Drake escalates Kendrick’s argument, accusing the record label of firing allies while empowering his rival

In the middle of one ongoing battle royal with hip hop icon Kendrick LamarCanadian rapper Drake is now claiming that their shared record label secretly manipulated the system to artificially inflate his outspoken rival’s latest diss track, in which Lamar accuses the former child star of being a “certified pedophile” while promoting his own music suppressed.

In a sensational court filing obtained by The Independent, drakesays born Aubrey Drake Graham Universal Music Group (UMG) used a network of bots in conjunction with a so-called pay-to-play system to “manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves” with Lamar’s hit song “Not like us“, all to Drake’s detriment.

The filing accuses UMG, which has contracts with both artists, of paying Spotify to recommend “Not Like Us” to users “looking for other, unrelated songs and artists,” and claims the label also did paid Apple have Siri Users are being “intentionally misled” when requesting songs from Drake’s catalog and are instead offering “Not Like Us.” The UMG’s trick, the filing says, “created the false impression that the song was more popular than it actually was.” To make matters even more difficult, Drake says in the filing that UMG attempted to hide its alleged support of Lamar at Drake’s expense “by firing employees associated with Drake or perceived to be loyal to Drake.” “

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According to the filing, it is a petition from Drake and his company Frozen Moments LLC asking the court to order UMG and Spotify to preserve all relevant documents and communications in advance of a pending lawsuit – UMG has so far refused to engage with Drake on this matter, instead pointing the finger at Lamar and instructing Drake to sue Lamar and not UMG.

But a source in Drake’s camp said Monday, shortly after the petition was filed with the New York State Supreme Court, that Drake was upset about UMG’s allegedly shady business practices, not Lamar or his lyrics. (Drake retaliated and called out Lamar with his own marks Compton (The rapper is a domestic abuser and raises doubts about the paternity of his child.) Furthermore, the source shared The IndependentIf Drake can curb misconduct across the industry, the result could help protect other, lesser-known artists from future exploitation.

A UMG spokesman declined to comment. Spotify declined to comment. Lawyers representing Drake declined to comment on the record for this story.

UMG was one of Spotify’s early backers, signing a multi-year global licensing deal with the streaming giant in 2020, Drake’s court filings say. It cites UMG’s financial reporting showing that Spotify had revenue of about $2.3 billion in 2023, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the label’s revenue.

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In May of this year, because streaming was so important to its bottom line, UMG “did not rely on coincidence or even ordinary business practices” to achieve success with Lamar’s latest release, the filing said.

“Instead, it launched a campaign to manipulate and flood the streaming services and airwaves with a song called ‘Not Like Us’ in order to make that song go viral, including through the use of ‘bots’ and pay-to -Play agreements,” the notice said. The filing said UMG charged Spotify 30 percent less than its usual royalty rates in exchange for Spotify passing recommendations for “Not Like Us” to “users searching for other , “Search for unrelated songs and artists.”

“Neither UMG nor Spotify disclosed that Spotify received any compensation in exchange for recommending the song,” the filing says, alleging that such practices violate the Communications Act of 1934.

In June, a “whistleblower” revealed on a podcast that Lamar’s label paid him to create a bot network that would generate 30 million streams on Spotify in the first few days after “Not Like Us” was released on May 3 the submission. The leaker claimed he was promised a cash payment plus a percentage of the songs sold in exchange for his help. The filing states that UMG also paid to quietly “inflate” the number of views on Lamar’s “Not Like Us” video, paid traditional radio stations for additional airplay and claims that the company’s supposedly undercover streaming deals Labels went beyond Spotify.

“Online sources reported that when users asked Siri to play recording artist Aubrey Drake Graham d/b/a Drake’s album ‘Certified Loverboy,’ Siri instead played ‘Not Like Us,’ which contains the lyrics ‘certified pedophile,’ an allegation against Drake,” the filing states.

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UMG, paid additionally social media The filing said the agreement generated nearly 900 million streams on Spotify for “Not Like Us,” a record for the most streams ever in a single day for a hip-hop song and the most-streamed diss track in the history of Spotify. The song was also a big hit on radio and became the best-selling rap song of 2024, the filing said. The motivation behind UMG’s “plans” was entirely financial, according to Drake’s filing. It’s claimed that the colossal success of “Not Like Us” in turn boosted sales of Lamar’s back catalog and made UMG even more money.

Drake’s filing even claims that he “received information that UMG appeared to have taken steps to conceal its dealings, including by firing employees associated with Drake or perceived to be loyal to Drake.”

“Streaming and licensing are a zero-sum game,” the filing concludes. “Every time a song ‘breaks out’ it means another artist isn’t breaking through. UMG’s decision to saturate the music market with “Not Like Us” comes at the expense of its other artists like Drake.”

Last month, nu-metal band Limp Bizkit sued UMGThey claimed the label hadn’t paid them even though their songs had been streamed more than half a billion times.

Drake accuses UMG and Spotify of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), the NY Deceptive Business Act and the NY False Advertising Act.