Popular gaming-adjacent streamers together with Kai Cenat And Mark Phillips have been named in musician Drake’s defamation lawsuit in opposition to Universal Music Group (UMG), which accuses the music writer of spreading the “false and malicious” narrative he’s a pedophile through the Kedrick Lamar observe Not Like Us.
The Lamar music is a diss observe, a longtime custom during which rappers pop off on each other till the viewers decides a winner or get bored, and is now most likely the complete cease on a long-running feud between the 2 artists. Drake had accused Lamar of home abuse on considered one of his tracks, earlier than Lamar’s Not Like Us described Drake and his entourage as “licensed paedophiles” who should be “registered.”
Drake’s lawsuit takes goal at UMG and never Lamar himself, and claims that the writer “selected company greed” by attempting to create a “viral hit” out of the music when it knew the accusations in opposition to him have been “not solely false, however harmful.” This is the place the streamers are available.
Towards the tip of the submitting Drake’s attorneys declare that UMG whitelisted Not Like Us from streaming companies, “for the aim of spreading the recording, and its defamatory content material, as broadly as potential and as rapidly as potential” (thanks, Kotaku). It says that is notable as a result of, to Drake’s data, “UMG has a proper ban on whitelisting and had by no means earlier than whitelisted a music on any platform,” however on this case it had a “huge and speedy impact” whereby “content material creators rushed to republish the recording in ‘reaction-videos.'”
The swimsuit then lists examples: Kai Cenat (11.6 million YouTube subs) posted a video which has over 9 million views; Twitch streamer RDC Gaming posted a response with over 4.5 million views; The CartierFamily (1.44 million subs) have 2 million views on a response video; No Life Shaq (4.75 million subs) posted a 14.5-minute response clip with 5.3 million views; and Zias! (4.94 million subs) posted a 15-minute response video which has 6.6 million views.
The attorneys aren’t concentrating on the streamers in query right here: The swimsuit is in opposition to UMG. But it’s naming them and together with their response movies as proof of its claims in opposition to UMG. That distinction is vital however, after all, goes to get subsumed underneath the far more incendiary concept that they are all being sued by Drake.
To be clear they aren’t. But what’s equally clear is that this was solely ever going to encourage extra response movies from the streamers in query, and create huge consideration on Drake’s lawsuit.
“Wait, why am I on this shit,” mentioned Kai Cenat on a January 15 stream, the day the swimsuit was filed. “What the fuck? I’m being sued.” Cenat quickly realises he is not being sued earlier than happening to assert that Drake had instructed him to “keep on stream” when the songs had been launched, laughed on the concept UMG had paid him to advertise Lamar’s observe, after which returned to monetising his response video.
“I ain’t going to lie, chat,” says Cenat. “Both methods ate loopy gang. I ain’t going to lie, bro, I wasn’t even complaining, all my shit is monetized. Imma preserve it a complete stack. How a lot views we’ve bought on that bitch? 9 million? I don’t imagine it! Goddamn! Are we essentially the most considered response? What the fuck!”
No Life Shaq responded by posting a YouTube video titled “DRAKE SNITCHED ON ME!” during which he accuses the rapper repeatedly of being a “snitch” on individuals “having enjoyable”, and calls him “the softest n***a ever, canine.” For his half, Zias responded by calling a lawyer dwell on-stream to speak about launching a counter-suit in opposition to Drake.
RDC Gaming responded on a stream: “One factor I discovered in my life is that this dawg… The largest Ls come from not figuring out the right way to take an L. Some n****s simply gotta take an L and transfer on.”
For its half UMG, which has been Drake’s document label for over a decade, has poured scorn on the star’s claims. “Not solely are these claims unfaithful,” it mentioned in an announcement (thanks, BBC), “however the notion that we’d search to hurt the status of any artist—not to mention Drake—is illogical.”
It goes on to accuse the swimsuit of attempting “to weaponize the authorized course of to silence an artist’s artistic expression” and famous its personal position in serving to Drake “obtain historic industrial and private monetary success.”
This feels one thing just like the Streisand impact for the streaming period: Complaining in courtroom about influencers making response movies is a surefire method of, erm, getting influencers to make extra response movies. The final function of Drake’s lawsuit, some declare, is to flee his contract with UMG: But the impact of bringing it in the way in which he has signifies that the rapper appears to be like like a sore loser in his rap beef and, in the case of citing influencers and their response movies, a little bit of a bully.
