The Drake Case: UMG Defamation Suit, Dismissal, and Appeal

Drake’s defamation lawsuit against UMG over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” was dismissed by a federal judge in October 2025, and the rapper’s appeal is now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as of mid-2026.¹ U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas ruled that the song’s lyrics were protected opinion, not statements of fact that could support a defamation claim.²

What Drake Sued Over

Drake filed the 81-page complaint on January 15, 2025, in the Southern District of New York (Case No. 1:25-cv-00399). He named Universal Music Group as the sole defendant. Kendrick Lamar was not sued.¹

The complaint brought three claims: defamation, harassment in the second degree, and violation of Section 349 of the New York General Business Law. The lyrics at the center of the case included lines calling Drake a “certified pedophile,” stating “Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young,” and suggesting his name belonged on a “sex offender list.” The cover art placed icons used by law enforcement to denote registered sex offender residences over what appeared to be an aerial view of Drake’s home.²

Drake alleged that UMG “waged a campaign” against its own artist by intentionally publishing and promoting a song it knew to contain false accusations of pedophilia. He claimed the label used bots and “nefarious marketing tactics” to drive the song’s popularity, stripped copyright restrictions so content creators could freely use it, and paid third parties to amplify it, all while knowing the pedophilia allegations were false.³ The complaint also alleged a financial motive: Drake’s contract with Republic Records, a UMG subsidiary, was up for renegotiation in 2025, and he claimed the label sought to devalue his brand to reduce his bargaining leverage.⁴

Drake tied real-world harm to the song’s promotion. On May 7, 2024, while the feud was at its peak, a security guard was shot outside Drake’s Toronto mansion in the Bridle Path neighborhood and hospitalized in serious condition. Toronto Police Inspector Paul Krawczyk said it was “too early” to determine a motive and that investigators had not linked the shooting to the rap feud.⁵ Drake nonetheless pointed to the shooting and subsequent trespass incidents at his home as consequences of UMG’s promotion of “Not Like Us.”³

Why the Judge Dismissed the Case

UMG moved to dismiss in March 2025 under Rule 12(b)(6), arguing the lyrics were “a series of hyperbolic insults” consistent with the conventions of hip-hop feuds. The label said Drake “lost a rap battle that he provoked and in which he willingly participated” and had leveled “similarly incendiary attacks at Lamar” during the same exchange.⁶

On October 9, 2025, Judge Vargas issued a 38-page opinion granting the motion and dismissing all three claims. The core holding was that the lyrics of “Not Like Us” are “nonactionable opinion” under the First Amendment and the New York Constitution.²

The judge applied a three-factor test drawn from New York’s Brian v. Richardson framework:

The forum. A rap diss track is not a medium where listeners expect “sober facts” or “fact-checked verifiable content.” The court compared it to social media with a “freewheeling, anything-goes writing style.”
The context of the feud. “Not Like Us” was one of roughly seven tracks exchanged over sixteen days in what the court called a “war of words.” In that setting, audiences anticipate “epithets, fiery rhetoric or hyperbole rather than factual assertions.”
Holistic assessment. The court refused to read the song in isolation. Judge Vargas noted the tracks were “in dialogue with one another” and pointed out that Lamar’s lyric “Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young” was a direct callback to Drake’s own line in “Taylor Made Freestyle”: “Talk about him likin’ young girls, that’s a gift from me.”²

Vargas grounded the ruling in prior cases. Steinhilber v. Alphonse (1986) held that statements made in the heat of public debate can take on the character of opinion. Torain v. Liu (2008) affirmed dismissal of a defamation claim where a rival radio personality called the plaintiff a “sick racist pedophile,” treating the remark as opinion in the context of an ongoing feud. Rapaport v. Barstool Sports, Inc. (2021) found that accusations of criminal conduct within a diss-track music video were not actionable given the dispute’s context.²

Two of Drake’s more creative arguments failed outright. He had contended that the song’s Grammy wins, chart dominance, and Super Bowl performance transformed opinion into fact. “Constitutional guarantees do not rest on such a flimsy foundation,” Vargas wrote, ruling that the legal status of speech cannot depend on a “retroactive analysis” based on how popular it later becomes.⁷ He had also argued that UMG’s continued promotion of the track created separate liability. The court called that reasoning “logically incoherent,” holding that if the song was nonactionable opinion when first released, republishing it could not manufacture a new cause of action.²

The Appeal to the Second Circuit

Drake filed a notice of appeal shortly after the dismissal and submitted his opening brief to the Second Circuit in January 2026. His brief argues that Judge Vargas created “an unprecedented and overbroad categorical rule that statements in rap diss tracks can never constitute statements of fact.” Drake contends that calling someone a “certified pedophile” carries a “precise” meaning capable of being proven true or false and should not be shielded by the diss-track context. He further argues that UMG “relentlessly” marketed the song in a way that misled consumers and caused him real harm.⁸

UMG filed its response brief in late March 2026.⁹ On April 3, 2026, two amicus briefs were filed in support of UMG, each offering a distinct argument for affirming the dismissal.

The first came from the Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression at Yale Law School and University of Florida law professor Lyrissa Lidsky. It argued that Drake’s claim is barred by an independent defense: consent, which under New York law is an “absolute defense” to defamation. The brief pointed to Drake’s own invitation in “Taylor Made Freestyle” and to lyrics in his later track “The Heart Part 6,” where he rapped, “This Epstein angle was the shit I expected,” as evidence that Drake knew what response he was inviting and got what he anticipated. The brief analogized Drake’s position to “a self-assured boxer [who] challenges the world champion to a prize fight, is knocked out on live television, and, with bruised ego and body, files a lawsuit for battery.”¹⁰

The second amicus brief was filed by the UC Irvine Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic on behalf of more than a dozen social scientists and legal scholars, including UC Irvine criminology professor Charis E. Kubrin and scholars from Howard University, Virginia Tech, and Northeastern University. They argued that rap lyrics function as creative expression characterized by “hyperbole, exaggeration, wordplay, and metaphors” rather than factual statements, and that treating diss-track lyrics as literal assertions risks introducing racial bias by activating stereotypes about rap music and its artists.¹¹

The Second Circuit has not scheduled oral arguments, and no decision date has been announced.¹² Appeals of this kind typically take well over a year.

1
PBS NewsHour. Drake’s Defamation Suit Against Label Over Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us Tossed by Judge
2
U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. Graham v. UMG Recordings, Inc., Opinion and Order
3
NBC News. Drake Files Federal Lawsuit Against UMG
4
Music Business Worldwide. Drake’s Deal Is Up for Renegotiation
5
The Guardian. Drake Security Guard Shooting
6
The New York Times. UMG Response Drake Lawsuit
7
Billboard. Drake Lawsuit Kendrick Lamar Not Like Us Dismissed Judge
8
Rolling Stone. Drake Kendrick Lamar Not Like Us Appeals Defamation Case
9
Music Business Worldwide. Yale Law School Scholars Back UMG in Drake’s Not Like Us Defamation Fight
10
Yale Law School. MFIA Clinic’s Brief Drake Defamation Appeal Draws Widespread Media Attention
11
UC Irvine School of Law. IPAT Clinic Files Amicus Curiae Brief on Behalf of Social Scientists and Legal Scholars in Drake v. UMG Appeal
12
CourtListener. Graham v. UMG Recordings, Inc., Second Circuit Docket