On Tuesday, Drake filed a lawsuit against a woman who he claims faked a “baby scam” and falsely accused him of raping her in order to extort money from him.
Drake—a.k.a. Aubrey Graham—filed the suit at the Superior Court of California against Laquana Morris, an Instagram model and adult film actress who goes by the name Layla Lace. According to People, Drake is seeking unspecified damages for civil extortion, fraud, defamation, abuse of process and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The suit details Drake’s relationship with Morris—which he says began consensually. He admitted to having sex with Morris in February 2017 in Manchester, England; the suit says the entire encounter was consensual and that the 31-year-old rapper wore protection.
But things soured not long after. (Buckle up, because this story as outlined by Drake’s lawsuit is a lot.)
From Rolling Stone:
During Drake’s 2017 European tour, Morris claimed she unsolicitedly booked a $1,600 flight to London after the rapper canceled a tour date there due to illness. “If ima be there when it’s time to have fun, i should definitely be there when he’s sick as well,” she allegedly texted a mutual friend. The suit claims Morris turned angry when no one responded to her booking of the flight, after which she canceled her flight and Drake ceased communication with her.
That’s when things escalated, the suit claims. In a now-deleted Instagram post from April 2017, People reports Morris wrote:
“So I guess still in this era this is the new thing that after you tell a dude you pregnant they stop answering they phone,” adding, “I feel so stupid … I never told this man ‘No.’ I did everything he told me to do … ((NEVER)) asked him for a dime … But don’t worry ima make sure I make a field day out of your fucking ass.”
That same month, Morris went on SiriusXM’s Shade 45 and told host Jazzy Belle that she was pregnant with Drake’s baby.
“I know who I sleep with unprotected, period. So it’s 100 percent sure. He knows it,” she said.
Morris then lawyered up, with her legal team reaching out to Drake to demand money for Lace’s alleged baby. The pair’s legal teams went back and forth in May, with talks ending when Drake’s lawyers pushed Lace to take a paternity test. She refused, according to the lawsuit, which casts doubt over whether there was a pregnancy to begin with.
“There is no credible evidence of pregnancy, nor any baby, which would have been born last Fall,” the suit reads.
After Morris refused to take a paternity test, she alleged that Drake raped her, the suit claims. According to Rolling Stone, Morris told her civil lawyer that Drake raped her, forced to perform oral sex and falsely imprisoned her in Drake’s hotel room. She filed a police report with Manchester police.
Manchester police cleared Drake of the claims, the lawsuit says, but alleges that Morris continued to demand money from Drake and threaten to go public with her allegations—forcing him to take legal action.
“It would have been easy for Drake to pay for silence,” the lawsuit says. “However, Drake does not want to take the easy way out. Layla and her attorneys underestimated Drake’s steadfast resolve not to pay hush money to avoid negative publicity arising from fabricated claims. He looks forward to holding Layla and those working in concert with her responsible for egregious misconduct.”
Morris has yet to speak to the press about the lawsuit.