Common Music Group fired again with some severe warmth in response to Drake’s lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar’s diss monitor, “Not Like Us.” As we beforehand reported, Drake is looking out the label for defamation in a brand new lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
In response to Drake’s lawsuit, Common Music launched a prolonged assertion to Selection that reads: “Not solely are these claims unfaithful, however the notion that we’d search to hurt the fame of any artist — not to mention Drake — is illogical. Now we have invested massively in his music and our workers all over the world have labored tirelessly for a few years to assist him obtain historic business and private monetary success.
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All through his profession, Drake has deliberately and efficiently used UMG to distribute his music and poetry to interact in conventionally outrageous back-and-forth ‘rap battles’ to precise his emotions about different artists. He now seeks to weaponize the authorized course of to silence an artist’s inventive expression and to hunt damages from UMG for distributing that artist’s music.”
“Now we have not and don’t have interaction in defamation — towards any particular person,” the assertion concludes. “On the identical time, we are going to vigorously defend this litigation to guard our individuals and our fame, in addition to any artist who may straight or not directly turn out to be a frivolous litigation goal for having completed nothing extra that write a track.”
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The lawsuit, submitted in federal court docket in New York Metropolis, claims that UMG went forward and pushed the monitor, though it dropped some severe false allegations towards Drake, together with pedophilia claims and a name for vigilante justice. Curiously, Kendrick Lamar isn’t talked about within the go well with in any respect.
Based on the lawsuit, this complete state of affairs led to some wild penalties, like a safety guard getting shot at Drake’s crib in Toronto. On high of that, Drake’s been dealing with a wave of on-line hate and harassment, which has taken a toll on his fame and messed with the worth of his model, particularly together with his contract renegotiation with UMG developing this yr. Take into account, the label has offers with each artists.
“The lawsuit is just not concerning the artist who created ‘Not Like Us,’” the lawsuit says, referring to Lamar. “It’s, as a substitute, solely about UMG, the music firm that determined to publish, promote, exploit, and monetize allegations that it understood weren’t solely false, however harmful.”
The go well with later alleges, “UMG did so as a result of it understood that the Recording’s inflammatory and stunning allegations have been a gold mine.”