New York, New York - Rapper Drake on Wednesday filed suit against his own label, saying Universal Music Group's release and promotion of a Kendrick Lamar track dissing him amounted to defamation and harassment.

UMG is behind both Drake and Lamar, two superstar rappers who last year exchanged a litany of increasingly vitriolic diss tracks.

Lamar's chart-topping Grammy-nominated song Not Like Us was the major blow in the war of words, and Drake said its punchlines accusing him of pedophilia saw Universal betray him in favor of profits.

In the suit filed in Manhattan's federal court and seen by AFP, Drake says Universal "approved, published, and launched a campaign to create a viral hit out of a rap track" that was "intended to convey the specific, unmistakable, and false factual allegation that Drake is a criminal pedophile, and to suggest that the public should resort to vigilante justice in response."

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In releasing and promoting Not Like Us, the 38-year-old Canadian artist born Aubrey Drake Graham says the record company chose "corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists."

The lawsuit cited the track's promotion as causing a "physical threat to Drake's safety" as well as a "bombardment of online harassment."

It cited a pre-dawn shooting last May that saw a gunman shoot and wound a security guard at the superstar rapper's estate in Toronto, and described subsequent break-in attempts.

"These events were not coincidental," the suit says, before detailing the defamation allegations.

Drake – the reigning highest-grossing rapper – is not taking legal action against Lamar, and he is not suing over the lyrics themselves.

"This lawsuit is not about the artist who created Not Like Us," read the court documents. "It is, instead, entirely about UMG, the music company that decided to publish, promote, exploit, and monetize allegations that it understood were not only false, but dangerous."

The filing says Universal did so by promoting the song, but also the album image – which Drake says features his actual house – and music video associated with the track.