Kendrick Lamar in early May, 2024 released the song “Not Like Us” in which he delivered the final blows in a rap battle with Drake. While Drake released another, poorly received, track in response, “Not Like Us” signified Kendrick’s definitive victory in the contest. “Not Like Us” was one the biggest songs of 2024 and was in the Billboard Top 25 as recently as this week. After months of hearing the diss track everywhere and all the time, Drake in November decided to take legal action against Spotify, iHeart Radio and Universal Music Group (UMG) for helping to promote “defamatory” material. Last week Drake withdrew the November petition and filed a defamation lawsuit against UMG for promoting “Not Like Us”.

Most of the lawsuit (full text here) is baseless claims premised on misreadings of “Not Like Us”. For example, the specific claims of being a pedophile and sex predator are levelled at one of Drake’s untalented hangers-on, Baka Not Nice. The initial claim that Drake “like[s] them young” is punctuated with “make sure you hide your little sister from him”, a dig at Drake dating Latto’s 22-year-old little sister.

Comedian Josh Johnson provides a good breakdown of potentially legitimate elements of Drake’s lawsuit and how UMG has an actual financial interest in damaging Drake’s image to negotiate terms for their next contract for his distribution rights. So, while it’s true that Drake is suing because Kendrick read him down to the cellular level, there is a nugget of truth to Drake’s claim that UMG has a vested interest in diminishing his negotiating power.

Much of the lawsuit has been dissected already for the general nonsense that it is, for how responding to a rap battle with a lawsuit goes against the spirit of the form, and how this is Drake taking the shovel from those who would bury him to do the task himself. But there is one small element to the lawsuit as yet not much covered.

In paragraph 62 of the lawsuit (page 24), Drake claims the following: “Furthering the Recording’s refrain that Drake is ‘not like us,’ the Recording alludes to Drake’s Jewish heritage, saying that Drake is ‘not a colleague’ but ‘a fuckin’ colonizer.’” The verses leading to the line, “No, you not a colleague you a fucking colonizer” are about how Drake has created extractive relationships with hip hop artists from Atlanta to improve his career and how he adopted elements of their posture as his own. The lawsuit’s claim is a deliberate misreading of these lyrics. The only reference Kendrick Lamar makes to Drake’s religion at all is in “Meet the Grahams” where he says to Drake, “You lied about religious views.” It’s not clear in that line whether Kendrick is saying Drake lied about being Jewish or lied about being Christian since he doesn’t appear to practice either religion despite being a bar mitzvah. Further, the last line on “Meet the Grahams” reorients all the prior verses as Drake being in a “long life battle with yourself,” rendering Drake’s lies about his religious views being part of self-deception rather than a public facing issue, though that distinction may be lost by parasocial fans invested in either Drake or Kendrick winning the battle. But there is nothing in Kendrick’s lyrics anywhere to link Drake’s actions as “a fuckin colonizer” to Drake being Jewish.

It’s a weird connection to make at all. Being a colonizer doesn’t make you Jewish. And being Jewish doesn’t make you a colonizer. There is no connection in either direction. The only people who make an inherent link between colonialism and Judaism or Jews are Zionists. Zionists, whether Christian, Jewish or other, insist that colonizing Palestine is something Jews should do, something Jewish. Otherwise various Jewish populations are as likely to be, generally speaking, victims of colonialism – as in Algeria, Ethiopia and Iraq – as they are, again generally speaking, beneficiaries of colonialism – as in the US, Australia and Argentina. Or to simultaneously be both a victim of and beneficiary of colonialism as with Arab and Ethiopian Jews in Israel who both enforce the dispossession of Palestinians and Palestine while being targeted by Israel’s white supremacist society.

Rather than sue UMG because he lost a game of rhyming dozens, Drake might visit a 2002 song by another Jewish rapper, MC Paul Barman, “Old Paul”. Kendrick’s verse calling Drake a colonizer goes as follows:

The settlers was using town folk to make them richer

Fast-forward, 2024, you got the same agenda

You run to Atlanta when you need a check balance

Let me break it down for you, this the real n**** challenge

You called Future when you didn’t see the club (ay, what?)

Lil Baby helped you get your lingo up (what?)

21 gave you false street cred

Thug made you feel like you a slime in your head (ay, what?)

Quavo said you can be from Northside (what?)

2 Chainz say you good, but he lied

You run to Atlanta when you need a few dollars

No, you not a colleague, you a fuckin’ colonizer

MC Paul Barman investigated just this thing on “Old Paul”.

People repping clones accused me of using rap as a stepping stone

I thought about this crap when I was schlepping home

Is it ‘cause I go for the laugh?

Because I’m not from the Ave?

Because I target the fans that you wish you didn’t have?

Had I made a mockery of a culture like the Choco Taco?

Was I to rap as France was to Morocco?

Kendrick is very clearly saying that Drake is to Atlanta as France was to Morocco (or Morocco is to Western Sahara). Kendrick is very clearly saying Drake is using Atlanta rappers as a stepping stone. Kendrick is very clearly saying that Drake is not from the ave. There is no ambiguity to these points. Drake’s lawsuit tries to connect the description of being a colonizer with unhinged comments by anonymous anti-semites on social media. Which is to say that Drake is blaming Kendrick for random internet anti-semites decoding Kendrick’s lyrics in an anti-semitic way. Josh Johnson pointed out that UMG indeed had an interest in reducing Drake’s bargaining power in upcoming rights negotiations. But that doesn’t mean that the content of Drake’s lawsuit isn’t complete bullshit. It is. And Drake is making a bad faith accusation of anti-semitism in his filing. Bad faith accusations don’t help fight anti-semitism. As when they are levelled against Palestinian liberation fighters and organizers, all they do is create an environment hostile to expression.