{"id":2081725,"date":"2025-10-10T12:37:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T12:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2081725"},"modified":"2025-10-10T12:37:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T12:37:56","slug":"drakes-defamation-suit-against-umg-over-lamars-not-like-us-dismissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/drakes-defamation-suit-against-umg-over-lamars-not-like-us-dismissed\/","title":{"rendered":"Drake&#8217;s defamation suit against UMG over Lamar&#8217;s &#8216;Not Like Us&#8217; dismissed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"storyContent\">\n<p>A federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday dismissed superstar rapper Drake\u2019s defamation lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us\u201d against Universal Music Group UMG.AS, which releases both artists\u2019 music.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas said Lamar\u2019s lyrics accusing Drake of being a pedophile were not defamatory because they were \u201cnonactionable opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\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,\u201d Vargas said.<\/p>\n<p>Attorneys for Drake and Lamar\u2019s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision.<\/p>\n<p>UMG said it was pleased by the dismissal. \u201cFrom the outset, this suit was an affront to all artists and their creative expression and never should have seen the light of day,\u201d UMG said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>The company said it looked forward to \u201ccontinuing our work successfully promoting Drake\u2019s music and investing in his career.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lamar and Drake, whose given name is Aubrey Drake Graham, have been engaged in a long-running feud with several high-profile diss tracks against each other. Drake sued UMG in January based on its promotion of \u201cNot Like Us,\u201d arguing the song\u2019s false accusation that the Canadian rapper is a pedophile put him and his family in danger.<\/p>\n<p>Music industry publications have said Drake did not sue Lamar directly because the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution offers strong protections for individual creative expression. Drake argued UMG was responsible for distributing and profiting from the song.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot Like Us\u201d won Grammy Awards in February for record and song of the year. It spent two weeks at the top of Billboard\u2019s Hot 100 in 2024 and another week at No. 1 after Lamar performed it at this year\u2019s Super Bowl halftime show.<\/p>\n<p><!-- ccpa version--><br \/>\n<!-- Entertainment SmartMatch -->\n<\/div>\n<p><script nonce=\"yvt6nspK\">\n!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\nn.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;\nn.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\nt.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,\ndocument,'script','https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\nfbq('init', '110232789685143');\nfbq('set','agent','tmgoogletagmanager', '110232789685143');\nfbq('track', \"PageView\");\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source triblive.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday dismissed superstar rapper Drake\u2019s defamation lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s diss track \u201cNot Like Us\u201d against Universal Music Group UMG.AS, which releases both artists\u2019 music. U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas said Lamar\u2019s lyrics accusing Drake of being a pedophile were not defamatory because they were \u201cnonactionable opinion.\u201d \u201cAlthough the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2081726,"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":[25177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2081725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Drakes-defamation-suit-against-UMG-over-Lamars-Not-Like-Us.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081725","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=2081725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2081727,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081725\/revisions\/2081727"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2081726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2081725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2081725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2081725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}