Drake v UMG appeal over 'Not Like Us' set for December hearing
Drake's legal fight with Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us will reach open court on 4 December.
Lawyers for Drake and UMG Recordings are due before a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the federal appeals court covering New York. The date was fixed in a scheduling notice entered on 18 September, Music Business Worldwide reported.
The appeal is docketed as Graham v. UMG Recordings, Inc., No. 25-2758. Drake, born Aubrey Drake Graham, sued UMG in January 2025 over the release and promotion of Lamar's track Not Like Us.
The song itself is not on trial. The case asks whether UMG can be held liable for putting out and pushing a diss track that Drake says defamed him.
Judge Jeannette Vargas of the Southern District of New York dismissed all of Drake's claims on 9 October 2025. She concluded that the allegedly defamatory statements in the song were nonactionable opinion, meaning views and insults that the law treats as protected expression rather than checkable statements of fact that can support a defamation claim.
Drake appealed. He filed a 117-page opening brief at the Second Circuit on 21 January 2026, laying out why he says the dismissal was wrong.
On the same day, he filed a separate request to certify a question of New York state law to the New York Court of Appeals. Certification is a procedure where a federal court asks a state's top court to answer an unsettled point of that state's law. That request was referred to the merits panel on 27 January 2026, to be decided alongside the appeal itself.
UMG answered with an 83-page response brief in late March 2026, according to the case history. Two outside filings supporting UMG followed on 3 April 2026. An amicus brief, a filing by a non-party offering its view to the court, came from the Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression. A second came from legal scholars represented by the UCI Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic.
For listeners, this means the next step is argument, not a verdict. The judges will question both sides on 4 December before issuing a written decision later.
The district-court case underneath the appeal was listed as No. 1:25-cv-00399 in the Southern District of New York, CourtListener records show.
