Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s ongoing feud already had excessive marks for being essentially the most technology-fueled rap beef of all time. Dis tracks on Instagram, lyric breakdowns on podcasts, live shows livestreamed on Amazon Prime Video. This week, although, the position know-how performs within the dustup hit new highs (or lows?) through a pair of court docket filings from Drake, each of them pointing to the significance of streaming music platforms in in style music.
Within the first submitting, a pre-action petition filed Monday in New York, attorneys for Drake’s firm Frozen Moments accused Lamar’s file label Common Music Group (UMG) of utilizing a number of strategies to extend performs on “Not Like Us,” together with allegations that the file firm paid Apple to have Siri direct listeners to the monitor after they requested Licensed Loverboy.
Drake’s legal professionals wrote that “on-line sources reported that when customers requested Siri to play the album Licensed Loverboy by recording artist Aubrey Drake Graham d/b/a Drake, Siri as a substitute performed ‘Not Like Us,’ which comprises the lyric ‘licensed pedophile,’ an allegation in opposition to Drake.” It additionally alleges UMG, which can also be Drake’s label, “paid, or authorized funds to” Apple to have Siri do that.
In a second submitting made in Texas that grew to become public on Tuesday, Drake’s legal professionals accused UMG of defamation, claiming the file label might have halted the discharge of “Not Like Us” or modified it to take away a few of its “false” statements about Drake.
Defamation and Siri-souping are simply a few the claims made within the petitions. Additionally they allege UMG charged Spotify lowered licensing charges in alternate for the streaming service recommending Lamar’s tune to listeners. There are additionally claims UMG used bots to inflate the streaming numbers for “Not Like Us,” which is approaching 1 billion streams on Spotify and was nominated for five Grammys earlier this month.
The primary petition seeks “pre-action disclosure” of any proof UMG or Spotify has concerning these allegations. The second does the identical of UMG and iHeartRadio, the radio firm Drake’s attorneys declare additionally participated in a “pay-to-play scheme” to advertise “Not Like Us.”
All through their beef—which has been escalating since Lamar referred to as out Drake on “Like That” within the spring and appeared all however ended after he dropped “Not Like Us”—each rappers have hurtled haymakers at one another by songs. Allegations concerning home violence, hypocrisy, and authenticity have been par for the course. That’s how hip-hop feuds work. However in a disagreement that acquired as heated as Drake and Lamar’s did, to look at it now come to court docket filings about Spotify streams and Siri strategies feels each lackluster and the epitome of what occurs when rap beefs turn into so intertwined with know-how. Longtime hip-hop followers will at all times have their opinions about who “gained” the meat, however the historic file nonetheless counts chilly, laborious numbers—from Spotify streams to likes on an IG put up.
