Photo Credit: Drake by The Come Up Show / CC by 2.0

Just a day after filing a legal petition in New York against Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” Drake’s company has filed a second claim in Texas court calling out UMG and iHeartRadio. The new filing, made public on Tuesday, claims UMG “funneled payments” to iHeartRadio as part of a “pay-to-play scheme” to promote the song on the radio.

According to Drake’s new filing, the Certified Loverboy alleges UMG knew that Kendrick Lamar’s song “falsely” accused him of being a “certified pedophile,” but chose to release it anyway. He accuses the music company of defamation for not preventing the song’s release and damaging his reputation.

“UMG […] could have refused to release or distribute the song or required the offending material to be edited and/or removed,” wrote Drake’s lawyers. “But UMG chose to do the opposite. UMG designed, financed, and then executed a plan to turn ‘Not Like Us’ into a viral mega-hit with the intent of using the spectacle of harm to Drake and his businesses to drive consumer hysteria and, of course, massive revenues. That plan succeeded, likely beyond UMG’s wildest expectations.”

Notably, neither filing is technically a lawsuit. Both are “pre-action” filings designed to take depositions from key figures at UMG and iHeartRadio to obtain more information that could support Drake’s allegations in a lawsuit. To that end, Drake’s attorneys say they already have enough evidence to pursue “a claim for defamation” against UMG, but they might be able to include claims of civil fraud and racketeering based on what they learn in discovery from the depositions.

“Before it approved the release of the song, UMG knew that the song itself, as well as its accompanying album art and music video, attacked the character of another one of UMG’s most prominent artists, Drake, by falsely accusing him of being a sex offender, engaging in pedophilic acts, harboring sex offenders, and committing other criminal sexual acts,” his lawyers write.

Neither company has immediately returned media requests for comment; Kendrick Lamar is not named in either filing and is not legally accused of any wrongdoing.

But even though neither filing has escalated to the point of a lawsuit, they represent a further rift between Drake and Universal Music, where the rapper has spent his entire music career. Lamar has also spent his career under UMG, and the two artists collaborated years ago before their feud began.

For fans, it also represents how much Lamar succeeded in the ongoing feudas many already considered “Not Like Us” to be the winning blow as the two traded diss tracks. Drake legally admitting in the petitions that “Not Like Us” caused him great harm, fans point out, might constitute the biggest defeat in the history of hip-hop feuds.

Photo Credit: Bluesky