How Drake’s feud with Kendrick Lamar reignited and escalated with a bombshell court filing | Canada Voices

The hip hop war that erupted this spring between rap titans Kendrick Lamar and Toronto’s Aubrey (Drake) Graham was reignited and spectacularly escalated this week when Drake’s company Frozen Moments, LLC filed bombshell allegations in the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

On Monday, the Started From the Bottom superstar filed a petition against Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG), accusing the companies of unfairly promoting Lamar’s diss track, Not Like Us.

Later in the day, a second petition was filed, this time in a Texas court claiming UMG directed payments to radio giant iHeartRadio in a pay-to-play scheme involving Not Like Us. It is also alleged that UMG was aware that Lamar’s song included defamatory lyrics that “falsely” accused Drake of deviant sexual behaviour, yet released it nevertheless.

Here’s what you need to know about the court filings and the history of the high-profile feud.

Where’s the beef?

While Drake is the most commercially successful rapper of all-time, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lamar is the critics’ darling – a distinction in status that likely does not sit well with the Canadian. On March 26, the friendly rivalry between the two artists turned edgier when rapper Future and producer Metro Boomin released the single Like That, featuring Lamar, who with his lines claimed rap dominance (“it’s just big me”) and downplayed Drake’s oeuvre (”your best work is a light pack”).

A flurry of increasingly ugly accusatory songs directed at each other ensued, including Drake’s Family Matters and his California foe’s response, Meet the Grahams. On May 4, Lamar released Not Like Us, in which Drake was falsely labelled a “certified pedophile.” The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 and received five Grammy nominations. It holds the record for the biggest single-day streams of a hip hop song.

What are the court filings?

No lawsuit has been filed. Drake is petitioning for access to information (“discovery”) that could be used in a possible lawsuit to come. In the petitions, it is alleged that UMG and Spotify artificially boosted streams of Not Like Us, and that iHeartRadio was paid to play the song – i.e., payola. The N.Y. petition contends bots were used to increase the song’s popularity on Spotify and to boost its algorithm presence at the expense of other artists: “Every time a song ‘breaks through,’ it means another artist does not.” As well, it is alleged that UMG gave a Spotify a discount on its licensing fee in exchange for the streaming giant’s preferential recommendation of Not Like Us to its users.

What does UMG have to say in response?

Both Drake and Lamar are signed to UMG-owned labels in the United States, Republic Records and Interscope Records, respectively. The N.Y. petition contends that UMG fired employees “with or perceived as having loyalty to Drake.” In response to the filings, UMG issued a statement:

“The suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue. We employ the highest ethical practices in our marketing and promotional campaigns. No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear.”

What are legal experts saying?

In an interview with Rolling Stone, entertainment lawyer Kevin Casini downplayed speculation that Drake was using the threat of a lawsuit as leverage in a possible bid to get out of his contract, saying the filings were more “whining than anything else.” Elsewhere, lawyer and music industry analyst Bob Lefsetz said he doubted that Spotify agreed to use bots to boost streams – “this is a smoking gun, and there’s no upside” – but that UMG might have. “That’s the history of music promotion,” he said in his widely read newsletter, The Lefsetz Letter.