UMG took unusual measures to boost its numbers, including the "unprecedented step" of removing its copyright restrictions on YouTube and streaming platform Twitch to ensure content creators would republish it broadly.

The suit also claims UMG made "significant financial investments" and ran sophisticated publicity campaigns to get Lamar to perform the song at this year's NFL Super Bowl halftime show, scheduled for Feb. 9 in New Orleans.