Drake moves his conflict with Kendrick Lamar to court

(New York) Canadian rapper Drake has taken his venomous dispute with Kendrick Lamar to court, accusing Universal Music of inflating the California hip-hop star’s ratings and defaming him, according to court documents and US media on Tuesday.

Rivals for years, the two artists released several vitriolic pieces one after the other in 2024 to criticize each other, a practice that is part of hip-hop culture.

In Not like usKendrick Lamar, Californian rapper crowned with a prestigious Pulitzer Prize, accuses Drake of having relationships with underage girls and calls him a “pedophile”.

The song, which exceeds 900 million plays on Spotify, became one of the artist’s most listened to and received several Grammy nominations in 2025, including best song of the year.

Kendrick Lamar, who released a surprise album on Friday, was also chosen to perform the halftime concert of the next Super Bowl, the final of the American football championship, in 2025, an immense privilege for an artist in the United States .

It is in this context that Drake, under contract with Universal, like Kendrick Lamar, launched two proceedings, respectively before a court in New York and one in Texas. These are not complaints, but a first procedural step which serves to collect evidence for subsequent legal actions.

In the first, dated Monday, the Canadian accuses Universal Music Group (UMG) of having made Spotify pay lower broadcast rights on the condition that the streaming platform recommend Not Like Us massively to its subscribers. According to a court document, Drake also accuses UMG of having used bots (computer automata) to artificially inflate the number of plays of this piece.

“The idea that UMG would do anything to harm any of its artists is shocking and false […] fans choose the music they want to listen to,” responded a UMG spokesperson contacted by AFP.

In the second procedure, revealed Tuesday by the specialist site Billboard, Drake’s lawyers believe that UMG “could have refused to release or distribute the song [Not Like Us] or demand that the offensive comments be edited and/or removed, but she chose to do the opposite.”