My son loves rap music. As an old dad, it is my responsibility to constantly remind him that today’s music can’t compare to that of my generation. He enjoys talking about clashes between certain artists and the diss tracks, or songs that insult an adversary, that ensue. While he thinks this is a relatively new phenomenon, I had to teach him that rap beefs are as old as hip-hop itself.
I told him about the dispute over the birthplace of hip-hop, known as the Bridge Wars, between The Juice Crew from Queens and Boogie Down Productions out of the Bronx. I educated him about the battle that arose when Kool Moe Dee felt that up-and-comer LL Cool J stole his style. I explained the most infamous rap beef between Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., which ultimately ended in the tragic deaths of both artists.
But the quarrel he’s most familiar with is the scuffle between two of today’s biggest stars, Drake and Kendrick Lamar.
The two artists exchanged barbs in various diss tracks, but the fracas came to a head when Lamar released “Not Like Us.” The 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 of Compton, California, and, more broadly, West Coast rap. Lamar insinuates Drake is a pedophile, rapping, “I hear you like ‘em young.”
The song was arguably the biggest hit of 2024, winning Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the Grammys, having the most Apple Music streams worldwide, and making this winter’s Super Bowl halftime show the most watched ever.
Instead of going back to the studio to try and one-up Lamar, however, Drake broke tradition and made the unprecedented move of going to court.
Reg Wydeven
Drake sued Universal Music Group in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, claiming the record label published and promoted the song he deemed slanderous. The suit, which seeks unspecified damages and does not name Lamar as a defendant, asserts that the song amounts to “falsely accusing him of being a sex offender, engaging in pedophilic acts” and more, harming his reputation.
Drake further contends that the track endangered him by inspiring vigilante justice for being an alleged pedophile. He blames Lamar for attempted break-ins and the shooting of a security guard at his Toronto home because his mansion was depicted in an aerial photo in the song’s cover art.
Michael Gottlieb, Drake’s lawyer, argued that “this song achieved a cultural ubiquity unlike any other rap song in history.” He suggested that an average listener could be “a 13-year-old who’s dancing to the song at a bar mitzvah.”
“That would be a very interesting bar mitzvah,” Judge Jeannette Vargas responded. “Who is the ordinary listener? Is it someone who’s going to catch all those references?” Vargas wondered aloud, addressing the legal standard that concerns how an average, reasonable person would understand a statement. “There’s so much specialized and nuanced to these lyrics.”
Universal asked that the case be dismissed, contending that the lyrics are just hyperbole in the tradition of rap beefing. “Context is key,” the company’s lawyer Rollin Ransom argued. “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.”
My son told my wife that he likes Eminem, and she replied saying she preferred Skittles. When he said he meant the rapper, she asked, “Why would you eat the wrapper?”
She’s not a fan of hip-hop.
Reg Wydeven is a partner with the Appleton-based law firm of McCarty Law LLP. He can be reached at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Drake’s lawsuit claims Lamar’s lyrics are slanderous, endangers him
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