Drake escalates Kendrick beef and accuses record label of firing allies while boosting his rival

The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. UMG’s ploy, the filing argues, created “the false impression that the Song was more popular than it was in reality.” Making matters even stickier, Drake says in the filing that UMG has tried to hide its alleged propping up of Lamar at Drake’s expense “by terminating employees associated with or perceived as having loyalty to Drake.” open image in gallery Kendrick Lamar has been locked in a battle with Drake for years According to the filing — a petition by Drake and his company, Frozen Moments LLC, asking the court to order UMG and Spotify to preserve all relevant documents and communications in advance of a pending lawsuit — UMG has so far “refused to engage” with Drake over the issue, instead pointing the finger at Lamar and telling Drake to sue Lamar, not UMG. open image in gallery Spotify streams are at the center of a legal filing by Drake, who contends his label has shown preference to rival Kendrick Lamar In May of this year, with streaming so important to its bottom line, UMG “did not rely on chance, or even ordinary business practices,” to achieve success with Lamar’s latest release, according to the filing. “It instead launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves with a song, ‘Not Like Us,’ in order to make that song go viral, including by using ‘bots’ and pay-to-play agreements,” the filing states, claiming UMG charged Spotify 30 percent less than its usual licensing rates in exchange for Spotify pushing recommendations for “Not Like Us” to “users who are searching for other unrelated songs and artists.” “Neither UMG nor Spotify disclosed that Spotify had received compensation of any kind in exchange for recommending the Song,” the filing contends, claiming that such practices contravene the Communications Act of 1934. open image in gallery Drake claims his streams have been suppressed beyond Spotify, extending all the way to Siri recomendations UMG, additionally, paid social media influencers to “promote and endorse” Lamar’s song, without either side disclosing the financial arrangement, according to the filing, which says the arrangement generated nearly 900 million streams on Spotify for “Not Like Us,” a record for the most streams ever in a single day for a hip-hop song, and the most-streamed diss track in Spotify history.