In what could be the most ridiculous hip-hop beef ever to find its way into the courtroom, Drake has finally elevated his issues with Kendrick Lamar to the legal arena. This time, he is aiming his anger at one of the biggest shows of the decade: the 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show.
In an updated 107-page amended complaint filed in New York on April 16, Drake alleges that Kendrick’s thundering performance of “Not Like Us” drew a gargantuan 133 million viewers that night, wasn’t a power move or lyrical flex. Drizzy’s camp says it’s a lot more serious: “a coordinated effort to assassinate his character.”
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Drake’s lawyers are focusing on the fact that an especially pointed line, including the word “pedophile,” that Kendrick delivered during the halftime show was reportedly tanked in an edit the NFL ran on the broadcast. To them, that’s not censorship but an acknowledgment. Drake’s lawyers cite the statement as evidence that the NFL and Universal Music Group (UMG) knew the lyric had strayed into a dangerous neighborhood of defamation.
The complaint also adds the 2025 Grammy Awards to the mix, where “Not Like Us” was performed live to 15 million viewers and took home some of the night’s biggest trophies: Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Drake’s team claims this only stoked the flames, extending the reach of the song and further damaging Drake’s public persona.
And this is where shit starts to get spicy. The suit further claims that UMG either looked the other way or, worse, was in on a plan to boost the song’s popularity by using bots to inflate stream counts. Translation? Drake’s camp now accuses one of the biggest labels in the world of collusion to game the system in Kendrick’s favor, all while Drake’s name got battered.
Although both artists have exchanged subliminal (and not-so-subliminal) blows for years, this new plot twist is an unequivocal escalation. What had been a contest of bars and streaming numbers has turned instead to courtrooms and legal briefs. Drake appears to be drawing a line in the sand, declaring enough’s enough, and if he’s going down, he’s bringing names.
Of course, Kendrick hasn’t provided a public response yet, and UMG is being tight-lipped. The hip-hop world will watch closely as this clash moves from the charts to the courtroom.
If music is war, this may be one of our largest encounters. And this time, it’s no longer just about who came up with the better verse but about who can make their case before a judge.
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