RDCWorld founder Mark Phillips has offered his reaction to being named in Drake's defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG).
During a recent stream on Twitch, Phillips pulled up a tweet reporting on the lawsuit, in which Drake accused UMG of defamation, harassment, and deceptive business practices surrounding the release of Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us." Phillips, who is named in the lawsuit as an example of a content creator who helped spread "Not Like Us," thinks Drizzy's decision to take legal action is indicative of his refusal to accept his loss in the beef with K Dot.
"One thing I learned in my life is this: The biggest L's come from not knowing how to take an L," he said. "I honestly believe that shit. Some n***as just gotta take an L and move on. Everybody take L's! Everybody! Every single person on this Earth takes L's, so we need to just learn how to take them. But I ain't gonna lie—us in the Black community, me included—when you get an L, bro, it's just like, 'Man, hell no!' You just get mad... But the further you go with not accepting the L, the more L's you will obtain. You are literally building the L's up, and you're making your first L even bigger. That's all I gotta say about that. I've seen that my whole fucking life."
In the lawsuit, Drake's lawyers accused UMG of waiving copyright restrictions on "Not Like Us" to allow content creators to share videos of them reacting to the track without getting copyright strikes.
"UMG removed the Recording's copyright restrictions on YouTube and Twitch, thereby 'whitelisting' the Recording," the lawsuit reads. Later it states, "The whitelisting was done purposely and with the full knowledge of UMG for the purpose of spreading the Recording, and its defamatory content, as broadly and as quickly as possible."
The lawsuit claims that UMG has "a formal ban on whitelisting and had never whitelisted a song on any platform" before. "The effect of whitelisting the Recording was massive and immediate," the lawsuit continues. "Able to play the Recording in full in their own videos and to profit from them, content creators rushed to republish the Recording in 'reaction-videos.'"
Videos from CartierFamily, No Life Shaq, Zias!, Kai Cenat, and RDC World were listed as various examples of such reaction videos. "These content creators could not have legally republished the Defamatory Material in full or profited from their reaction videos without UMG first whitelisting the Recording," the lawsuit alleges. "On information and belief, UMG also paid influencers on Instagram and X to post content about the Defamatory Material for the purpose of spreading the content to larger audiences."
Kai Cenat also shared a reaction to being named in the lawsuit during a recent stream and shot down accusations he was paid by UMG, but confirmed he was allowed to monetize clips of him listening to "Not Like Us."
"I ain't gonna lie, n***as ate that week," he joked.