Drake Unlikely To Prevail In Defamation Case, Experts Say
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Drake‘s latest lawsuit, a rare one where an artist is suing his own record company, might be one that he can’t win, several legal experts are saying. In case you’ve been off the grid for a while, over the summer, Drake and Kendrick Lamar engaged in a rap battle. Lamar was declared the undisputed people’s champ after he put out ‘Not Like Us,’ an anthemic rap comeback that hit the culture as hard as Nas’ “Ether” did in his battle with Jay-Z back in 2001.
At first, Drake sued Universal Music Group and Spotify for allegedly colluding to inflate streams of ‘Not Like Us,’ which accuses the 38-year-old Canadian-born superstar of being a “certified pedophile” and for getting street cred off his collaborations with Atlanta-based rappers like Young Thug, Future, 21 Savage and 2 Chainz.
He withdrew that suit last week but mounted a new lawsuit days later accusing him and Lamar’s distribution label, UMG, of helping Lamar defame him. However, experts say the allegation in this new lawsuit will be hard for Drake to prove.
“Drake and his team acted smartly by leaving off Kendrick Lamar as a defendant because many of the legal theories are based on how Universal marketed and allegedly used underhanded methods to juice Lamar’s song and make it more successful, which has nothing to do with Lamar as an artist,” Tre Lovell, a defamation and media lawyer told Newsweek.
Though Lamar is not even named in the new lawsuit, other lawyers say that it’s very likely that Drake is trying to sue to gain leverage and save face in the court of public opinion.
“This lawsuit by Drake is a much less meritorious legal case—likely used as leverage in contract negotiations and as a PR move more than intended for a drawn-out legal battle through trial,” defamation lawyer Camron Dowlatshahi told the outlet.
Lamar’s victory lap took him all the way to the Super Bowl halftime show and five of seven Grammy nods for “Not LIke Us.” Lamar has said little since the beef began, but he did do a video for the song and a one-off Los Angeles show, The Pop Out: Ken and Friends that packed the Forum in Inglewood last June.
In October, after announcing his tour with SZA, Lamar talked to her for Harper’s Bazaar. He said, ‘”Not Like Us” is the energy of who I am, the type of man I represent. Now, if you identify with the man that I represent …This man has morals, he has values, he believes in something, he stands on something. He’s not pandering. He’s a man who can recognize his mistakes and not be afraid to share the mistakes and can dig deep down into fear-based ideologies or experiences to be able to express them without feeling like he’s less of a man.
He added, “If I’m thinking of “Not Like Us,” I’m thinking of me and whoever identifies with that.”
