About this episode
Hey everybody, it's Patrick here, and let me tell you, I am absolutely obsessed with everything happening in the Drake versus Kendrick Lamar universe right now. The drama just keeps evolving and it's incredible.So here's what's going on in the last few days that has my attention. The most recent development is that Drake's defamation lawsuit appeal against Kendrick's "Not Like Us" track has just been delayed, and honestly, this is huge. Both Drake's legal team and Universal Music Group, which is backing Kendrick, have requested to push back all the key deadlines because of the holidays. We're talking about attorneys wanting to spend time with their families. Now originally, Drake was supposed to file his opening brief by December 22nd, but that's been moved all the way to January 21st, 2026. Universal Music Group's response date has shifted from January 26th to March 27th, 2026. What's fascinating here is that Drake's lead counsel, Michael Gottlieb, is juggling multiple high-profile cases at the same time, including Blake Lively's lawsuit against Justin Baldoni. The whole thing really underscores just how massive this case is and how it's bearing on major issues of artistic expression and defamation law for public figures.Now, the original case was dismissed in the Southern District of New York, with Judge Jeanette Vargas ruling that the forum here is a music recording, specifically a rap diss track with accompanying video and album art. She made it clear that diss tracks are much more akin to forums like YouTube and X, which encourage a freewheeling, anything-goes writing style, rather than journalistic reporting. The judge explicitly noted that the lyrics in "Not Like Us" accuse Drake of being a pedophile. Despite this dismissal, Drake has appealed, and now we're just sitting in this holding pattern until the new year.What's wild is how this lawsuit has essentially put the hip-hop community on notice. Industry insiders are seriously questioning whether rappers can even battle each other anymore without legal consequences. Some people in the music world are wondering if future diss tracks will be affected by this precedent.Outside of the courtroom drama, the cultural impact of this feud continues to reverberate. "Not Like Us" has become absolutely massive, topping the charts and garnering five Grammy Awards, including Record and Song of the Year. This is being called the biggest and most profitable beef in rap history by numbers. The song has become a symbol of peak hater status and social media engagement like we've never seen before in hip-hop.The feud itself, which goes back over a decade to 2013, really accelerated in spring 2024 when both rappers started trading bars with shocking allegations. Nothing was off limits—they brought in city pride, physical abuse accusations, sexual abuse allegations, parental absenteeism, you name it. But when "Not Like Us" dropped, it absolutely blew
