Drake says Universal inflated popularity of Kendrick Lamar diss track

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Drake alleged in a court filing Monday that Universal Music Group falsely pumped up the popularity on Spotify and other streaming services of Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us, a song that viciously attacked Drake amid a bitter feud between the two hip-hop superstars.

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The petition in a New York court by the Toronto rapper’s company Frozen Moments LLC demands the preservation and divulgence of information that might be evidence in a potential lawsuit against UMG, which is the distributor for the record labels of both Drake and Lamar.

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In allegations that UMG calls “offensive and untrue,” the filing says the record company “launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves with a song, ‘Not Like Us,’ in order to make that song go viral, including by using ‘bots’ and pay-to-play agreements.” It said the company and Spotify “have a long-standing, symbiotic business relationship” and alleges that UMG offered special licensing rates to Spotify for the song.

The petition also says UMG has fired employees seen as loyal to Drake “in an apparent effort to conceal its schemes.”

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 untrue. We employ the highest ethical practices in our marketing and promotional campaigns. No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear.”

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Not Like Us, the wildly popular Lamar single released in May as part of a flurry of duelling tracks by the two artists, includes the lyrics, “Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young, You better not ever go to cell block one.” It has gotten more than 900 million plays, according to figures listed on Spotify.

Spotify representatives declined immediate comment, but in a statement on a previous case, the company said it “invests heavily in automated and manual reviews to prevent, detect, and mitigate the impact of artificial streaming on our platform,” and in broader public statements has said it has gone to great lengths to mitigate the effects of bad actors on streaming numbers and royalties.

The feud between Drake, a 38-year-old rapper and singer who has won five Grammys and earlier this year became the first artist to top 100 billion streams on Spotify, and Lamar, a 37-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner who is set to headline the next Super Bowl halftime, is among the biggest in hip-hop in recent years, with two of the genre’s biggest stars at its centre.

The two were occasional collaborators more than a decade ago, but Lamar began taking public jabs at Drake starting in 2013. The fight escalated steeply earlier this year. The move to court, while not yet a lawsuit, still represents a major escalation of the feud and involves some of the biggest business partners of both men.

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