Drake‘s attorneys filed their reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on April 17, pushing back on UMG Recordings and a separate group of academics who sided with the label, and arguing the lower court made errors serious enough to require the case be sent back.

As previously reported by miixtapechiick.com, a federal judge dismissed Drake’s defamation lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar‘s “Not Like Us,” and UMG filed its response brief in March asking the Second Circuit to let that ruling stand. Drake’s team, represented by Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, says the judge went well outside what the rules allow at the dismissal stage, pulling in outside materials, making factual findings, and drawing conclusions against Drake — all without giving him any chance to respond.

The central argument is about who the court imagined was listening. Drake’s team says the judge didn’t ask how an average listener would understand “Not Like Us.” Instead, the ruling assumed the listener was someone steeped in the full history of the Drake-Lamar feud, familiar with every track exchanged, and already reading the song through that lens. His attorneys say those two audiences are not interchangeable. The reply points out that the second-most-streamed song from the feud had roughly 4.1% of “Not Like Us”‘s total views, which means the vast majority of people who heard the recording hadn’t heard the other songs the ruling relied on for context. Under that math, the brief argues, the court effectively declared 95% of actual listeners unreasonable.

A track called “Taylor Made Freestyle” is where Drake’s team says the lower court’s approach fell apart most clearly. That song wasn’t mentioned anywhere in Drake’s complaint, was only available online for about a week, and doesn’t feature Drake’s own voice — yet the judge cited it as something a reasonable listener would have used to frame the pedophile accusations in “Not Like Us.” Getting there required the court to go outside the complaint and read things in UMG’s favor, both of which are procedurally improper at the dismissal stage. Drake’s attorneys say if the judge wanted to rely on that material, the rules required converting the case to summary judgment first, which would have given Drake the opportunity to present evidence in response. They say that evidence would have included the actual source of the “young girls” line — a 2023 episode of the Joe Budden Podcast that was criticizing Drake for dating women the host considered too young for him, not for any interest in minors.

The reply also takes issue with what the lower court ignored. Drake’s complaint described the cultural moment the song landed in, a period when several high-profile men in entertainment had faced serious criminal and civil consequences for child sex abuse and exploitation. His team argues that context made the pedophile accusations in “Not Like Us” land differently than typical diss track hyperbole, and that real-world reactions — including threats against Drake and an attempted shooting at his home — proved that listeners took the claims seriously. The brief argues the court drew inferences against Drake from disputed outside material while disregarding well-pleaded facts already in the complaint.

On the question of whether the song reached new audiences after its initial release, Drake’s team argues UMG’s position has no legal support. UMG had argued that because the song was already widely known when it was performed at the Super Bowl halftime show, the feud context followed it into that room automatically. Drake’s reply says that’s not how republication works. The complaint described an audience at the Super Bowl that included people who had never heard the song before, and his attorneys argue that performance has to be evaluated on its own terms. They also note that UMG’s own standard recording contract includes a clause allowing the label to remove content it determines constitutes defamation or libel, which his team frames as evidence that the label’s current argument is inconsistent with how it actually operates.

A group of social scientists and legal scholars filed their own brief on April 15 backing UMG’s position, arguing that diss tracks are a well-established format rooted in African American oral tradition, built on exaggeration and competitive insult rather than factual claims. That brief, filed through the UCI Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic at the University of California, Irvine, also argued that treating rap lyrics as factual statements in court opens the door to racial bias, citing decades of research showing that exposure to rap evidence produces racially skewed judgments against Black defendants. Drake’s reply addresses it directly, calling their argument that he effectively consented to the pedophile accusations by releasing his own diss tracks “imaginative,” noting that UMG never actually raised that argument itself and that it wouldn’t apply under the law regardless.

UMG filed its oral argument request on April 10, asking the Second Circuit to allow live argument in the case. No date has been scheduled.