Slander or ‘trash-talking’? Drake-Kendrick Lamar feud has a day in court

Drake sued Universal Music Group, his and Lamar’s record label over “Not Like Us."

NEW YORK — A U.S. federal judge is pondering the nature of rap battles and the cutting wordplay in Kendrick Lamar ’s “Not Like Us,” the megahit diss track that spurred a defamation lawsuit from his fellow superstar Drake.

Drake sued Universal Music Group — both his and Lamar’s record label — over “Not Like Us,” saying the company published and promoted a song he deems slanderous. Universal says the lyrics are just hyperbole in the tradition of rap beefing, and the label is trying to get the case dismissed.

Judge Jeannette Vargas didn’t immediately decide after a lively hearing Monday, when the raw creativity of hip-hop brushed up against the staid confines of federal court.

“Who is the ordinary listener? Is it someone who’s going to catch all those references?” Vargas wondered aloud, addressing a legal standard that concerns how an average, reasonable person would understand a statement. “There’s so much specialized and nuanced to these lyrics.”

Neither artist attended the hearing.

The case stems from an epic feud between two of hip-hop’s biggest stars over one of 2024 biggest songs — the one that won the record of the year and song of the year Grammys, got the most Apple Music streams worldwide and helped make this winter’s Super Bowl halftime show the most watched ever.

Released as the two artists were trading a flurry of insult tracks, Lamar’s song calls out the Canadian-born Drake by name and impugns his authenticity, branding him “a colonizer” of rap culture who’s “not like us” in Lamar’s home turf of Compton, California, and, more broadly, West Coast rap.

“Not Like Us” also makes insinuations about Drake’s sex life, including “I hear you like ’em young” — implications that he rejects.

Drake’s suit says that the song amounts to “falsely accusing him of being a sex offender, engaging in pedophilic acts” and more. Contending that the track endangered him by fanning notions of vigilante justice, the suit blames “Not Like Us” not only for harming Drake’s image but for attempted break-ins and the shooting of a security guard at his Toronto home. The mansion was depicted in an aerial photo in the song’s cover art.

“This song achieved a cultural ubiquity unlike any other rap song in history,” Drake lawyer Michael Gottlieb said. He argued that Universal had campaigned and contrived to make it “a de facto national anthem” that didn’t just address hip-hop fans who knew the backstory and were accustomed to over-the-top lyrical battling.

The average listener could be “a 13-year-old who’s dancing to the song at a bar mitzvah,” Gottlieb suggested.

“That would be a very interesting bar mitzvah,” the judge opined. (The song has indeed been played at some such celebrations.)

Universal, meanwhile, has emphasized that “Not Like Us” was part of an exchange of barbs between Drake and Lamar.

“Context is key,” label lawyer Rollin Ransom argued Monday, at one point apologizing for having to use profanity while reciting some of the lyrics Drake aimed at Lamar in a track called “Taylor Made Freestyle.”

“What you hear in these rap battles is trash-talking in the extreme, and it is not, and should not be treated as, statements of fact,” the attorney said.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

Drake also went after iHeartMedia, claiming in a Texas legal petition that the radio giant got illegal payments from Universal to boost airplay for “Not Like Us.” IHeartMedia has denied any wrongdoing. That dispute was resolved in March.

Drake hasn’t sued Lamar himself.

Jennifer Peltz, The Associated Press