Drake's Legal Team Mentions Super Bowl Viewership in Latest Filing

Earlier this week it was reported that Drake was willing to drop key elements from his defamation of character lawsuit against Universal Music Group, for distributing Kendrick Lamar's scathing Drake diss track "Not Like Us [click here if you missed that]."  

In his legal response Drake denies altering his lawsuit in any meaningful way and references the 133.5 million viewers who tuned in for Kendrick's performance of the diss track during his Super Bowl halftime show... 

From HipHopX

In a letter to Judge Antonio Vargas filed on Monday (February 24), Drake’s attorney Michael J. Gottlieb responds to UMG’s recent claim that his side was getting ready to drop “key allegations” in their suit against the music giant.

Gottlieb hits back, saying that UMG is concerned about only a “single factual allegation” — one that, even if Drake adjusted the lawsuit to deal with the company’s concerns, would result in very minimal changes.

All of this back-and-forth has to do with a pre-trial conference scheduled for April 2 that UMG wants to delay, so that Judge Vargas can have time to consider Universal’s motion to dismiss the case entirely — a motion they have to file by March 17.

Gottlieb, on the other hand, wants the conference to happen as scheduled. He also wants UMG to begin the process of turning over evidence related to the case, known as discovery — something the company has so far resisted, as they said in a letter filed Friday (February 21) that discovery was “premature” given the state of the case.

Gottlieb argues against delaying discovery in his letter to Judge Vargas, citing Kendrick’s Super Bowl performance as an example of the harm that comes with waiting.

“[D]elaying discovery would unfairly prejudice [Drake], who is continuing to suffer the consequences of UMG’s defamatory campaign,” he writes. “Indeed, at the same time UMG has been delaying here, UMG launched new campaigns to further spread the defamatory content [“Not Like Us”], including at the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show, which had over 133.5 million viewers.”