Legal News
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A federal appeals court panel on Friday upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok in a few short months, handing a resounding defeat to the popular social media platform as it fights for its survival in the U.S.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the law, which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January, is constitutional, rebuffing TikTok’s challenge that the statute ran afoul of the First Amendment and unfairly targeted the platform.
“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” said the court’s opinion. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
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TikTok and ByteDance — another plaintiff in the lawsuit — are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first term and whose Justice Department would have to enforce the law, said during the presidential campaign that he is now against a TikTok ban and would work to “save” the social media platform.
The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, culminated a years-long saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China.
The U.S. has said it’s concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.
However, a significant portion of the government’s information in the case has been redacted and hidden from the public as well as the two companies.
TikTok, which sued the government over the law in May, has long denied it could be used by Beijing to spy on or manipulate Americans. Its attorneys have accurately pointed out that the U.S. hasn’t provided evidence to show that the company handed over user data to the Chinese government, or manipulated content for Beijing’s benefit in the U.S. They have also argued the law is predicated on future risks, which the Department of Justice has emphasized pointing in part to unspecified action it claims the two companies have taken in the past due to demands from the Chinese government.
Friday’s ruling came after the appeals court panel heard oral arguments in September.
Some legal experts said at the time that it was challenging to read the tea leaves on how the judges would rule.
In a court hearing that lasted more than two hours, the panel – composed of two Republican and one Democrat appointed judges – appeared to grapple with how TikTok’s foreign ownership affects its rights under the Constitution and how far the government could go to curtail potential influence from abroad on a foreign-owned platform.
The judges pressed Daniel Tenny, a Department of Justice attorney, on the implications the case could have on the First Amendment. But they also expressed some skepticism at TikTok’s arguments, challenging the company’s attorney – Andrew Pincus – on whether any First Amendment rights preclude the government from curtailing a powerful company subject to the laws and influence of a foreign adversary.
In parts of their questions about TikTok’s ownership, the judges cited wartime precedent that allows the U.S. to restrict foreign ownership of broadcast licenses and asked if the arguments presented by TikTok would apply if the U.S. was engaged in war.
To assuage concerns about the company’s owners, TikTok says it has invested more than $2 billion to bolster protections around U.S. user data.
The company also argues the government’s broader concerns could have been resolved in a draft agreement it provided the Biden administration more than two years ago during talks between the two sides. It has blamed the government for walking away from further negotiations on the agreement, which the Justice Department argues is insufficient.
Attorneys for the two companies have claimed it’s impossible to divest the platform commercially and technologically. They also say any sale of TikTok without the coveted algorithm – the platform’s secret sauce that Chinese authorities would likely block under any divesture plan – would turn the U.S. version of TikTok into an island disconnected from other global content.
Still, some investors, including Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire Frank McCourt, have expressed interest in purchasing the platform. Both men said earlier this year that they were launching a consortium to purchase TikTok’s U.S. business.
This week, a spokesperson for McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative, which aims to protect online privacy, said unnamed participants in their bid have made informal commitments of more than $20 billion in capital.
TikTok’s lawsuit was consolidated with a second legal challenge brought by several content creators — for which the company is covering legal costs — as well as a third one filed on behalf of conservative creators who work with a nonprofit called BASED Politics Inc.
If TikTok appeals and the courts continue to uphold the law, it would fall on Trump’s Justice Department to enforce it and punish any potential violations with fines. The penalties would apply to app stores that would be prohibited from offering TikTok, and internet hosting services that would be barred from supporting it.
Village People singer Victor Willis might be threatening to sue news outlets that describe his song “Y.M.C.A” as a “gay anthem,” but legal experts say such lawsuits would likely be a “nonstarter.”
In a social media post on Monday defending President-elect Donald Trump’s use of the iconic disco song at his campaign rallies, Willis also sharply denied that he had intended the track to be aimed at the gay community — calling it a “false assumption” and “completely misguided.”
But he also went a step further than that, warning that next month his team would “start suing each and every news organization” that refers to “Y.M.C.A” as a “gay anthem,” calling such a description “defamatory.”
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“The song is not really a gay anthem other than certain people falsely suggesting that it is,” Willis wrote in the post. “And this must stop because it is damaging to the song.”
Released by the Village People in October 1978, “Y.M.C.A” eventually reached No. 2 on the Hot 100 and was emblematic of the late-1970s disco craze. The buoyant track and its trademark alphabetic dance have become one of music’s enduring phenomenons, blasted for years at sporting events, wedding dance floors and, of late, Trump rallies.
According to The Financial Times, the song has been “widely interpreted as a gay anthem” for years: “This is no great stretch for a song encouraging ‘young men’ to ‘find many ways to have a good time,’” the outlet wrote. Beyond the lyrics, the band’s 1977 debut album made clear references to gay cultural touchstones, and the music video for “Y.M.C.A” was itself filmed in front of the famed New York City gay bar The Ramrod.
“‘Y.M.C.A.’ was more than a hit record,” reads a 2021 article released by the Library of Congress. “It was a cultural milestone: a world anthem built on, for, and about gay life and sensibilities that was, nevertheless, fully embraced by mainstream audiences.”
In an oral history of the song released by Spin in 2008, members of the band argued over whether such interpretations had been behind design — with Randy Jones (the cowboy) saying it was “not intended as a gay anthem” but David Hodo (the construction worker) saying that it “certainly has a gay origin.”
Willis has long denied any such connotation to his lyrics, saying in 2017 that “it was not written to be a gay song because of the simple fact I’m not gay.” And this isn’t the first time he’s threatened to sue to prove it: In 2020, amid a similar dustup over Trump, Willis warned that he would “sue the next newspaper that falsely claim my lyrics are somehow about gay sex.” It does not appear that any case was ever filed.
With such threats now resurfaced, it’s fair to ask: Can Willis really sue news outlets over something like this? Sure — this is America, and anybody can file a lawsuit over just about anything. But top attorneys who specialize in media law say that if he does so, such claims would face serious obstacles in court.
“Mr. Willis’ threatened libel claim would be a nonstarter for numerous reasons,” says Adam I. Rich, a music and free speech attorney at the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine.
“The Media Was Put On Notice To Cut It Out”
In his Facebook post — which has an all-caps header that says the song is “NOT REALLY A GAY ANTHEM” — Willis isn’t entirely clear on exactly what he plans to sue about, or how he plans to do it.
At times, he seems fixated on the “gay anthem” label itself, saying he and his wife will sue any outlet that “falsely refers” to the song as such. At other points, he appears more concerned about the perceived meaning of his lyrics, denying that he wrote the song as a “a message to gay people” and complaining that the lyrics have been misconstrued as references to gay sex or “illicit activity” at YMCAs. Confusingly, however, he also says, “I don’t mind that gays think of the song as their anthem.”
To understand more, Billboard reached out to Karen Willis, Victor’s wife and manager, who will purportedly be filing such lawsuits. In a series of emails, she said that the threatened litigation would target any media outlet that “infers that ‘Y.M.C.A.’ is a gay anthem based on its association with illicit gay activities at the Y,” calling such a statement “defamatory on its face.”
“Victor has a right not to have his lyrics twisted outside of the true meaning of his words, especially in a manner that would bring shame or scorn to him,” she wrote. “This is especially true when he can show that the media was put on notice to cut it out. Stop it.”
Will these lawsuits target any media report that refers to the song as a “gay anthem,” even if it makes no reference to the lyrics and merely cites the song’s well-established place in cultural history? Or will they merely target articles that make direct claims about what Victor intended his lyrics to mean?
Karen Willis wouldn’t exactly say. “I think if they simply said that the song is popular in the gay community, [I] see no liability there,” she wrote. But she also repeatedly argued the only reason the song is considered a “gay anthem” in the first place is a perceived hidden meaning of the lyrics.
“The single basis for the claim that ‘Y.M.C.A.’ is a gay anthem is that the lyrics suggests such,” Willis wrote, before later adding: “If the lyrics are not wrongfully believed to be the source of the gay anthem claim, the song would not be referred to as a gay anthem.”
“Squarely Protected by the First Amendment”
If the plan is to sue for defamation, that means that Willis believes that statements linking his song to the gay community are both factually false and damaging to him. It’s easy to make those accusations in a Facebook post, but actually winning such claims in the American court system is pretty hard, thanks to the U.S. Constitution and its robust protections for free speech.
For starters, to prove such an accusation — also known as libel — Willis would need to show that an offending news outlet had made a statement of fact that’s capable of being proven false, and not merely a statement of opinion that he disagrees with — a form of speech safeguarded by the First Amendment.
While explicit statements about his lyrical intentions might cross a line, experts say that merely describing the song as a “gay anthem” is clearly the kind of broad opinion that’s shielded from defamation litigation. And even if the “anthem” label could be proven false, would Willis actually be able to do so?
“A court would almost certainly find that the label ‘gay anthem’ is nonactionable opinion, squarely protected by the First Amendment,” says Rich, the media lawyer. “And regardless of what Mr. Willis now claims to have meant when he wrote it, he would bear the burden of proving that the song isn’t a gay anthem — that is about as likely as a young man not having a fun time at the YMCA.”
That skeptical view was seconded by Dori Hanswirth, a First Amendment attorney at the law firm Arnold & Porter, who cited the Village People’s “iconic status in the gay community” and the appearance of “a gay landmark in the music video.” In his Facebook post, even Willis admitted that the group’s self-titled debut album, released a year before “Y.M.C.A.,” had been “totally about gay life.”
“Calling ‘Y.M.C.A.’ a gay anthem is an opinion,” Hanswirth says. “To the extent the reference is considered a factual statement rather than an opinion, it is probably true. And truth is a complete defense to any defamation claim.”
Another potential legal roadblock for Willis’ planned lawsuits: Is a connection to the gay community even capable of being legally defamatory? Put another way: Is it really outright damaging if someone says your song was embraced by gay listeners, or that it made allusions to gay culture?
That might have been an easy argument to make in 1978, but after decades of hard-fought progress on LGBTQ+ rights, it’s a harder one to make in 2024. For example, a New York state appeals court issued a ruling in 2021 overturning a decades-old precedent holding that falsely calling someone gay was automatically defamatory, citing a “profound and notable transformation of cultural attitudes.”
“If the songwriter is arguing that it is defamatory to say that he wrote a song that became a gay anthem, I don’t see a basis for a claim there,” Hanswirth says. “It is generally not defamatory to say that someone is gay; thus, it would not be defamatory to say that someone wrote a song that is viewed as a celebration of gay male culture.”
Another, even more basic problem for any lawsuit against media outlets is the fact that Willis is a “public figure” — a status that makes it very hard to win a defamation lawsuit. Under U.S. Supreme Court precedents, he’d need to prove that offending statement (either calling his song a “gay anthem” or claiming a hidden lyrical meaning) was not only factually false, but that the writer knew it was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
That requirement (known as “actual malice”) has long made it extremely challenging for prominent people to sue for libel over anything but the most egregious cases. “That is a very difficult standard to meet,” Rich says. And it’s by design: if not sharply limited, defamation lawsuit could allow government officials, business execs and other powerful people to use the courts to stifle the kind of open exchange of ideas that the First Amendment is supposed to protect.
Of course, none of this is to say that Willis and his wife can’t file lawsuits come January. Everyone is entitled to their day in court, and if he wants to spend the money on lawyers and court fees, he can certainly test out his defamation theories. But experts don’t expect the courts to be sympathetic.
“I think the song has universal popularity and has also become symbolic of gay male culture from the 1970’s. Two things can be true,” Hanswirth says. “Is it a gay anthem? If you think it is, yes.”
In March, Tennessee became the first state to modernize its laws for the age of artificial intelligence. The ELVIS (Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security) Act — which updates the state’s right of publicity and likeness rights to prevent AI companies from creating unauthorized deepfake vocal imitations — represented the culmination of efforts from across the industry, including those of record labels and music publishers. But it was Todd Dupler, Recording Academy vp of advocacy and public policy, who gave the law its distinctly rock’n’roll name.
Coming up with catchy titles for laws is something of an extreme sport in legislative circles — think of the DREAM Act (for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors), or, in music, the CLASSICS (Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society) Act, which became part of the Music Modernization Act. Like these subjects, AI is complicated, so getting positive attention helps. And “in Tennessee, there’s no better way to capture attention than Elvis,” says Dupler, who has worked in the academy’s policy department since 2012 and was promoted to his current position in September 2023.
Dupler’s role in pushing for the Tennessee law is just one prominent example of how the Recording Academy is increasingly taking its lobbying work for music creators beyond Washington, D.C., to various state capitals. “The ELVIS Act became a model that state legislators and members of Congress looked at,” Dupler says. (Sometimes state laws lead to change in D.C.) “Our focus is to be a high-impact organization, to be a thought leader on issues that matter.”
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Right now, AI is the biggest issue of all. “It’s the issue that most of the community feels the most concern about,” Dupler says. It also involves a range of laws, including both federal copyright law (under which the major labels are suing generative AI companies Suno and Udio for using their recordings to train their software) and state law likeness rights (the legality of creating a “Fake Drake” or a similar vocal imitation). That’s why the academy, along with other music rights-holder organizations, is pushing for stronger statutes in statehouses, plus backing the federal NO FAKES (Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe) Act. (The bill, which has been introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, now has widespread support; there will be attempts to attach it to must-pass legislation in the current “lame duck” session before Christmas, but it seems more likely that it will be reintroduced next year.)
By the beginning of this year, AI loomed so large that the House Judiciary Committee had a “field hearing” about it in Los Angeles two days before the 2024 Grammy Awards, where country singer Lainey Wilson and Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. testified. “We wanted to use the spotlight of the show to draw attention to the issue,” Dupler says. “We embraced this idea of protecting human creativity.” The hearing helped raise the visibility of the Tennessee law, which in turn became a model for other bills around the country.
In February, Mason spoke at a House Judiciary Committee field hearing in Los Angeles on artificial intelligence.
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The academy’s other two advocacy priorities are banning the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials and regulating the secondary ticketing market, especially to mandate transparency. Unlike copyright law, which is federal, both of these issues involve a mix of federal and state legislation. The admissibility of lyrics as evidence can be a matter of federal or state law, depending on the charges; ticketing laws have come from statehouses, as well as Washington, D.C.
The academy launched its advocacy division in the late ’90s, and what began as a modest attempt to help shape policy for the digital age has grown into a significant operation that lobbies for creators, often along with the RIAA and the National Music Publishers’ Association, which represent the recording and publishing businesses, respectively. The academy now runs an annual Grammys on the Hill event to recognize artists and legislators (including, this past year, Sheryl Crow and Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Cornyn, R-Texas), and a Music Advocacy Day in which academy members visit the regional offices of national legislators to talk to them about their policy ideas. (This year drew 2,100 members.) In 2024, the academy also organized seven State Capitol Advocacy Days, twice as many as in past years, reflecting the importance of state law to its priorities.
Although the nature of procedural rules for criminal cases isn’t a core issue for the music industry, the academy and other music organizations have pushed to limit the use of lyrics as evidence on free expression grounds. “We engage in issues that affect the music business,” Dupler says, “and members and local chapters bring issues to us.”
In September 2022, California became the first state to limit the use of lyrics as evidence in its Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act, after the practice gained attention in Young Thug’s RICO trial. But bills in other states have stalled, and the federal RAP (Restoring Artistic Protection) Act, which would apply to trials for federal offenses, has yet to pass. “That has to be reintroduced,” Dupler says. “And we’ll continue to focus on both AI and lyrics on a federal level.”
Ticketing — the other big issue for the academy — has become controversial and seems likely to remain so, especially now that Donald Trump’s election has thrown into doubt the future of the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Live Nation. (The new attorney general will decide if and how to continue that case.) The state ticketing bills the academy is lobbying for are simpler and have more to do with requiring secondary sellers to disclose extra charges and refrain from offering tickets they do not yet own. There’s similar federal legislation, known as the Fans First Act in the Senate and the TICKET (Transparency In Charges for Key Events Ticketing) Act. Dupler didn’t come up with that name — but he’s prepared to spread the word once the bill is reintroduced in 2025.
This story appears in the Dec. 7, 2024, issue of Billboard.
The creators of the hit Broadway play Stereophonic have reached a settlement to resolve a copyright lawsuit claiming they stole elements of the show from a memoir about the infamous recording of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
The deal will resolve a case, filed last month by music producer Ken Caillat, that called playwright David Adjmi’s Tony Award-winning show an “unauthorized adaptation” and “willful infringement” of the 2012 book Making Rumours, a memoir detailing his work on the famed album.
In a court filing Tuesday, attorneys for both Caillat and Adjmi said that they had “resolved the dispute in principle as to all claims and defendants, and are working to commit their agreement to writing.” And in a brief order, the judge seemed pleased that the case would not be moving forward.
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“I cannot say I am surprised by this news but it is the wisest resolution for all concerned,” Judge Colleen McMahon wrote. “Feel free to come in and (hopefully) memorialize the settlement [at a hearing later this month].”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed in court filings, and neither side immediately returned requests for comment.
Stereophonic debuted on Broadway last fall, eventually winning five Tony Awards including best play, best direction of a play and best featured actor in a play. Featuring the music of Arcade Fire’s Will Butler, it tells the story of a fictional rock band struggling to record an album in the mid-1970s.
Critics quickly noted the similarities to the difficult process behind Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which featured high tensions and heavy drug usage. A reviewer for the Wall Street Journal said the play was “fictionalizing Fleetwood Mac”; another critic said the play “isn’t literally about Fleetwood Mac, but c’mon.”
In their Oct. 2 lawsuit, Caillat and co-author Steven Stiefel said the hit play “presents a nearly identical story arc as Making Rumours,” told from the same perspective of a sound engineer in a recording studio, about five characters who are “undeniably analogous to the members of Fleetwood Mac.”
“Stereophonic is undoubtedly a play based on plaintiffs’ memoir Making Rumours because substantial similarities exist between the two works, a reality that has been independently confirmed by those familiar with plaintiffs’ book who have also had the opportunity to review the play,” the duo’s lawyers wrote at the time.
If the case had gone to trial, it would have presented tricky legal questions. Under U.S. law, historical events cannot be monopolized under copyrights, and nobody can claim exclusive ownership over the real story behind the making of Rumours. But specific creative elements of how such a story is told can be protected by copyrights, and film, TV and stage producers often license non-fiction books as the basis for their works.
Caillat and Stiefel claimed that Adjmi copied those exact kinds of creative choices when he created his play, saying show depicted not just a historical event but did so “as it is described in Making Rumours.”
Maurene Ryan Comey, a lead prosecutor in the sex trafficking case against Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, has joined the prosecutors’ team in the ongoing case against Sean “Diddy” Combs. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Comey, who also happens to be the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, […]
The music industry’s lawyers were busy this year — from Diddy’s downfall to Live Nation’s antitrust case to Young Thug’s gang charges to novel questions about AI.
An Atlanta jury on Tuesday issued a verdict largely acquitting Young Thug’s two remaining co-defendants in the long-running trial of his alleged YSL gang.
After nearly a year of testimony, jurors found Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick not guilty on any of the slew of charges he was facing. They found Shannon Stillwell guilty on a single charge of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, but not guilty on any others.
The verdict, which will allow both men to walk free on Tuesday, is a major loss for the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, which had accused Kendrick and Stillwell of racketeering, murder, firearms and drug charges – accusations that exceeded those leveled against Thug himself.
After the verdict was read, Judge Paige Reese Whitaker sentenced Stillwell to 10 years in prison but ordered him to serve only two, which were covered by time already served during the long-running trial. The remaining eight years of his sentence will be served on probation, the judge said.
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The verdict came a month after Thug himself escaped the case. After botched testimony from a state’s witness sparked talk of a mistrial, Thug’s attorneys rejected a plea deal with prosecutors and instead opted to simply plead guilty – a gamble that paid off when Whitaker sentenced him to just 15 years probation with no time served in prison.
Combined with Thug’s exit, Tuesday’s verdict marks the end of criminal trial that has captivated the music industry for nearly than two years. Pitting prosecutors in America’s rap capital against one of hip-hop’s biggest stars, the YSL case has raised big questions — about the fairness of the criminal justice system; about violent personas in modern hip-hop; and about prosecutors using rap lyrics as evidence.
Kendrick and Stillwell were two of the more than two dozen men indicted alongside Thug in May 2022. In a sweeping indictment, prosecutors alleged that his “YSL” — nominally a record label standing for “Young Stoner Life” — was also a violent gang called “Young Slime Life” that had wrought “havoc” on the Atlanta area for nearly a decade.
The case, built around Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, claimed that YSL committed murders, carjackings, and many other crimes. Prosecutors said Thug was “King Slime,” operating as a criminal boss amid his rise to fame, but accused Kendrick and Stillwell of some of the most serious crimes — including carrying out the 2015 murder of rival gang leader Donovan Thomas that played a central role in the prosecution’s case.
From the start, the YSL case was beset by delays. Starting in January 2023, it took an unprecedented 10-month process just to pick a jury. After the trial itself got underway in November 2023, prosecutors meandered through a vast list of witnesses that included more than 100 names. Earlier this year, the case was delayed for weeks over a bizarre episode that resulted in the presiding judge being removed from the case.
Days before Thug pleaded guilty, several of his co-defendants either did the same or took plea deals. But Kendrick and Stillwell rejected offers and opted to continue to litigate the case, leading to Tuesday’s verdict.
Thought he trial is over, the YSL case isn’t quite over. Several other defendants were separated from the case early in the proceedings and could face similar trials in the future.
Even by the standards of a litigious business, Drake’s recent legal actions against Universal Music Group and other companies look like odd filings.
On Nov. 25, Drake filed an action accusing UMG and Spotify of acting to “artificially inflate” the popularity of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us”; the next day, he made a similar filing against UMG and iHeartRadio, alleging that UMG’s release of the song could also constitute defamation. The basic idea seems to be that “Not Like Us,” Lamar’s diss track against Drake, became so successful because it was rigged.
“UMG did not rely on chance, or even ordinary business practices,” Drake’s lawyers wrote in the first filing. “It instead launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves.” The filings accuse UMG and its partners of acting in ways that are fraudulent, including using “bots” and payola, but little proof is provided — a “whistleblower,” an “inside source known to petitioner” and an assertion that Drake “learned of at least one UMG employee making payments to an independent radio promoter” who had agreed to pay stations. (The company has said in a statement to Billboard that “the suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue.”)
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These filings aren’t lawsuits, but rather legal attempts to get information that might provide the basis for them. And since Lamar’s success doesn’t really come at the expense of Drake’s — at least any more than any artist becomes popular at the expense of any other — it’s hard not to wonder if Drake is just upset that, with “Not Like Us,” Lamar seems to have won the long-running feud between them. That’s a long story — well-summarized here — but Drake and Lamar basically traded diss tracks for hip-hop fans until Lamar’s scathing “Not Like Us” topped the Billboard Hot 100. Drake is essentially claiming that UMG — for which both rappers record under different labels — cheated on Lamar’s behalf. It was rigged.
Quick: What other famous person does this remind you of? Hints: When he wins, he revels in his success; when he loses, he blames it on unfairness and litigates. Yes, I’m going there: Drake has become Trumpian.
Before Team Drizzy throws bottles of Virginia Black Whiskey by Drake, Drake is a skilled rapper, a compelling performer, and a fantastic Drake — it’s hard to compare him to other artists, both because he doesn’t fit neatly into a genre and because his greatest talent is being Drake. (Drake the artist seems to be an exaggerated version of Drake the person, with the soap operatic conflict amped up and the more mundane parts edited out.)
Both Drake and Trump thrive on success and fandom — their fans root for them because they win and they win because their fans root for them. (Trump the politician seems to be an exaggerated version of Trump the person, with the cultural conflict amped up and the boring parts edited out.) Neither gets a ton of respect from critics, but they are both popular beyond belief, and they love to win and then show off that they did. Drake’s feud with Lamar became so compelling because each was a champion in his own way — Drake the unmatched entertainer, Lamar the iconic old-school lyricist. By scoring a No. 1 single with a diss track, an unusual achievement, Lamar essentially beat Drake at his own game.
Is this why Drake is filing legal actions? Most people file litigation for financial restitution, to get an injunction to stop something, or to win negotiating leverage. In this case, the first would be hard to calculate, the second involves practices that would be hard to prove and the third seems unlikely — why would Drake want out of the UMG deal he signed in 2021, which includes publishing and merchandise rights and was described as “Lebron sized.” The only thing we know about Drake’s motive is that his second filing says he “brings this action for a discrete and specific purpose: to understand whether, and how, UMG funneled payments to iHeartRadio and its radio stations as part of a pay-to-play scheme.” Perhaps, like Trump, he simply can’t imagine the possibility that he would lose a fair fight.
Does Drake have a case? If UMG really had the power to make any song a hit, wouldn’t it do so more frequently? If anyone thinks Drake hasn’t received enough marketing or promotion — and I have yet to meet such a person — it’s worth considering that some Spotify subscribers found the service’s promotion of Scorpion so extensive that they asked for a refund. This, too, has political echoes: If U.S. elections are as unfair as Trump claims, how can he trust the one in November?
Like Trump, Drake loves the one-upmanship drama of competition — but only, apparently, when he wins. Trump ran several campaigns based partly on the politics of insult comedy — his dog-whistle racism was obviously far worse — but he doesn’t like to be on the receiving end of it. (The kind of thin skin that would be a personal fault in most is terrifying in the U.S. president.)
If rappers could pursue defamation claims for diss tracks, much less against the labels that release them, hip-hop never would have made it out of the Bronx. Lamar called Drake a certified pedophile, which is an ugly accusation, and a pun on Drake’s Certified Lover Boy, but not an actual thing; the reason Drake looks bad isn’t because people believe it but because “Not Like Us” is catchier and wittier than his own diss tracks. Drake certainly has the right to ask about music promotion practices — even in a legal filing. If no evidence of this emerges, though, he will need to seek satisfaction the old-fashioned way — by releasing a more compelling single.
A Manhattan federal judge on Wednesday (Nov. 27) again refused to release Sean “Diddy” Combs on bail ahead of his sex trafficking and racketeering trial next year, citing the rapper’s “propensity for violence” and evidence that he poses “a serious risk of witness tampering.”
The star’s lawyers had argued he could be released on a $50 million bond and live under house arrest with “near-total” restrictions, but federal prosecutors had argued that Diddy had been trying to “subvert the integrity” of the case from jail and would continue to do so if released.
In a ruling issued late Wednesday, Judge Arun Subramanian sided with the government, saying that “no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community” if Combs was released ahead of trial.
“There is compelling evidence of Combs’s propensity for violence,” the judge wrote. “There is evidence supporting a serious risk of witness tampering.”
In denying bail, Judge Subramanian cited evidence that Combs had “initiated and had unexplained communication” with a witness who had been called to testify before the grand jury and that he had likely already violated prison rules since he was arrested in September. The judge also cited a legal precedent that said “wealthy defendants” should not be released on bail to “self-funded private jails.”
“Given the nature of the allegations in this case and the information provided by the government, the Court doubts the sufficiency of any conditions that place trust in Combs and individuals in his employ —like a private security detail — to follow those conditions,” Judge Subramanian wrote.
A spokesperson for Combs did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday evening.
Combs was indicted in September, charged with running a sprawling criminal operation aimed at satisfying his need for “sexual gratification.” The case centers on elaborate “freak off” parties in which Combs and others would allegedly ply victims with drugs and then coerce them into having sex, as well as on alleged acts of violence to keep victims silent.
A trial is currently set to start on May 5. If convicted on all of the charges, Combs faces a potential life prison sentence.
At a hearing in September, Judge Andrew L. Carter refused to release Combs on bail, saying that prosecutors had presented “clear and convincing evidence” that he posed a danger to the community. He said “no condition or set of conditions” could guard against the risk of Combs obstructing the investigation or threatening or harming witnesses.
Earlier this month, Combs’ lawyers renewed their request for bail with Judge Subramanian, who took over the case last month after Judge Carter recused himself. They again offered to pay a $50 million bond but with a “far more robust” package of restrictions. They also cited the recent release of former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries after he was arrested on similar sex trafficking charges.
“There is no legal basis for continuing to force Mr. Combs to prepare for trial from jail,” his lawyers wrote in court filings.
The government fired back last week, arguing that Combs would still pose a grave risk of obstruction of justice if released. In doing so, they accused Diddy of trying to tamper with the case from behind bars, including reaching out to witnesses, leaking favorable materials, and orchestrating “social media campaigns” to influence public opinion and taint the jury pool.
“Defendant has continued to engage in a relentless course of obstructive conduct designed to subvert the integrity of these proceedings,” the prosecution wrote in the filing.
The decision means that until trial, Combs will remain in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal prison in Brooklyn often used to house defendants awaiting trial. He will also likely re-launch his appeal of the bail issue to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which has been on hold while he asked Judge Subramanian to reconsider.
Marilyn Manson has dropped his defamation lawsuit against Evan Rachel Wood and agreed to pay her $327,000 in legal fees, according to legal documents obtained by Billboard, officially ending a case that the shock rocker first lodged against his former girlfriend more than two and a half years ago.
Filed in March 2022, the lawsuit accused Wood of conspiring with another woman, Ashley Gore, to falsely portray Manson (real name Brian Warner) as a “rapist and abuser” in the public eye. Both women appeared in the 2022 documentary Phoenix Rising, in which Wood detailed her accusations of sexual abuse against the singer. The lawsuit claimed that both women “secretly recruited, coordinated, and pressured prospective accusers to emerge simultaneously with allegations of rape and abuse against Manson, and brazenly claim that it took 10 or more years to ‘realize’ their consensual relationships with Warner were supposedly abusive.”
But Manson’s lawsuit suffered a major blow in May 2023 after a judge largely sided with Wood in her move to have it thrown out by invoking California’s anti-SLAPP statute, which makes it easier for judges to dismiss cases that threaten free speech. In that ruling, the judge struck down much of Manson’s case after finding that the rocker had not shown he would ultimately be able to prove many of his accusations against Wood. Manson had appealed that decision this past August.
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“Marilyn Manson — whose real name is Brian Warner — filed a lawsuit against Ms. Wood as a publicity stunt to try to undermine the credibility of his many accusers and revive his faltering career,” Wood’s lawyer Michael J. Kump said in a statement sent to Billboard. “But his attempt to silence and intimidate Ms. Wood failed. As the trial court correctly found, Warner’s claims were meritless. Warner’s decision to finally abandon his lawsuit and pay Ms. Wood her full fee award of almost $327,000 only confirms as much.”
In his own statement, Manson’s attorney Howard King said, “After 4 years of fighting a battle where he was able to tell the truth, Brian is pleased to dismiss his still-pending claims and appeal in order to close the door on this chapter of his life.”
The public battle between Manson and Wood kicked off in February 2021, when Wood claimed in an Instagram post that Manson “started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years.” In addition to Wood’s accusations, Manson has been hit with multiple sexual misconduct lawsuits over the last several years from women including former assistant Ashley Walters, model Ashley Morgan Smithline, Game of Thrones actress Esme Bianco and two Jane Doe accusers.
The majority of these cases are no longer active. In May 2022, a judge dismissed Walters’ lawsuit, citing the statute of limitations. Manson subsequently settled with both Bianco and one of the Jane Doe accusers, while Smithline recanted her allegations and claimed that Wood and others had “manipulated” her into bringing them.
Manson has denied all of the allegations against him.