It looks like Drake is making serious moves to take revenge on his rival Kendrick Lamar days after he filed a defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) over Kendrick's scathing diss track "Not Like Us." The suit alleges that the lyrics, including the accusation that Drake was a "certified pedophile," crossed a line by a lot and that Kendrick's appearances at the Super Bowl and Grammys only raised the volume on the slander.
Now, four legal and cultural scholars have intervened on the judge's behalf with a sharp warning: Taking diss tracks at face value would set a dangerous precedent, they argue, one that would give free rein to racial bias and censorship.
"The parties who may be most familiar with how rap music is made and how rap music is received by its intended audience have come forward as an amicus to inform the Court that the author of the song's lyrics is not offering commentators literal or autobiographical facts, but rather is 'engaging in a vibrant and populous literary tradition,'" the professors write in an amicus brief filed in New York's Southern District Court, where UMG asserted in its successful motion to dismiss that rap lyrics and particularly those in diss tracks are not to be taken literally.
"Drake's defamation claim is founded on the premise that every word of the song 'Not Like Us' is to be taken literally," the brief says. "This assumption is not only flawed but harmful."
The scholars contend that taking rap lyrics literally fills the courtroom with damaging stereotypes, especially racial ones. When lyrics are accepted as literal truth, they said, it "invites the specter of racial bias and stereotypes," even as organizations that have the power to stop it have a stranglehold on free expression in hip-hop. They argue that exaggeration, sarcasm, and lyrical boasting of rap are integral to the art form, not legal oaths of fact.
Diss tracks have always been about out-rhyming your opponent and not taking them to small claims court. Whether through rhymes of snatching someone's girl or out-gunning them on the streets, these lyrics aren't affidavits, but they are words throwing in a tradition of one-upmanship calling for one artist's work to be compared to another.
UMG's attorneys went even further, describing Drake's complaint as "astounding" and insinuating that the lawsuit was a desperate attempt to "save face" after Kendrick scored the more powerful blows. They even noted the irony: Drake, of all people, made a name for himself by rapping provocatively.
The original lawsuit claimed that UMG had artificially inflated Kendrick's stream count using bots, but that section was quietly scrubbed from the amended filing. Yet the legal wheels keep churning, and the judge has also denied UMG's motion to halt discovery, allowing Drake's team to continue sifting through Lamar's contracts.
But for culture, the takeaway is bigger than a bout between two megapopular emcees taking shots at each other. It is about how we ensure that creative expression can be preserved without also being submitted as evidence in a trial. When bars turn to briefs, hip-hop begins to lose its edge.
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