Rapper Drake’s corporate Frozen Moments filed a petition in a New York court docket Monday accusing the streaming provider Spotify and Common Tune Crew of conspiring to inflate the streams of Kendrick Lamar’s hit diss observe “No longer Like Us.”
“No longer Like Us,” the results of Lamar and Drake’s weekslong beef, broke information at the Billboard rap charts, keeping the highest spot all summer time. Frozen Moments, described within the submitting as “an entity wholly owned by means of Drake,” alleges that UMG “introduced a marketing campaign to control and saturate the streaming services and products and airwaves” with “No longer Like Us” by way of bots and pay-for-play agreements.
The submitting alleges the track was once approved to Spotify at a 30% cut price in change for a spice up in suggestions to customers — the observe now has over 900 million streams on Spotify, in keeping with the provider. The petition additionally alleges UMG used bots to power up the streams on “No longer Like Us,” paid radio promoters to extend air play or even paid tech massive Apple to have its voice assistant Siri misdirect customers to Lamar’s hit track.
UMG referred to as the allegations, “offensive and unfaithful.”
“We make use of the very best moral practices in our advertising and promotional campaigns,” UMG stated in a observation. “No quantity of contrived and absurd criminal arguments on this pre-action submission can masks the truth that enthusiasts make a selection the song they need to listen.”
UMG owns each Interscope, Lamar’s label and Republic Data, the place Drake has spent his whole occupation. Drake has discussed UMG CEO Lucian Grainge in lyrics more than one instances through the years, together with 2023’s “Away From House” — rapping “Who the CEO of Common? They wrong, ‘purpose Google announcing Lucian, however that simply does not make sense. Who filling up the piggy financial institution? Who bringing house the bacon?” The road turns out to suggest Drake’s perceived significance to the label as Spotify’s 2d maximum streamed artist at the back of Taylor Swift, whose Large Gadget Data may be dispensed by means of UMG.
In line with the petition, UMG terminated positive workers perceived as being unswerving to Drake all over the inter-label feud with Lamar, and rebuffed his makes an attempt at negotiation, insisting that Drake take it up with Lamar without delay as an alternative of the label.
The petition filed Monday isn’t a lawsuit, however a pre-action movement supposed to collect additional information from UMG and Spotify within the pursuit of a civil declare underneath the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, repeatedly known as RICO.
The criminal motion comes days after Lamar launched “GNX,” his first album for the reason that pork. Lamar references the feud more than one instances at the challenge, together with Snoop Dogg’s posting of considered one of Drake’s diss tracks and Lil Wayne taking offense to Lamar’s headlining of the 2025 Super Bowl Halftime show in New Orleans.
