Replace: Drake’s lawyer, Michael J. Gottlieb, shared an announcement:
“UMG needs to faux that that is a few rap battle with a purpose to distract its shareholders, artists and the general public from a easy fact: a grasping firm is lastly being held liable for making the most of harmful misinformation that has already resulted in a number of acts of violence. This movement is a determined ploy by UMG to keep away from accountability, however we’ve got each confidence that this case will proceed and proceed to uncover UMG’s lengthy historical past of endangering and abusing its artists.”
Authentic Story: Common Music Group (UMG) has formally responded to Drake‘s lawsuit involving Kendrick Lamar‘s “Not Like Us” diss monitor, accusing Drake of “try[ing] to avoid wasting face” within the wake of shedding a rap beef to Dot.
Billboard experiences that the report label filed a movement on Monday, March 17 to dismiss the lawsuit, calling Drizzy’s accusations in opposition to them “meritless” as he solely filed the defamation lawsuit as a result of public embarrassment he endured. “Plaintiff, one of the vital profitable recording artists of all time, misplaced a rap battle that he provoked and through which he willingly participated,” UMG’s attorneys wrote. “As a substitute of accepting the loss just like the unbothered rap artist he typically claims to be, he has sued his personal report label in a misguided try and salve his wounds.”
The label added that Drake evened out the rap beef’s enjoying subject by writing “hyperbolic insults” and “vitriolic allegations” in opposition to Lamar in his personal diss tracks, a few of which had been accusations involving home violence and the potential for Dave Free, Lamar’s pgLang co-founder, fathering the rapper’s son together with his companion Whitney Alford. UMG claimed that the lyrics of “Not Like Us” are protected as free speech below the First Modification, and though it contained exaggerated remarks, using “[h]yperbolic and metaphorical language” in such tracks are widespread — together with in Drake’s very personal releases. “Diss tracks are a well-liked and celebrated artform centered round outrageous insults, and they’d be severely chilled if Drake’s swimsuit had been permitted to proceed,” UMG continued.
UMG contended that that Dot’s lyricism could be thought-about as both “rhetorical hyperbole” or opinion, which may have damaging connotations however can’t be confirmed false. As defamation solely applies to false statements introduced as information, exaggerated takes and private opinions don’t maintain weight in courtroom. The label went on to discuss with how Drake publicly supported a 2022 petition that condemned using rap lyrics as factual proof in felony circumstances. “As Drake acknowledged, in terms of rap, ‘the ultimate work is a product of the artist’s imaginative and prescient and creativeness’,” UMG said. “Drake was proper then and is flawed now. The grievance’s unjustified claims in opposition to UMG are not more than Drake’s try to avoid wasting face for his unsuccessful rap battle with Lamar. The courtroom ought to grant UMG’s movement and dismiss the grievance with prejudice.”
“Drake has been happy to make use of UMG’s platform to advertise tracks leveling equally incendiary assaults at Lamar,” UMG added. “However now, after shedding the rap battle, Drake claims that ‘Not Like Us’ is defamatory. It’s not.”
The Boy beforehand accused UMG, his personal label, of defaming him by unethically boosting “Not Like Us” regardless of the track containing a “malicious narrative” that painted him as a pedophile.
