Defamation Lawyer Says Hip-Hop Stars Could Sue

First, Drake dropped “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle,” two tracks geared towards Lamar.

Their legions of followers impressed the meat and eagerly awaited the responses.

Decrease than 72 hours later, Lamar launched “6:16 in LA,” sparking one different response from Drake (“Family Matters“). It provoked two further jabs from Lamar (“Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us“), which led to a unique rebuttal from Drake (“The Heart Part 6“).

The latter of these songs obtained excruciatingly personal, with every stars dropping into their lyrics extreme — although crucially, unverified — allegations about residence violence, pedophilia, and harboring secret children.

The Diss tracks that rappers use to indicate themselves whereas moreover lyrically decimating their rivals have largely gone out of favor since their heyday throughout the 80s and 90s.

Nevertheless whereas the Drake-Kendrick feud was initially seen as some nice opponents between the two hip-hop heavyweights, the reality that they’ve leveled doubtlessly career-ending accusations at each other has opened up the prospect that their disagreement could switch out of the recording studio and into the courtroom.

There is no such thing as a such factor as a precedent of rappers suing for defamation over the contents of a diss observe

“Has anyone ever filed a defamation lawsuit over a diss observe sooner than?” Matt Ford, a licensed reporter on the New Republic, joked on X earlier this week, seemingly referring to the an increasing number of salacious facet of Drake and Kendrick’s feud.

Whereas the reply isn’t any, that’s to not say it couldn’t happen.

Daliah Saper, a principal lawyer at Saper Law who focuses on defamation circumstances, knowledgeable Enterprise Insider that whereas each of them — notably Drake, given the extreme, repeated accusations of pedophilia from Lamar — might be tempted to get the laws involved to mitigate any reputational damages.

Nonetheless, the licensed benchmarks for a worthwhile defamation swimsuit are extreme for public figures.

“Because of they’re every well-known, then they may have this added heightened pleading commonplace,” Sapar said.

She outlined that, not like personal individuals who solely need to level out that their alleged defamers acted negligently, public figures ought to present that these making defamatory statements in the direction of them acted with “exact malice,” which means they knew their assertion was false or they acted with reckless disregard for the fact.

Saper said the essential factor to any swimsuit is ascertaining “if the listening public — people who hear these songs — construe them to be merely jabs or exact allegations.” The true question is, ‘Do people now suppose Drake is a pedophile?’” she said.

Throughout the days after Lamar launched his back-to-back diss tracks “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us,” a video of the Canadian rapper appearing to fondle a 17-year-old fan onstage has resurfaced online,

On the earlier music, Lamar accused Drake of being a “predator” who retains “intercourse offenders … on a month-to-month allowance” at his doc label, OVO.

Throughout the latter, Lamar outright often called Drake and his entourage pedophiles:”‘ Licensed Lover Boy’? Licensed pedophiles,” he raps in an apparent reference to the singer’s 2021 album.

Saper said: “If he was my client, I may need that extreme dialog: ‘Are you so adamant in regards to the falsity of the statements {{that a}} mere PR advertising marketing campaign or responsive rap is insufficient to mitigate the harm? Or are you at all-time low now and you could’t come once more from this?’”

To date, Drake has chosen to go for the selection of a responsive rap, addressing the criticism head-on in “The Coronary coronary heart Half 6.”

Nonetheless, his safety — that he’s “means too well-known for this shit you merely steered” and would have already been arrested if there was any veracity to the claims — has been obtained as a significantly tone-deaf switch,.

The #MeToo movement has proved that well-known intercourse offenders, resembling Harvey Weinstein, operated in plain sight due to the protection and vitality their fame and success afforded them.

On the comeback observe, Drake moreover addressed Lamar’s declare that he secretly fathered a daughter with one different girl 5 years sooner than the start of his son, Adonis, 6, whom he shares with French artist Sophie Brussaux.

“These that you just’re getting your tales from, they’re all clowns,” Drake raps. “We plotted for each week after which we fed you the information/ A daughter that’s 11 years earlier, I wager he takes it.”

Nonetheless, by admitting that he intentionally handed Lamar fake intel a few secret daughter throughout the hope that his opponent would flip it into fodder for a rap, Saper said Drake might have jeopardized any standing he would have in courtroom docket.

If what Drake raps is true, it “would merely undermine any declare that Lamar acted with reckless disregard for the fact,” she well-known.

Ultimately, it seems unlikely that each rapper will end up suing for defamation over the slur-laden diss tracks. Any reputational damage suffered is survivable compared with the career suicide of being the first rapper to for defamation over the contents of a diss observe.

Definitely, their careers have benefited from this high-profile feud, with every having enjoyable with boosted streams and product sales over the previous few weeks.

“I do suppose it’s giving them each notoriety. They’re already extraordinarily well-known, nevertheless that’s elevating their music to a unique stage,” Saper well-known. “It’s most certainly lastly an unimaginable PR play for every of them.”