Drake escalates the Kendrick beef, accusing the label of firing allies while boosting his rival

On By Littum

In the middle of one ongoing battle royale with hip hop icon Kendrick LamarCanadian rapper Drake now claims their joint label secretly gamed the system to artificially inflate his avowed rival’s latest diss track, in which Lamar accuses the former child star of being a “certified pedophile” while suppressing his own music.

In an eye-catching lawsuit obtained by The independent, Drakeborn Aubrey Drake Graham, says Universal Music Group (UMG) used a network of bots, in conjunction with a so-called pay-to-play scheme, to “manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves” with Lamar’s smash hit song “Not like us,” all to Drake’s detriment.

The filing accuses UMG, which has deals with both artists, of paying Spotify to recommend “Not Like Us” to users “searching for other unrelated songs and artists,” and claims the label also paid Apple to have Siri “Intentionally misleading” users requesting songs from Drake’s catalog, serving up “Not Like Us” instead. UMG’s ploy, the filing claims, created “the false impression that the song was more popular than it really was.” To make matters even stickier, Drake says in the filing that UMG has tried to hide its alleged support for Lamar at Drake’s expense “by firing employees associated with or perceived to be loyal to Drake.”

Kendrick Lamar has been locked in a battle with Drake for years

Kendrick Lamar has been locked in a battle with Drake for years (Getty Images)

According to the filing — a petition by Drake and his company, Frozen Moments LLC, asking the court to order UMG and Spotify to preserve all relevant documents and communications ahead of a pending lawsuit — UMG has so far “declined to engage” with Drake on the issue, instead pointing the finger at Lamar and telling Drake to sue Lamar, not UMG.

But a source from Drake’s camp said Monday, shortly after the petition was filed in New York State Supreme Court, that Drake is upset about UMG’s allegedly shady business practices, not Lamar or his lyrics. (Drake has hit back at Lamar with his own numbers and calls Compton raps a domestic abuser and casts doubt on his child’s paternity.) The source further said The independentif Drake is successful in quashing wrongdoing across the industry, the result could help protect other, lesser-known artists from future exploitation.

A spokesman for UMG declined to comment. Spotify declined to comment. The attorneys representing Drake declined to comment on the record for this story.

UMG was one of Spotify’s earliest supporters and entered into a multi-year global licensing agreement with the streaming giant in 2020, Drake’s lawsuit states. It cites UMG’s financial reporting, which showed about $2.3 billion in revenue from Spotify in 2023, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the brand’s revenue.

Spotify streams are at the center of a legal filing by Drake, who claims his label has shown favoritism to rival Kendrick Lamar

Spotify streams are at the center of a legal filing by Drake, who claims his label has shown favoritism to rival Kendrick Lamar (AFP via Getty Images)

In May of this year, with streaming so important to its bottom line, UMG didn’t rely on chance, or even common business practices, to achieve success with Lamar’s latest release, according to the filing.

“Instead, it launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves with a song, ‘Not Like Us’, to make that song go viral, including using ‘bots’ and pay-to-play deals , filing states that claims UMG charged Spotify 30 percent less than its usual licensing fees in exchange for Spotify pushing recommendations for “Not Like Us” to “users searching for other unrelated songs and artists.”

“Neither UMG nor Spotify disclosed that Spotify had received compensation of any kind in exchange for recommending the song,” the filing claims, arguing that such practices violate the Communications Act of 1934.

In June, a “whistleblower” revealed on a podcast that Lamar’s label had paid him to set up a bot network that would generate 30 million streams on Spotify in the first few days after the release of “Not Like Us” on 3 .May, according to the filing. The artist claimed he had been promised a cash payment plus a percentage of the song’s sales in exchange for his help. The filing says UMG also paid to quietly “inflate” the number of views Lamar’s “Not Like Us” video received, paid traditional radio stations for extra airplay and claims the label’s alleged under-the-table streaming deals extended beyond Spotify.

“Online sources reported that when users asked Siri to play the album ‘Certified Loverboy’ by musician Aubrey Drake Graham d/b/a Drake, Siri instead played ‘Not Like Us,’ which contains the lyrics ‘certified pedophile,'” an allegation. against Drake,” the suit says.

Drake claims his streams have been suppressed beyond Spotify and extending all the way to Siri recommendations

Drake claims his streams have been suppressed beyond Spotify and extending all the way to Siri recommendations (Getty Images for The Recording A)

UMG, additionally paid social media influencers to “promote and support” Lamar’s song without either party disclosing the financial arrangement, according to the filing, which says the arrangement generated nearly 900 million streams on Spotify for “Not Like Us,” a record for most streams ever in a single day for a hip-hop song and the most streamed diss track in Spotify history. The song was also a massive hit on radio and became the best-selling rap song of 2024, the filing said. According to Drake’s filing, the motivation behind UMG’s “schemes” was entirely financial. It claims that the colossal success of “Not Like Us” in turn boosted sales of Lamar’s back catalog and made even more money for UMG.

Drake’s filing even claims that he has “received information that UMG has taken steps in an apparent attempt to conceal its schemes, including, but not limited to, terminating employees associated with or perceived to be loyal to Drake.”

“Streaming and licensing is a zero-sum game,” the filing concludes. “Every time a song ‘breaks through,’ it means another artist doesn’t. UMG’s choice to saturate the music market with ‘Not Like Us’ comes at the expense of its other artists, like Drake.”

Last month, nu-metal band Limp Bizkit sued UMGand claim that the label has not paid them despite their songs being streamed more than half a billion times.

Drake is accusing UMG and Spotify of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), as well as the NY Deceptive Business Act and the NY False Advertising Act.