{"id":4068,"date":"2025-10-09T17:24:58","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T20:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/?p=4068"},"modified":"2025-10-09T17:24:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T20:24:58","slug":"drake-lawsuit-over-kendrick-lamars-not-like-us-dismissed-by-judge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/?p=4068","title":{"rendered":"Drake Lawsuit Over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s \u2018Not Like Us\u2019 Dismissed by\u00a0Judge"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tA federal judge on Thursday (Oct. 9) dismissed Drake\u2019s defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s \u201cNot Like Us,\u201d ruling that a \u201cwar of words\u201d during a \u201cheated rap battle\u201d did not violate the law.<\/p>\n

\n\tDrake\u2019s case, filed earlier this year<\/a>, claimed that UMG defamed him by releasing Lamar\u2019s scathing diss track, which tarred his arch-rival as a \u201ccertified pedophile.\u201d He believed that millions of people took that lyric literally, severely harming his reputation.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut just ten months later, Judge Jeannette Vargas granted UMG\u2019s motion to dismiss the case at the outset \u2013 ruling that Kendrick\u2019s insulting lyrics were the kind of \u201chyperbole\u201d that cannot be defamatory because listeners would not think they were statements of fact.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe artists\u2019 seven-track rap battle was a \u2018war of words\u2019 that was the subject of substantial media scrutiny and online discourse,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cAlthough the accusation that plaintiff is a pedophile is certainly a serious one, the 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 about plaintiff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ruling marks an abrupt end to a legal battle that stunned the music industry. Few expected a rapper to respond to a diss track with a lawsuit \u2013 a move that drew ridicule in the hip hop world and condemnation from legal scholars. Fewer still expected him to file it against UMG, his longtime record label and the biggest music company in the world.<\/p>\n

\n\tDrake\u2019s attorneys can appeal the ruling to a federal appeals court. His attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment. A spokesman for UMG also did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tLamar released \u201cNot Like Us\u201d last May amid a war-of-words with Drake that saw the two UMG stars release a series of bruising diss tracks. The song, a knockout punch that blasted Drake as a \u201ccertified pedophile\u201d over an infectious beat, became a chart-topping hit in its own right and won five Grammy Awards, including record and song of the year.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn January, Drake took the unusual step of taking UMG to court, claiming his own label had defamed him by boosting the track\u2019s popularity, including through the use of bots and other nefarious marketing tactics. The lawsuit, which didn\u2019t name Lamar himself as a defendant, alleges that UMG \u201cwaged a campaign\u201d against its own artist to spread a \u201cmalicious narrative\u201d about pedophilia that it knew to be false.<\/p>\n

\n\tUMG argued those allegations were clearly meritless \u2013 that \u201chyperbolic insults\u201d and \u201cvitriolic allegations\u201d are par for the course in diss tracks and cannot form the basis for a libel lawsuit. The company pointedly noted that Drake himself was happy to make such attacks, including accusing Lamar of domestic abuse, until he lost the battle.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe dispute got even nastier in February, when Lamar made \u201cNot Like Us\u201d the centerpiece of his Super Bowl halftime show. After speculation about whether he\u2019d play the track at all, Kendrick used the show to mock his rival, looking directly into camera as he rapped \u201cSay, Drake, I hear you like \u2019em young.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is a developing news story and will be updated with more details as they become available.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Less than a year after the rapper filed his stunning lawsuit, a federal judge says nobody thought Kendrick was really calling him a pedophile.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[381],"tags":[385],"class_list":["post-4068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musica-internacional","tag-internacional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}