{"id":67929,"date":"2025-10-11T12:51:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T12:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/67929\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T12:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T12:51:08","slug":"judge-dismisses-drakes-lawsuit-over-kendrick-lamars-not-like-us-diss-track","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/67929\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge dismisses Drake\u2019s lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s \u2018Not Like Us\u2019 diss track"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Drake's <\/a>Drake’s lawsuit against Kendrick Lamar has been thrown out of court<\/p>\n

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed the\u00a0defamation lawsuit\u00a0Drake brought against his own record label, Universal Music Group, for publishing and promoting Kendrick Lamar\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us.\u201d<\/p>\n

District Judge Jeannette Vargas concluded that the Grammy-winning song \u2013 where Lamar infamously claimed Drake was a \u201ccertified pedophile\u201d \u2013 was an expression of pure opinion and not an assertion of facts. <\/p>\n

Therefore, Drake, who denied the allegation, couldn\u2019t sue for defamation.

\nDrake did not sue Lamar, who was not accused of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

The ruling means Drake\u2019s case against UMG is now over, though he can appeal the decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe intend to appeal today\u2019s ruling, and we look forward to the Court of Appeals reviewing it,\u201d a spokesperson for Drake told CNN on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

The ruling is a major victory for UMG, which has\u00a0insisted from the beginning\u00a0that the case was \u201cfrivolous\u201d and \u201cillogical.\u201d (Drake sued UMG because Lamar is an Interscope Records artist, which is a division of UMG. Drake\u2019s current label is Republic Records, which is also part of UMG.)<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the outset, this suit was an affront to all artists and their creative expression and never should have seen the light of day,\u201d a UMG spokesperson said on Thursday. \u201cWe\u2019re pleased with the court\u2019s dismissal and look forward to continuing our work successfully promoting Drake\u2019s music and investing in his career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kendrick Lamar performs during halftime of the NFL Super Bowl 59 football game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans, Feb. 9, 2025.<\/p>\n

The judge determined that Lamar\u2019s \u201coffensive\u201d accusations against Drake were a protected expression of opinion. Her 38-page ruling included a line-by-line breakdown of lyrics from the songs Drake and Lamar released last year at the height of their feud, where Drake and Lamar traded\u00a0increasingly personal and unverified insults in a series of songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe average listener is not under the impression that a diss track is the product of a thoughtful or disinterested investigation, conveying to the public fact-checked verifiable content,\u201d Vargas wrote.<\/p>\n

The judge also said, \u201cthe broader context of a heated rap battle, with incendiary language and offensive accusations hurled by both participants, would not incline the reasonable listener to believe that \u2018Not Like Us\u2019 imparts verifiable facts\u201d about Drake.<\/p>\n

Drake filed the lawsuit\u00a0in January, and the case was in the evidence-gathering stage known as discovery before the judge threw out the lawsuit Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot Like Us\u201d went on to\u00a0win multiple Grammys\u00a0earlier this year and was also featured as part of\u00a0Lamar\u2019s Super Bowl halftime show\u00a0performance in February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drake’s lawsuit against Kendrick Lamar has been thrown out of court A federal judge on Thursday dismissed the\u00a0defamation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-67929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}