Three months ago, a federal judge dismissed Drake’s defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us.
Now, the superstar rapper is appealing the decision.
Drake filed a 117-page appellate brief on January 21 in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, seeking to overturn Judge Jeannette Vargas’s October ruling that dismissed all of his claims.
He originally filed the lawsuit in January 2025, about eight months after Not Like Us was released in May 2024. Drake alleged that UMG “intentionally published and promoted” the song, while knowing that the song’s lyrics “were false and defamatory”.
Lamar’s Not Like Us was part of what Judge Jeannette Vargas described as “perhaps the most infamous rap battle in the genre’s history.”
Over 16 days, Drake and Lamar released eight diss tracks with increasingly inflammatory rhetoric.
Not Like Us achieved extraordinary commercial success, accumulating over 1.8 billion streams on Spotify alone to date, and winning Record of the Year at the 2025 Grammys. It was performed during the 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show to 133.5 million viewers.
Judge Vargas ruled that the diss track “constitutes protected opinion rather than actionable defamation”.
Drake’s appeal directly challenges that conclusion.
The brief argues that “The District Court Created a Dangerous Categorical Rule that rap diss tracks can never be actionable.”
It also claims that “millions of people understood the Recording and Image to convey factual information, causing countless individuals around the globe to believe that Drake was a pedophile.”
Drake’s brief filed this week contends that Judge Vargas made an error by considering the song only within the context of the entire rap battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar.
His lawyers argue that “of all the songs published during the rap beef, the Recording is the only one that ‘broke through the noise’ and achieved cultural ubiquity.”
By contrast, the next-most-popular song in the feud, Euphoria, had “just 4.1%” of the streams and views achieved by Not Like Us, according to data cited in the filing.
The brief argues the song was repeatedly “republished” to massive new audiences who had no knowledge of any rap battle, including at the Democratic National Convention and the Grammy Awards, where it won Record of the Year.
“Millions who tuned in to the ‘Big Game’ – including young children and people whose religious or cultural beliefs, or simply their taste in music, leave them with no interest in or exposure to rap battles – were unaware of the feud and ‘had never before heard the [Recording] or any of the songs that preceded it,'” the filing states.
Drake’s lawyers argue that the district court “effectively created an unprecedented and overbroad categorical rule that statements in rap diss tracks can never constitute statements of fact.”
The appeal also revives Drake’s claim that UMG used deceptive business practices to artificially boost the song’s success.
The brief alleges that “notwithstanding its knowledge of the falsity of the allegations and the threats to Drake and his family’s safety, UMG waged an unrelenting campaign to spread the Recording as widely as possible.”
Following the dismissal in October, a UMG spokesperson said: “From the outset, this suit was an affront to all artists and their creative expression and never should have seen the light of day. We’re pleased with the court’s dismissal and look forward to continuing our work successfully promoting Drake’s music and investing in his career.”
In May, when the company filed its motion to dismiss, UMG characterized Drake’s allegations as “wild conspiracies” and described the lawsuit as “Drake’s attempt to save face for his unsuccessful rap battle with Lamar.”
MBW has reached out to UMG for a response to the most recent filing.Music Business Worldwide