Drake is still flying high above his competition and raking in the Stake partnership cash, but his legal situation continues to be a gamble. You have probably heard a lot about his defamation lawsuit against UMG over the Kendrick Lamar diss track "Not Like Us," which the label and distributor recently motioned to dismiss. In a response filing, Drizzy's attorney Michael J. Gottlieb pointed to alleged instances of payola practices and cover payments, although he did indicate a potentially monumental part of the case. Apparently, they are considering amending parts of the legal complaint, although fans shouldn't interpret this as a white flag.
Instead, Gottlieb suggested in a legal filing that Aubrey Graham probably won't retract his specific UMG accusations. Rather, based on presumptions and the track record so far, this amendment process will probably only change a couple of extra aspects relating to the main target at hand. We already saw an example of this via Drake's dropped iHeartMedia petition that cleared the radio company of any wrongdoing. In addition, it seems like the 6ix God wants to focus on UMG's business and marketing practices rather than any isolated rap beef incident.
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Although this is just purely speculative and we still have a lot of questions, we doubt that a ruling over the supposed defamation in Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us" will fully conclude Drake's crusade against UMG. From what Michael J. Gottlieb hinted at in his response to the music giant, they still have a lot of roads in front of them that they could go down. As such, maybe this legal action ends up being more about UMG than it is about "Not Like Us," which was clear as The Boy's intent from the jump. Of course, that doesn't change the skepticism around throwing a diss track under the bus, especially when many think that he lost the battle.
Regardless, a loss can't stop Drake's commercial appeal, and standout tracks from his new PARTYNEXTDOOR collab album $ome $exy $ongs 4 U are performing very well. We will see in due time exactly how his legal battle might evolve over time, and how it might impact his creative output.
