Drake wants to continue his rap feud with Kendrick Lamar in court over pedophile allegations

go away between hip-hop legends Drake and Kendrick Lamar take an unexpected turn: Drake wants to take legal action against the record company UMG for defamation.

According to the Canadian rapper, the label had the song in which he is “falsely accused of sexual violence” – Or Like Us – can stop. The day before yesterday, his team announced that they would take legal action because it is said that the streaming figures of that song were artificially inflated.

Both Drake and Kendrick Lamar are affiliated with UMG, so of course Drake is now fighting a legal battle against his own record company. Drake only focuses on UMG. Lamar has not yet been named as a defendant.

No one with even an interest in rap music could ignore the ‘hip-hop civil war’ last summer. The two titans quickly released songs in which they tried to shoot each other.

The accusations on both sides became more intense as the argument continued, until, according to most fans, Kendrick Lamar delivered the final blow. In two ruthless avoid Drake was accused of sexual assault, among other things.

The number Or Like Us it quickly became one of the most popular hip-hop songs of all time. It will soon reach 1 billion streams on the Spotify music platform.

But rapper Drake is now claiming that record label UMG has artificially inflated the song’s listening figures. So some of the streams on the music platform would be fake. According to the lawyers, UMG also used influencers to promote the song. They also refer in the documents to a “whistleblower”, who claims the label paid radio stations to play the song.

Lamar rapped in the song that his opponent prefers young girls and called “a confirmed pedophile“. It should be a reason for UMG not to release the song or release it in a suitable way, Drake now says.

His team has filed the court papers in New York. This is not an official complaint, but “pre-action filtering”. The lawyers are asking the court to compel the record label to keep all relevant documents for use in future litigation.

UMG denies the allegations, saying “the suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine one of its artists is offensive and false.” the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear,” said the label.

Fans have mixed reactions to the rivalry. According to some, Drake is fighting injustice in the music world, while others say that the move shows that he is a big loser.

“Taking legal action goes against the unwritten rules of the hip-hop world,” Bowie van Loon explains. He is the editor-in-chief of the cultural platform Hiphop In Je Smoel. “Disrespecting each other is part of hip-hop culture. You should fight arguments with a microphone and not by threatening a lawsuit.”

In addition, according to some fans, there is hypocrisy. During the argument, Drake accused his opponent of attacking his girlfriend and seemed to say that Lamar was abused as a child.

Van Loon: “Drake has also said bad things about Lamar. I can agree with him when people say he went too far, but they were both guilty of creeping.”

The timing of the news is also amazing. Last Friday, Lamar released an album that was well received. “Lamar is winning as an artist,” says Van Loon. “While that’s happening, Drake does something that is completely against the values ​​of the culture.”

According to Van Loon, Drake is hoping to make the song culturally inappropriate through legal action. This cannot be confirmed, but if it is true the case so far has had the opposite effect. Or Like Us has been climbing the charts again in the past few days.