sued UMG<\/a>, the label that distributes both his and Lamar\u2019s music, in January\u2014but notably did not sue Lamar himself.<\/p>\nThe Canadian-born rapper instead blamed his label for its decision to \u201cpublish, promote, exploit, and monetize\u201d Lamar\u2019s allegations against him.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Court Judge Jeannette Vargas dismissed the lawsuit Thursday, noting that despite containing \u201clyrics explicitly accusing Drake of being a pedophile,\u201d the statements were still \u201cnonactionable opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vargas found that the likely audience understood Lamar\u2019s track in the context of his feud with Drake, writing \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 factchecked verifiable content.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for UMG praised the dismissal and called the lawsuit \u201can affront to all artists and their creative expression,\u201d adding that the company would \u201clook forward to continuing our work successfully promoting Drake\u2019s music and investing in his career.\u201d<\/p>\n
Key Background<\/p>\n
\u201cNot Like Us\u201d was released in the middle of an escalating feud<\/a> between Drake and Lamar that began in early 2024. The feud produced a back-and-forth of singles from both artists and other rappers like J. Cole, including Drake\u2019s \u201cFamily Matters,\u201d \u201cPush Ups,\u201d and \u201cTaylor Made Freestyle\u201d and Lamar\u2019s \u201cEuphoria.\u201d However, Lamar quickly became seen as the winner of the dispute after releasing \u201cNot Like Us\u201d in May 2024, which broke the Spotify streaming record for most plays in a single day and shot to the top of the Billboard charts. \u201cNot Like Us\u201d directly accused Drake of pedophilia, addressing the rapper with accusations like \u201cI hear you like ’em young\u201d and \u201cCertified Lover Boy? Certified pedophile,\u201d a reference to Drake\u2019s 2021 album. Lamar was announced in September 2024 as the halftime show performer for Super Bowl LIX. During his performance at the big game in February, Lamar played \u201cNot Like Us\u201d and included some of the indirect references to Drake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Topline A federal judge in New York dismissed Drake\u2019s defamation lawsuit against his own label Universal Music Group…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[121117,3095,88,2775,3130,216,24621],"class_list":["post-212902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-defamation","tag-drake","tag-entertainment","tag-kendrick-lamar","tag-lawsuits","tag-music","tag-universal-music-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}