Adding to the ongoing feud between hip-hop titans Drake and Kendrick Lamar, Drake’s legal team has accused Universal Music Group (UMG) of artificially inflating the popularity of Lamar’s controversial diss track, Not Like Us.
Filed in a New York court on Monday, November 26th, the petition from Drake’s company, Frozen Moments LLC, alleges that UMG manipulated streaming numbers on platforms like Spotify to give Lamar’s diss track an unfair advantage.
The court filing demands UMG disclose information that could serve as evidence in a potential lawsuit. According to Drake’s team, UMG allegedly used “bots” and pay-to-play schemes to make the song go viral and bolster its performance.
It further claims UMG offered special licensing rates to Spotify to push the track, leveraging what the filing calls a “symbiotic business relationship” between the label and the streaming giant.
UMG has denied the allegations, calling them “offensive and untrue.” In a statement, the company said “We employ the highest ethical practices in our marketing and promotional campaigns. No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear.”
Spotify, which has faced similar allegations in the past, has not commented on the current dispute but previously stated that it invests heavily in tools to detect and prevent artificial streaming.
The feud between Drake, a five-time Grammy-winning Canadian rapper, and Lamar, a Pulitzer Prize-winning artist slated to headline the next Super Bowl halftime show, is among the most heated in hip-hop history. Their rivalry dates back to 2013, when Lamar began publicly criticizing Drake after their earlier collaborations.
Lamar’s Not Like Us, released in May during a spree of diss tracks between the two artists, has drawn widespread attention for its scathing lyrics, including a jab at Drake “Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young, You better not ever go to cell block one.”
The track has since garnered over 900 million plays on Spotify.
Drake’s petition also accuses UMG of retaliatory actions, alleging the company fired employees loyal to the rapper to “conceal its schemes.”
