Drake’s back-to-back legal filings against UMG and others over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” provided fodder for a timely quip from Jalen Rose on Tuesday night’s Inside the NBA.
Rose, a guest panelist for the Lakers and Suns game on TNT that evening, was quick to tuck in a nod to the filings, which arrived within hours of each other at the top of the week. But first, Shaquille O’Neal couldn’t help but launch into a Kendrick-emulating shout of “Mustard!” as the widely memed GNX track “TV Off” played.
“I don’t know if y’all should be playing that Kendrick,” Rose joked. “Y’all don’t wanna get a lawsuit up here.”
From there, Shaq got in a few more “Mustard!” shouts, not to mention a condiments-related hot dog inquiry, before Ernie Johnson chimed in with some playful defiance.
“Lawsuits don’t scare us around here,” he said.
Monday, word broke that Drake had accused UMG of inflating the popularity of Kendrick’s Grammy-nominated “Not Like Us.” This was followed by a second filing that saw his legal team arguing that the corporation had engaged in defamation, though Kendrick is not directly accused of any alleged wrongdoing in either filing, neither of which is a lawsuit and both of which were recently broken down in detail by Shawn Setaro for Complex.
In a statement shared with Complex on Monday, a UMG spokesperson called the claims in the initial filing “offensive and untrue,” asserting that it only utilizes ‘the highest ethical practices” in its business.
“No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear,” the spokesperson said.
