Drake has filed a second legal petition against Universal Music Group (UMG) over Kendrick Lamar’s diss track Not Like Us.
The One Dance hitmaker has filed court documents in Texas against UMG bosses for alleged defamation over Kendrick’s inflammatory song, in which he accuses Drake of being a paedophile.
In the new filing, his lawyers claim Not Like Us damaged Drake’s reputation by “falsely accusing him of being a sex offender, engaging in pedophilic acts, harboring sex offenders, and committing other criminal sexual acts”.
They argued that UMG bosses knew the lyrics of the song “attacked the character” of Drake and could have “refused to release” the diss track or demanded edits to remove the controversial words.
“But UMG chose to do the opposite. UMG designed, financed, and then executed a plan to turn Not Like Us into a viral mega-hit with the intent of using the spectacle of harm to Drake and his businesses to drive consumer hysteria and, of course, massive revenues,” they alleged.
Executives at the iHeartRadio network are also named in the filing because the rapper’s lawyers accuse staff of possibly accepting “covert payments” from UMG to promote the song as part of a “pay-to-play scheme”.
In his New York petition earlier this week, the Hotline Bling hitmaker accused UMG bosses of working with Spotify to artificially inflate the popularity of Not Like Us.
A UMG representative said at the time, “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 petitions are not lawsuits, but pre-action requests for information that could potentially lead to one in the future.
Not Like Us was the most successful song in the series of diss tracks Drake and Kendrick released against each other earlier this year. The Canadian rapper denied the incendiary allegations in his response song, The Heart Part 6.
