‘Not Like Us’ feud lives on: Drake demands emails, contracts in UMG legal dispute

Drake’s lawyers have requested emails from UMG’s CEO Lucien Grainge and others, including Lamar associate Dave Free in relation to Lamar’s children.

Believe it or not, the legal fracas over Kendrick Lamar’s iconic diss record, “Not Like Us” is on-going. Though the seeds of the active beef between Lamar and Drake started in March 2024, Drake and his lawyers are still in hot pursuit a year and a half later for proof that Universal Music Group (UMG) conspired to inflate the popularity and presence of the record at the expense of their own artist (Drake), by actively promoting a record alleging that Drake was a pedophile. Both artists are under the UMG umbrella. 

According to Billboard, Drake is trying to get his hands on a litany of documents related to Kendrick Lamar as an artist, a human and anything that could tie certain people to the record and its success in the latter half of 2024 when the record was inescapable. Drake’s lawyers claim that UMG has not been very forthcoming during the discovery process, having provided very little of the requested documents, and what has been provided has been useless. On August 12, Drake’s legal team filed several motions to require UMG to provide the requested files, claiming for instance, that though they did  receive a copy of Kendrick Lamar’s recording contract with Interscope, the vast majority of it was redacted “rendering it virtually unreadable and incomprehensible.”

Similarly, Drake is trying to get ahold of email exchanges and text messages from UMG CEO Lucian Grainge, claiming that because of his position of power and authority, he had knowledge of and allowed the plot to defame Drake through the beef—and in particular “Not Like Us”—to happen, in attempt to devalue Drake’s brand and market value amid contract negotiations with UMG. UMG claims that Grainge had “no meaningful involvement” in the back-and-forth, but Drake’s lawyers feel otherwise, claiming that he previously alleged no involvement whatsoever. 

In the Tuesday filings, Drake is also seeking information about the valuation of Kendrick Lamar’s catalog, compensation figures for other label heads, information about whether or not the label has ever declined to promote content or materials deemed defamatory, alleging that when Drake was in a beef with rapper Pusha T (who just released an album as part of his group The Clipse) in 2018, UMG may have cut verses from Pusha’s take-down record, “The Story of Adidon,” because they were too offensive. 

Curiously, Drake is also seeking records related to any potential allegations of domestic violence, any violence really, against Kendrick Lamar and information about Lamar associate Dave Free’s relationship to both Lamar and Lamar’s kids. While Drake is concerned that Lamar referred to him as a “certified pedophile” in “Not Like Us,” Drake claimed via the record “Family Matters” that Dave Free is the actual father to one of Lamar’s children and also claimed that Kendrick committed domestic violence against his fiancée, Whitney Alford. 

In March, UMG sought to have the case dismissed, claiming that Drake lost a rap battle that he had a hand in starting and willingly participated in, pointing out that Drake is no stranger to rap beefs or understanding, essentially, how they work.