Drake alleged in a court filing Monday that Universal Music Group falsely boosted Kendrick Lamar’s popularity on Spotify and other streaming services. not like usa song that brutally attacked Drake amid a bitter feud between the two hip-hop superstars.
The petition filed in a New York court by the rapper’s company Frozen Moments LLC demands the preservation and disclosure of information that could be evidence in a potential lawsuit against UMG, which is the distributor for Drake and Lamar’s record labels.
In allegations that UMG calls “offensive and false,” the document says the record company “launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate streaming services and the airwaves with a song, ‘Not Like Us,’ in order to make that song went viral, including through the use of ‘bots’ and pay-for-play deals.” He said the company and Spotify “have a long-standing symbiotic business relationship” and alleges that UMG offered special licensing fees to Spotify for the song.
The petition also says UMG has fired employees deemed loyal to Drake “in an apparent effort to conceal his plans.”
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Universal Music Group said in a statement in response that the “suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and false. We employ the highest ethical practices in our marketing and promotional campaigns. “No contrived and absurd legal argument in this pre-action presentation can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to listen to.”
not like usLamar’s wildly popular single, released in May as part of a series of dueling songs by the two artists, includes the lyrics: “Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young. You better never go to cell block one.” . It has obtained more than 900 million views, according to figures on Spotify.
Spotify representatives declined to immediately comment, but in a statement about a previous case, the company said it “invests heavily in manual and automated reviews to prevent, detect and mitigate the impact of artificial streaming on our platform,” and in In broader public statements it has said it has done everything it can to mitigate the effects of bad actors on streaming numbers and royalties.
The feud between Drake, a 38-year-old Canadian rapper and singer and five-time Grammy winner, and Lamar, a 37-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner who will headline the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, is among the biggest in hip-hop. hop in recent years, with two of the genre’s biggest stars at the center.
The two were occasional collaborators more than a decade ago, but Lamar began publicly attacking Drake starting in 2013. The feud abruptly escalated earlier this year.
The move to court, while not yet a lawsuit, still represents a major escalation of the dispute and involves some of both men’s biggest business partners.
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