Drake & 21 Savage Settle With Condé Nast Over Fake Vogue Cover

To promote their collaborative album Her Loss last year, Drake and 21 Savage staged fake media appearances such as visits to SNL and Howard Stern and a COLORS performance. One of those counterfeit promo ops was a fabricated Vogue cover, which got the rappers into legal trouble. Vogue’s parent company Condé Nast sued Drake and 21 less than a week after the album’s release, and two days later a judge ordered the duo to stop “misleading consumers” and “deceiving the public” by “using, displaying, dissenting or distributing.”

Now, as Semafor reports, Drake and 21 have settled with Condé for an undisclosed sum. The company initially asked for $4 million. According to an internal memo from Condé Nast general counsel Will Bowes, the company received a settlement that will “bolster our ongoing creative output, including Vogue editorial.” I guess in this case it was actually their loss.

“As a creative company, we of course understand our brands may from time to time be referenced in other creative works,” Bowes wrote in the memo. “In this instance, however, it was clear to us that Drake and 21 Savage leveraged Vogue’s reputation for their own commercial purposes and, in the process, confused audiences who trust Vogue as the authoritative voice on fashion and culture.”