Drake's long-running legal battle over Kendrick Lamar's Grammy-winning diss track "Not Like Us" remains active, with the rapper's appeal of a dismissed defamation lawsuit still working its way through the federal court system. Notably, Drake never sued Lamar himself — his lawsuit targeted Universal Music Group, the label that distributes music for both artists.
Drake originally filed the lawsuit against UMG in January 2025, roughly eight months after "Not Like Us" was released in May 2024. The complaint alleged UMG "intentionally published and promoted" the song "while knowing that the song's insinuations that he has sexual relations with minors were false and defamatory," despite both artists being signed to Universal-affiliated labels. Drake releases music through Republic Records while Lamar is signed to Interscope, both under the UMG umbrella. The suit also included allegations of harassment and violations of New York's General Business Law, claiming UMG used bots and payola-style tactics to inflate the song's popularity.
On October 9, 2025, U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas dismissed the case in a written opinion describing it as arising from "perhaps the most infamous rap battle in the genre's history." The judge ruled that the diss track "constitutes protected opinion rather than actionable defamation." UMG had argued in its motion to dismiss that Drake "lost a rap battle that he provoked and in which he willingly participated," and the court agreed that the broader context of the feud would not lead a reasonable listener to interpret the song's claims as verifiable fact. Lamar himself was never named as a defendant in the case. Following the ruling, a UMG spokesperson said the company was pleased with the dismissal and looked forward to continuing its work with Drake.
CBS News
Drake's legal team filed a formal Notice of Appeal on October 29, 2025, escalating the fight to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. On January 21, 2026, Drake's attorneys submitted a 117-page appellate brief seeking to overturn the dismissal, arguing that the district court "created a Dangerous Categorical Rule that rap diss tracks can never be actionable" and that "millions of people understood the Recording and Image to convey factual information, causing countless individuals around the globe to believe that Drake was a pedophile."
The song's cultural and commercial footprint has only grown throughout the litigation. "Not Like Us" has accumulated over 1.8 billion streams on Spotify, won Record of the Year at the 2025 Grammys, and was performed before 133.5 million viewers during the 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show.
In the appeal, Drake has claimed the song caused the public to view him "as another Jeffrey Epstein," and by late March 2026, UMG had filed its own response brief pushing back on his positions, with legal observers noting that neither side's filings broke significant new ground. A ruling from the appeals court could take well over a year, meaning the case is likely to remain unresolved well into 2027.