Vogue Sues Drake And 21 Savage Over Fake Vogue Cover
Drake and 21 Savage released their collaborative album “Her Loss” on the 4th of November. The rappers have been performing various spoofs at the COLORS Studio and Saturday Night Live to promote their album.
However, the very first spoof that the duo did as part of their promotional campaign was posting a fake Vogue magazine cover. They did not only post the cover on their social media accounts for their 135 million followers to view but also distributed several copies in North America’s largest metropolitan areas.
Drake captioned the 30th October post, “Me and my brother on newsstands tomorrow!! Thanks @voguemagazine and Anna Wintour for the love and support on this historic moment.”
The cover went viral on social media, and several fake posters in New York caught people’s attention. This led to a lot of misunderstanding, as fans and several news platforms believed that the magazine would drop a special edition soon.
The distributed copies of the fake Vogue magazine were reprinted issues of the October edition. The rappers had modified the cover and some pages within, promoting the album. They even had photos of Anna Wintour that were not present in the original issue. One of her pictures even had Drake doctored in.
The publisher of the Vogue Magazine, Condé Nast, has now sued the duo. However, it was not Vogue’s first choice. According to the lawsuit, Nast tried to communicate with both rappers, but they disregarded Condé Nast’s rights. This left the publisher with no other option but to take legal action.
Nast had asked Drake and his team to remove the Instagram post, stop distribution of the fake magazine, and issue a statement stating the truth that Vogue was not involved in any way.
The publisher has now filed a 30-page lawsuit asking for $4 million in damages or triple of what the rappers profit from the album and the counterfeit magazine, whichever is more.
The coat papers state that the promotion campaign for the rapper’s album was “built entirely on the use of the Vogue marks and the premise that Drake and 21 Savage would be featured on the cover of Vogue’s next issue.” It goes on to say, “All of this is false. And none of it has been authorized by Condé Nast.”
The papers further allege that “Anna Wintour did not authorize the use of her image to promote Defendants’ Album.”
The suit also mentions social media posts and news stories written by people who thought the news of the rappers appearing on the cover page of Vogue was real.
While Vogue was not happy with the rapper’s sense of humor, other media outlets took it quite sportingly. Howard Stern himself talked on air about the spoof, where he apparently interviewed the rappers on his SiriusXM radio show.
He said, “He edited himself in to look like he’s in our studio… Drake did such a good job that the news outlets are reporting on it as if it’s real.”
