Will legal action give Drake the last word in his feud with Kendrick Lamar?

With Kendrick Lamar's surprise release of his brand new album, GNX, and Drake taking legal action against his own label regarding the diss track Not Like Us, it seems that neither rapper is prepared to end their feud that began earlier this year.

But is Lamar's new album strong enough to cement his win in this rap battle, or will Drake's legal action give him a leg up in the eyes of hip-hop's historians?

Today on Commotion, culture critics David Dennis Jr., Matthew Amha and Pablo The Don join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to unpack the latest chapter in modern music's most exciting feud.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, including the panel's review of Kendrick Lamar's new album GNX, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: David, look. Drake has taken some legal action in the last week, and that's a significant thing. He's taken some legal action against some significant players in the music industry. The whole thing is really fascinating because he's taking shots at Universal Music Group and Spotify. Basically, he's accusing these two companies of scheming — that's a direct quote from the legal action — to artificially inflate the popularity of Not Like Us, the Kendrick diss against him. As simply as possible, could you break down the things we know about the allegations he's making?

David: Yeah, so contrary to a lot of belief, these are not actual lawsuits yet. They are just legal actions against Universal, his own label, and Spotify, and all of these conglomerates that basically, they have come together to boost the numbers of Not Like Us using bots, artificial streams, all of these nefarious tactics to boost something that he says, in part of the legal action, is slanderous or libelous about him, there are lies about him. Obviously in Not Like Us, they say "certified pedophile," … and he's saying that they are wrongly boosting a song that has disparaging lies about him, and he wants to do something about it.

Elamin: It's important to also distinguish there are two different legal actions. Number one is that one, the idea of artificially boosting the streams of Not Like Us. For context, Not Like Us has 900 million Spotify plays. That is a preposterous number of plays. Drake is saying, did some of these come from bots? Did the label pay the radio stations to play it more than they otherwise would have? These are some of the questions that he's raising.

Then the second legal action is the one about the line "certified pedophile," because he's saying Universal Music Group still put out the song even though it has this claim against him and that amounts to defamation, or at least like he's sort of raising the question, does that amount to defamation? As far as rap beefs go, what kind of precedent do you think Drake is setting with turning to the legal dimension?

David: This is about as bad a look as you could possibly imagine, because you are in a battle of words and you're suing people for the words that were used in the battle of words — which also, let's remind everybody, Drake said that Kendrick Lamar's best friend is the father of his children, and he beat his wife, right? … These are things that they're saying against each other. Also, the crux of Kendrick's victory is that Drake is an outsider, that Drake is this sort of white-acting guy who is not of the culture, and the most white-acting guy thing that you could do and not the culture, is to go to the po-po during a rap beef. That's essentially what he's doing: he's calling the cops, he's calling the manager. You're being a Karen right now in the middle of a rap beef, which is about as bad of a marketing move or strategic move in the context of beef as you can make.

Elamin: It's not a good look, especially in terms of the ways that we sort of outlined what hip-hop is about. I kind of understand that. We should also say, Universal Music Group has put out a statement being like, Drake's claims are not only untrue, they're also offensive. Pablo, there is something to the dimension of the claims that I think needs to be addressed. Because even though it's not a great look to say, "I'm going to the cops and invoking the RICO Act," which is a very significant act that Drake is trying to say might be at play here, claims of inflated numbers, claims of payola within the music industry — those are not new by any standard. Do you see Drake's claims in particular opening up maybe an even bigger can of worms here?

Pablo: Absolutely…. I do think this opens up a bigger can of worms because the truth of the matter is Drake knows this information because Drake has benefited from the same things. I don't forget 2018 when Scorpion came out and Drake's face was on every single Spotify playlist, regardless of the genre. Baby, you are not making indie music. Your label definitely helped you out getting over there. Spotify wasn't doing this as an in-kind, you know what I mean?

But I do think it does open a bigger can of worms, and I do think it's important that we both give Drake the heat for being the king of bad optics, but also look at UMG, look at Lucian Grainge and be like, Hey, you guys are helping to make this atmosphere of creating music be demonstrably unfair to artists. Even though we've got this pseudo look at a democratized music industry where everybody can upload their own music, the truth of the matter is the labels still control what goes on. The labels and Spotify control where the money goes, so it's not democratized. You've just made us believe that it is democratized. And so I think Drake truly, if you want to be about your action, if you want to redeem yourself, you better be about your words. And when that PartyNextDoor album drops, you better stick with this regardless. You better be on Lucian's case about this, or else you're going to look again like a Karen. You already do, but you're going to look more crazy.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender.