Drake just got schooled by some of the country’s top legal minds, and they’re all backing UMG in his defamation fight over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”
Two amicus briefs filed Friday in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals argue that could completely tank his appeal, and the scholars aren’t holding back on the logic here.
The Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression at Yale Law School filed the first brief, and they’re leading with a consent defense that Drake probably didn’t see coming.
Their argument is simple but devastating: Drake literally invited Kendrick to respond with a diss track, so he can’t now claim he’s a victim of defamation.
In his “Taylor Made Freestyle” from April 2024, Drake specifically encouraged Kendrick to “talk about him likin’ young girls,” and when Kendrick responded with “Not Like Us” days later, Drake even acknowledged it in “The Heart Part 6” by saying, “This Epstein angle was the s### I expected.”
The brief compares it to a boxer challenging a champion, getting knocked out, and then suing for battery. Consent is an absolute defense under New York law, and Drake basically handed Kendrick the blueprint.
The second brief, filed by social scientists and legal scholars from Howard University, Tulane, Virginia Tech, and other institutions, takes a different angle but lands just as hard.
They’re arguing that rap diss tracks aren’t factual statements; they’re art.
The scholars point out that Drake himself previously supported a “Protect Black Art” campaign, criticizing prosecutors for treating rap lyrics as literal confessions.
Now he’s doing exactly what he criticized, and the hypocrisy is impossible to ignore.
Research shows that identical lyrics labeled as rap are interpreted as more literal and threatening than the same words in other genres, which introduces racial bias into the courtroom.
Judge Jeannette Vargas already ruled in October 2025 that a reasonable listener understands diss track lyrics as hyperbole and wordplay, not factual claims about someone’s criminal conduct.
Drake’s appeal is looking weaker by the day, and these briefs just made his job significantly harder.
UMG’s own response brief called his arguments “astoundingly hypocritical” and said he’s trying to “turn the law upside down.”
The label noted that Drake felt perfectly comfortable using UMG’s platform to attack Kendrick in equally harsh terms when it benefited him, but now he wants different rules for words directed at him.