Yale Law School Backs the Dismissal of Drake’s ‘Not Like Us’ Lawsuit
Another brief submitted by a collective of legal scholars also supported the dismissal
As Drake continues his defamation lawsuit against his label, Universal Music Group (UMG), regarding Kendrick Lamar’s diss track, “Not Like Us,” institutions have weighed in. Yale Law School and a group of social scientists and legal scholars represented by the University of California, Irvine (UCI), have submitted amicus briefs to the courts urging the lawsuit be dismissed.
The details:
The Yale brief states that Drake consented to Lamar’s lyrics by engaging in the rap battle.
The comparison was made to a boxing match.
If a boxer who was knocked out sued their opponent for battery, the lawsuit would "fail at the outset for a simple but important reason: the challenger consented to the fight, and consent is a classic defense to an intentional tort.”
The UCI brief leans on the argument that rap lyrics, including diss track lyrics, have never been presented as factual throughout the history of hip-hop culture.
“Drake’s defamation claim rests on the assumption that every word of ‘Not Like Us’ should be taken literally, as a factual representation. This assumption is not just faulty — it is dangerous.”
Read the Yale brief and the UCI brief.
Background:
Last October, Judge Jeannette Vargas of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed Drake’s lawsuit.
Her ruling stated that the diss track “constitutes protected opinion rather than actionable defamation.”
This past January, Drake appealed the decision.
👋 Disclosures & Transparency Block
This article was written with information sourced from Music Business Worldwide.
We covered it because this lawsuit is a major music industry story.
