<\/p>\n
A federal judge dismissed Drake<\/a>\u2018s defamation lawsuit against his own record label on Thursday.<\/p>\n The suit, brought after the Canadian rapper was on the losing end of a rap beef<\/a> with Super Bowl halftime show headliner Kendrick Lamar<\/a>, alleged that Universal Music Group<\/a> defamed him by releasing Lamar\u2019s \u201cNot Like Us.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cSay, Drake, I hear you like \u2019em young,\u201d Lamar raps before calling the hitmaker a \u201ccertified pedophile.\u201d<\/p>\n Drake\u2019s lawsuit said the label \u201cintended 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.\u201d It also alleged that UMG stood to profit in future contract negotiations with Drake by tarnishing his reputation. <\/span>UMG countered in a statement that Drake was \u201cweaponiz[ing] the legal process to silence an artist\u2019s creative expression.\u201d<\/p>\n On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Jeannette Vargas ruled<\/a> that the assertion that Drake was a pedophile was \u201chyperbole\u201d and fell well within the bounds of a heated musical back-and-forth between two superstar musicians. Vargas ruled that no \u201creasonable listener\u201d would believe that Lamar\u2019s barbs were a statement of fact in the context of their \u201cwar of words.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough 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 \u2018Not Like Us\u2019 imparts verifiable facts about plaintiff,\u201d she wrote in the ruling on UMG\u2019s motion to dismiss the case. \u201cBecause the Court concludes that the allegedly defamatory statements in \u2018Not Like Us\u2019 are nonactionable opinion, the motion to dismiss is granted.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Drake\u2019s \u201cNot Like Us\u201d defamation lawsuit against UMG dismissed<\/a> appeared first on Salon.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A federal judge dismissed Drake\u2018s 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\u2019s \u201cNot Like Us.\u201d In that smash hit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2080523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[321648,25844,37703,46171],"class_list":["post-2080522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-defamation-lawsuit","tag-drake","tag-kendrick-lamar","tag-universal-music-group"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Drakes-Not-Like-Us-defamation-lawsuit-against-UMG-dismissed.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2080522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2080524,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080522\/revisions\/2080524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2080523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2080522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2080522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2080522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}