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2024 has not been a great year for Drake thanks to his impressively one-sided beef with Kendrick Lamar, and the rapper committed yet another unforced error when he took legal action over “Not Like Us” on Monday. However, he’s not stopping there, as he doubled down with another filing where he accused his foe of defamation over the lyrics in the instantly iconic diss track.
Drake has always been a fairly divisive figure in the world of hip-hop, and while even his biggest haters have to admit he knows how to pump out hits, he’s been an easy figure to clown on due to his tendency to take himself far too seriously and routinely wander out of his lane while pretending to be someone the world knows he’s not. He’s been no stranger to highly public beefs with other rappers over the years, and you have to wonder if his ability to come out on top against Meek Mill in 2015 gave him the confidence that led to him engaged in a couple of other feuds where he took a L in incredibly divisive fashion.
In 2018, Drake opted to fire some shots at Kanye West and Pusha T on a diss track that led to the latter responding with one of his own—”The Story of Adidion”—where he revealed the Toronto native had been “hiding a child” he fathered with an, um, adult entertainer. It didn’t seem like a stretch to assume that would be the most scathing lyrical takedown Drake would ever end up on the receiving end of, and while I’d argue that’s still the case, Kendrick Lamar gave Pusha a serious run for his money earlier this year when he brought his own beef with Drake to a definitive end by dropping “Not Like Us.”
The infectious song was littered with references to unsubstantiated rumors concerning Drake’s affinity for women who have not reached the legal age of consent, with Lamar saying “I heard you like ’em young,” branding him as a “certified pedophile,” and capping off a verse with the “A MINOOOOOOOOR” line that really drove the nail in the coffin.
Drake pushed back against the allegations in the essentially forgotten track he put out in response, but the damage was done for a man who did too little too late. “Not Like Us” broke a number of streaming records Drake had previously set en route to debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and Kendrick took a victory lap when he played it five times in a row at the concert he held in Inglewood a few months before he revealed he’d been tapped as the halftime performer at the Super Bowl.
Drake’s handling of the entire situation has left a lot to be desired, and he made yet another questionable decision on Monday with a pre-action filing (the precursor to an official lawsuit) accusing Lamar’s label, Universal Music Group, of using bots and illegal payola to boost the popularity of “Not Like Us.” However, he didn’t stop there, as Billboard reports there’s a second filing where Drake goes after the label for ignoring the defamatory lyrics “falsely accusing him of being a sex offender” while asserting they should have prevented the song from being released or forced Kendrick to edit those lines before it was.
