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On Tuesday, January 14, Drake withdrew his legal action accusing Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG) of artificially boosting streams of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” The withdrawal got here lower than two months after Drake took a number of authorized actions in opposition to events additionally together with iHeartRadio, alleging that numerous sections of the music trade conspired to make Lamar’s diss monitor a success.
The withdrawal of Drake’s New York state petition follows a counter-filing from Spotify that unequivocally rejected the claims and referred to as the motion a “subversion of the traditional judicial course of.” UMG additionally denied the claims. Within the new submitting, Drake’s firm Frozen Moments LLC mentioned it might voluntarily withdraw the motion “with out prices to any social gathering.”
Whereas the brand new submitting states that “Spotify has no objection to the withdrawal and discontinuance,” UMG has “reserved its place.” Pitchfork has emailed every firm’s respective representatives for remark.
On Wednesday, January 15, Drake newly sued UMG, in a New York federal court docket, for defamation and harassment, The New York Times studies. The criticism, obtained by Pitchfork, opens with an epigraph from UMG’s chairman and chief government, Sir Lucian Grainge:
From there, Drake and his authorized crew invoke the shooting outdoors the rapper’s Toronto mansion final Could. The assault, together with two different alleged tried intrusions, occurred within the days after Kendrick Lamar released “Not Like Us,” on Could 4, in partnership with UMG’s Interscope Records.
“UMG is the ‘world’s largest music firm,’ and in addition the music firm that has represented Drake for greater than a decade,” the lawsuit reads. “But, on Could 4, 2024, UMG authorised, revealed, and launched a marketing campaign to create a viral hit out of a rap monitor that falsely accuses Drake of being a pedophile and requires violent retribution in opposition to him. Regardless that UMG enriched itself and its shareholders by exploiting Drake’s music for years, and knew that the salacious allegations in opposition to Drake have been false, UMG selected company greed over the security and well-being of its artists.”
Drake’s authorized crew, led by legal professional Michael J. Gottlieb, says that Lamar’s music “was supposed to convey the particular, unmistakable, and false factual allegation that Drake is a prison pedophile, and to counsel that the general public ought to resort to vigilante justice in response. The Recording is defamatory as a result of its lyrics, its album picture (the ‘Picture’), and its music video (the ‘Video’) all advance the false and malicious narrative that Drake is a pedophile.”
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