Drake’s ongoing defamation lawsuit in opposition to his personal file label, Common Music Group (UMG), took one other flip at the moment as a choose in New York dominated that his authorized group can start the invention course of.
At a pre-trial convention on Wednesday morning, Decide Jeanette Vargas decreed that Drake’s representatives can go forward with the method, which is more likely to embrace deposing key executives and requesting doc manufacturing.
UMG had beforehand requested that the courtroom delay discovery. That movement has now been denied, that means that Drake can proceed with requesting entry to paperwork that UMG has referred to as “extremely commercially delicate”, together with Lamar’s contracts with the file label.
In an announcement to The Impartial, Drake’s lead legal professional Michael Gottlieb stated: “Now it is time to see what UMG was so desperately attempting to cover.”
UMG had stated the request would “require pricey assortment and evaluate of huge swaths of hard-copy and digital knowledge units, contracts and agreements, and communications”.
In January, Drake accused UMG of spreading the “false and malicious narrative” that he’s a pedophile with the discharge of Lamar’s tune “Not Like Us”, which incorporates the lyrics: “Say, Drake, I hear you want em’ younger.”
Lamar is just not named within the lawsuit; nonetheless, Drake moreover claimed that UMG knew the accusations had been false however selected company greed over the protection and well-being of its artists.
Final month, UMG branded Drake’s lawsuit a “misguided try to salve his wounds” and requested the rapper’s criticism be “dismissed with out prejudice.”
“Plaintiff, probably the most profitable recording artists of all time, misplaced a rap battle that he provoked and during which he willingly participated. As an alternative of accepting the loss just like the unbothered rap artist he typically claims to be, he has sued his personal file label in a misguided try to salve his wounds,” learn the movement filed to the US District Court docket for the Southern District of New York.
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It went on to recount the main points of Drake and Lamar’s notorious rap battle, which kicked off within the spring of 2024.
“Over the course of roughly two months, they exchanged more and more vitriolic and incendiary ‘diss tracks,’ generally responding inside hours of one another. Drake inspired the feud,” UMG claimed.
“For instance, when he felt that Lamar was taking too lengthy to reply, Drake launched a second recording during which he goaded Lamar to proceed the general public rap battle. Lamar did simply that, and collectively Drake and Lamar launched a complete of 9 tracks taking intention at one another. A number of commentators declared Lamar to be the ‘winner’ of the battle.”
The submitting additional acknowledged that “Drake has been happy to make use of UMG’s platform to advertise tracks leveling equally incendiary assaults at Lamar, together with, most importantly, that Lamar engaged in home abuse [in his song ‘Family Matters’].”
“However now, after dropping the rap battle, Drake claims that ‘Not Like Us’ is defamatory. It isn’t,” it continued.
It argues that as a result of Drake’s lawsuit is sort of totally centered on “Not Like Us,” it “disregards the opposite Drake and Lamar diss tracks that encompass ‘Not Like Us’ in addition to the conventions of the diss observe style, and, thus, critically ignores the context of the dispute.”
In an announcement shared with The Impartial on the time, Gottlieb referred to as UMG’s movement “a determined ploy to keep away from accountability.”
