Joe Budden had choice words for Drake after his lawsuit against Universal Music Group was dismissed.
“The Drake news broke about the lawsuit,” Budden said at the beginning of the video linked above. “To me, it’s not that important. I was never one that believed that was going to go a different way … For the people that missed it, yesterday evening somewhere around 6 or 7 o’clock it was finally confirmed. The news broke that Drake’s a bitch.”
The comment prompted laughter from his fellow co-hosts.
“The same shit that I told y’all 11 months ago rang true yesterday at around 6 o’clock. Some tweet was going around that said Drake lost ‘the n***a way’ and ‘the white way.’ That was a good one. And people just started having fun with this,” he continued.
Earlier this month, a judge dismissed Drake’s defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group, ruling that Lamar’s lyrics on “Not Like Us”—such as lines like “Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophile,” constituted “nonactionable opinion” rather than verifiable statements of fact. The judge emphasized that the song was part of a “vitriolic war of words” between the two artists with both trading insults across eight diss tracks.
The judge also ruled that “a reasonable listener could not have concluded that ‘Not Like Us’ was conveying objective facts about Drake.”
In the suit, Drake had also accused UMG of harassment and using deceptive practices, such as bots and payola, to artificially boost the song’s popularity. UMG denied those allegations and said Lamar’s lyrics were protected by free speech. You can read more about the ruling here.
Elsewhere in the podcast, Budden suggested that Universal Music Group’s “punishment” for Drake is imminent.
“The punishment is coming. We have not seen the punishment yet,” he said. “I agree with everything that is said. Like, great, y’all are coming from the ‘Drake is Drake’ angle, but UMG is coming from the ‘we own 65-70% of the market share’ [angle]. We own this shit
“Back in my day, you couldn’t just do shit to the label without fearing the repercussion from the label. You think that he could do all of that to Universal? And Universal [will] just say, “Oh, well, we won. Glad to still have him?’”
Per a statement made through Drake’s spokesperson, the rapper said he intends to appeal the ruling.
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