Certified Libel Boy: Drake vs Universal

You know how rap battles go. One diss begets another. Winner gets bragging rights and crowds singing along to their song. Loser gets clowned on the internet and retains expensive lawyers.

In late 2024, the artists Drake and Kendrick Lamar traded lyrical barbs across several songs, “diss tracks,” if you will. The feud escalated to the point where Lamar’s chart-topping song “Not Like Us” included the lyrics:

Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophile.

. . .

And your homeboy need subpoena, that predator move in flocks

That name gotta be registered and placed on neighborhood watch

The music video also features Lamar playing hopscotch while rapping “Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A-minor” and the album cover resembles a sex-offender map, with multiple “pins” on an image of Drake’s Toronto home.

It only went downhill from there. Some people decided to shoot up Drake’s home, seriously injuring one of his security guards. The next week, two trespassers tried to break into his home.

On January 15, Drake sued Lamar’s music label Universal Music Group (UMG) for defamation, claiming it “approved, published, and launched a campaign to create a viral hit out of a rap track that falsely accuses Drake of being a pedophile and calls for violent retribution against him.”

Are Song Lyrics Statements of Fact?

A defamation claim must be premised on objectively verifiable facts about a plaintiff. However, provably false allegations can be deemed “rhetorical hyperbole” if they are overtly bombastic, and therefore non-actionable. Pity the federal judge that has to interpret rap lyrics.

In Boladian v. UMG Recordings, Armen Boladian sued UMG and rapper Warren Griffin III for defamation. Funk musician George Clinton’s verse goes as follows:

…Can't take the sorrow of the horrors of his abuse
It ain't worth the sorrows to cause the death ......all men
He's a disgrace to the species in to his face with some feces
Big nose mothafucka got it comin'…

The court dismissed Boladian’s claims, finding that there was no verifiable statement of fact because there was no specific allegation of child abuse. Rather, the abuse was referred to in loose, figurative language representing the kind of puerile taunt that, for better or for worse, is typical of rap music.’”

In Rapaport v. Barstool Sports, Inc., actor Michael Rapaport sued Barstool Sports for defamation for alleging that he was “racist” and a “fraud,” “stalked and physically abused his ex-girlfriend,” and that he has herpes (he doesn’t) during their public feud. Most of the statements were made in Barstool’s music video diss track entitled “Fire Rap” (lol ok), featuring unflattering and doctored photos and videos of Rapaport in the background. The court granted Barstool’s motion for summary judgment, stating that the “nature and tone of the surrounding language” function as a “strong indicator to the reasonable reader that the statement is not expressing or implying any facts.” In that context, “even certain ostensibly factual statements could be reasonably understood as part of a ‘tasteless effort to lampoon’ because they were made in ‘[i]n the emotional aftermath of a [situation] when animosity would be expected to persist’ and in circumstances where ‘an audience may anticipate the use of epithets, fiery rhetoric or hyperbole.”

Disses Aren’t Always Defamatory

Drake and Lamar have been at it for over a decade at this point. Their insults began mild and gradually escalated into explosive claims of abuse, infidelity, fake abs, pedophilia, and sex trafficking.

When the court evaluates Not Like Us in the context of the whole beef, it could find that “ostensibly factual statements” (like calling Lamar a domestic abuser or Drake a pedophile) are part of a “tasteless effort to lampoon” in a genre where animosity is expected. While the diss track is peppered with references alluding to real life controversies, everything has been dialed up to 11 on both sides.  

While it is scary that Drake’s home was attacked, that doesn’t make Not Like Us defamatory. Civilians should steer clear of calling people pedophiles in their day-to-day interactions. However, rappers have the right to call each other sex pests - when the occasion calls for it.