A federal judge dismissed Drake‘s defamation lawsuit against his own record label on Thursday.
The suit, brought after the Canadian rapper was on the losing end of a rap beef with Super Bowl halftime show headliner Kendrick Lamar, alleged that Universal Music Group defamed him by releasing Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” In that smash hit diss track, which netted the rapper five Grammys, Lamar rides a bouncy West Coast rap beat while accusing Drake of being into underage girls.
“Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young,” Lamar raps before calling the hitmaker a “certified pedophile.”
Drake’s lawsuit said the label “intended to convey the specific, unmistakable and false factual allegation that Drake is a criminal pedophile, and to suggest that the public should resort to vigilante justice in response.” It also alleged that UMG stood to profit in future contract negotiations with Drake by tarnishing his reputation. UMG countered in a statement that Drake was “weaponiz[ing] the legal process to silence an artist’s creative expression.”
On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Jeannette Vargas ruled that the assertion that Drake was a pedophile was “hyperbole” and fell well within the bounds of a heated musical back-and-forth between two superstar musicians. Vargas ruled that no “reasonable listener” would believe that Lamar’s barbs were a statement of fact in the context of their “war of words.”
“Although 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 ‘Not Like Us’ imparts verifiable facts about plaintiff,” she wrote in the ruling on UMG’s motion to dismiss the case. “Because the Court concludes that the allegedly defamatory statements in ‘Not Like Us’ are nonactionable opinion, the motion to dismiss is granted.”
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