Universal Music Group is firing back at Drake with their response to the rapper’s appeal to revive his defamation lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar’s Drake diss track, “Not Like Us.”
According to a Digital Music News report, published on March 27, Universal Music Group responded to Drake’s appeal, arguing that reinstating Drizzy’s defamation lawsuit would “critically undermine” the art of hip-hop because he’s upset that he lost the rap battle against Kendrick Lamar. In the suit, UMG suggested that K-Dot calling Drake a pedophile is part of the art form that’s “built on exaggeration, insult and wordplay.”
Drake’s original lawsuit accused UMG — but not Kendrick — of defamation through the music giant releasing the song, which called him a “certified pedophile,” that Drizzy claimed allowed millions of people to actually believe that he was a pedophile. However, a judge dismissed the suit in October of 2025, ruling that the Compton rapper’s lyrics were a “nonactionable opinion,” meaning, they were not statements of fact.
In UMG’s latest filing, the music conglomerate argued that Kendrick’s “pedophile” lyric was in response to Drake’s accusations that K-Dot allegedly beat his wife and was not the biological father of one of his children. They also added that the OVO Sound leader’s defamation lawsuit doesn’t hold any weight in a broader legal sense either.
“‘Not Like Us’ falls within a genre typified by inflammatory putdowns, epithets, fiery rhetoric, vulgarity and hyperbole,” UMG’s attorneys reportedly wrote in the documents. “Drake’s attempt to rip the words he now dislikes from their immediate and broader context has no support in governing law.”
The appeals court is scheduled to hear arguments in this case in the next few months and a ruling is expected next year.
XXL has reached out to Universal Music Group for comment.
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