Drake sues UMG Recordings, Inc. for defamation over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Drake is battling his own record label over a song that is the lynchpin of a now legendary hip-hop feud.

In a lawsuit against UMG Recordings, Inc., brought Wednesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Canadian rapper and actor has accused the label of defamation in the publishing and promotion of Kendrick Lamar’s hit “Not Like Us.” Drake is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. Lamar is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

The suit begins with what Drake says happened in May 2024, when a security guard he employed was shot on the grounds of his Canadian estate.

“In the middle of the night on May 7, 2024 an armed group of assailants drove up to the Toronto house in which Drake and his family resided. Drake was inside,” according to the suit. “The car stopped in front of the residence, someone yelled ‘F**k Drake,’ and at least one gunman began to open fire. One bullet went through the security gate and hit Drake’s front door; another bullet struck and wounded a security guard, who was also one of Drake’s friends.”

The suit states that it took nearly 30 minutes for an ambulance to arrive, during which time those present “labored to keep the man alive by applying pressure to the gunshot wound with towels.”

While the guard ultimately was taken to the hospital and survived, the suit describes more incidents the following days in which intruders attempted to get into Drake’s residence.

“In the two decades leading up to May of 2024, although Drake was constantly in the public eye, nothing remotely like these events had ever happened to him and his family,” the suit states. “But these events were not coincidental.”

According to his complaint, Drake alleges the attempted break-ins occurred as a result of UMG, the “world’s largest music company” and Drake’s label for more than a decade, launching a campaign to make “a viral hit out of a rap track that falsely accuses Drake of being a pedophile and calls for violent retribution against him.”

The backstory

Lamar’s “Not Like Us” was the breakout song in the rap battle between the two artists that played out in May 2024. Their dispute appears to have begun a year prior, when rapper J. Cole collaborated with Drake on the song, “First Person Shooter.”

On that track, Cole refers to himself, Lamar and Drake as the “Big three” in rap. Drake likened his own popularity in the game to the stardom of the late singer Michael Jackson. Lamar seemingly took exception to the comparisons and hit back on a collaborative track with Future and Metro Boomin that caught fire in March 2024, titled “Like That.”

Lamar makes clear on the song that there is no “Big three” just “Big me.” He casts himself as Prince to Drake’s Jackson, noting that the former outlived the latter.

“Like That” is a cut on the album “We Don’t Trust You,” which many believe is filled with disses aimed at Drake. The apparent jabs surprised some listeners as Drake and Future have been longtime collaborators.

Things got more heated when Future and Metro Boomin released the followup “We Still Don’t Trust You,” which Billboard magazine declared is “filled with Drake disses, not only from Future, but from The Weeknd and A$AP Rocky as well.”

Cole released “7 Minute Drill” on a surprise project “Might Delete Later” in which he came after Lamar, only to later declare the song lame. He removed it from streaming services, publicly apologized and has gone quiet since.

Things intensified between Drake and Lamar as the pair quickly dropped multiple diss tracks aimed at the other. But Lamar, who made history in 2018 by becoming the first rapper to win a prestigious Pulitzer Prize for his album “DAMN.,” was the perceived winner by audiences.

In his suit, Drake claims that while UMG “enriched itself and its shareholders by exploiting Drake’s music for years, and knew that the salacious allegations against Drake were false, UMG chose corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists.”

The lawsuit alleges that “Not Like Us” is “intended to convey the specific, unmistakeable and false factual allegation that Drake is a criminal pedophile, and to suggest that the public should resort to vigilante justice in response.”

“The Recording is defamatory because its lyrics, its album image (the “Image”) and its music video (the “Video”) all advance the false and malicious narrative that Drake is a pedophile,” the suit states.

CNN has reached out to representatives for Drake and Lamar for comment.

Drake is currently represented by Republic Records, a division of UMG, and Lamar is currently represented by Interscope records, also a division of UMG.

“Not only are these claims untrue, but the notion that we would seek to harm the reputation of any artist—let alone Drake—is illogical. We have invested massively in his music and our employees around the world have worked tirelessly for many years to help him achieve historic commercial and personal financial success,” a spokesperson for UMG said in a statement to CNN on Wednesday. “Throughout his career, Drake has intentionally and successfully used UMG to distribute his music and poetry to engage in conventionally outrageous back-and-forth ‘rap battles’ to express his feelings about other artists. He now seeks to weaponize the legal process to silence an artist’s creative expression and to seek damages from UMG for distributing that artist’s music.”

“We have not and do not engage in defamation—against any individual. At the same time, we will vigorously defend this litigation to protect our people and our reputation, as well as any artist who might directly or indirectly become a frivolous litigation target for having done nothing more that write a song,” the statement concluded.

In November 2024, Drake filed a pre-action petition to a New York court, alleging that UMG conspired to artificially boost “Not Like Us” on Spotify. Drake met with company representatives on Tuesday,” according to Variety, citing court documents.

Lamar has been enjoying a wave of success since the release of “Not Like Us,” including being announced as the featured performer for the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show. He has a forthcoming tour planned with collaborator SZA.

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