Rap Beefs
hip hop beef
diss rap

Feuds and rivalries have existed since the dawn of hip hop, which originated in the 1970s in New York City, United States. Originally, it came to block parties, where DJs would play records and isolate the percussion breaks for the dancing masses. Soon, MCs began speaking over the beats, usually simply exhorting the audience to continue dancing. Eventually, MCs began incorporating more varied and stylistic speech, and focused on introducing themselves, shouting out to friends in the audience, boasting about their own skills, and criticizing their rivals. While this was often done in good humor, the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. have meant that in today’s hip hop scene it is always feared that lyrical rivalries (known as "beefs" in hip hop slang) will develop into offstage feuds that become violent. Many observers have claimed that the media feeds on such rivalries for headlines and blows situations out of all proportion, a good example of which was the famous East Coast-West Coast rivalry of the 1990s.

One prominent example used as contrast by those who feel that the media manipulate and intensify hip hop rivalries was the 1980s hit "Roxanne" by U.T.F.O., which sparked several hundred "answer records" in response, some of which were quite vituperative. At the time, hip hop was nowhere as widespread as it would eventually become, and as such there was little media response to this record. The beef never made it onto the streets, and many observers felt that if something similar happened today, violence would surely result. However, the recent high-profile beef between Nas and Jay-Z was carried out without ever threatening to become violent.

"East Coast vs West Coast"

Probably the most famous rap feud of recent times is the early to mid-1990s rivalry between the East Coast’s Bad Boy Records and the West Coast’s Death Row Records, which was widely thought of and reported in the media as an East Coast vs West Coast dispute.

Hip hop had originated in New York, and the city remained the undisputed capital of hip hop until 1992, when Dr. Dre’s The Chronic became one of the biggest-selling hip hop albums in history, followed shortly by Snoop Doggy Dogg’s breakout album Doggystyle in 1993. Dre was on Death Row Records, headed by Suge Knight, and he soon built up a roster of stars like Warren G, Tupac Shakur, Tha Dogg Pound and Snoop Doggy Dogg that reigned on the charts, and Los Angeles begun to rival New York for its place as the center for mainstream hip hop. This had already, and somewhat inevitably, created a tension between certain industry heavyweights on both coast, each hungry for control of an increasingly lucrative market.

The biggest stars on the East Coast at this time were Puff Daddy’s Bad Boy Records crew, which was founded in 1993 and included Craig Mack, Mase and the Notorious B.I.G.. Bad Boy and Death Row were thrown into conflict with one another after Tupac Shakur was shot five times at a New York recording studio on November 30, 1994, and publically blamed his former close friend Notorious B.I.G and his Bad Boy Records cohorts. This feud escalated after Suge Knight mocked Puff Daddy at the Source Awards in August 1995, announcing to the assembly of artists and industry figures: "If you don’t want the owner of your label on your album or in your video or on your tour, come sign with Death Row." Despite Puff Daddy himself attempting to defuse the situation with a speech later in the evening, a later performance by Death Row’s Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg was booed (to which Snoop famously responded "The East Coast ain’t got no love for Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg?").

The feud continued to escalate through numerous incidents. First, in September 1995, a close friend of Knight’s was gunned down at a birthday party thrown for producer Jermaine Dupri in Atlanta, Georgia, for which Knight publically blamed Bad Boy Records. Then, in December, while filming the video for the Dogg Pound’s New York, New York in Manhattan, Snoop Dogg’s trailer was shot at numerous times (though the trailer was in fact empty at the time). The video itself then become the source of further controversy on its release, featuring Death Row artists knocking over New York skyscrapers and landmarks, to which many East Coast artists and fans took offense.

There was also suspicion that the song itself was also targeted at Bad Boy Records and New York in general, though this is unlikely as the song is in fact a remake of a Grandmaster Flash song, features only generic, non-specific braggadocio/battle rhymes with nothing that could be interpreted as a specific attack on any specific individuals, and was written and recorded before the Bad Boy/Death Row feud got off the ground.

The feud moved onto wax in early 1996 when Tupac recorded Hit ’Em Up, in which he claimed to have had sex with the Notorious B.I.G’s wife Faith Evans and that "this ain’t no freestyle battle, y’all niggas getting killed". B.I.G. soon responded on Jay-Z’s track Brooklyn’s Finest (a move which also caused Jay-Z to become embroiled in the dispute). In March 1996, at the Soul Train Awards in Miami, there was a confrontation in the parking lot between the respective entourages of Bad Boy and Death Row in which guns were drawn. Although an armed staring contest was all this confrontation eventually amounted to, it was readily apparent to hip hop fans and artists that this rivalry was getting very out of hand, and going far beyond the peaceful if heated lyrical battles for superiority of the past.

On September 7, 1996 Tupac Shakur was shot several times in Las Vegas, dying a few days later. On March 9, 1997, the Notorious B.I.G. was shot and killed in California. Both murders remain unsolved, and numerous theories (some of them conspiracy theories) have sprung up. These include, most notoriously, that Shakur’s death was faked.

In 1997, several rappers, including Bizzy Bone, Doug E. Fresh and Snoop Dogg met at the request of Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam and pledged to forgive any slights that may be related to the rivalry and deaths of Shakur and Biggie.

Prior to his death, 2Pac had also come into separate disputes with several other East Coast rappers. Some friends of 2Pac had been apparently snubbed by the group Mobb Deep at one of their concerts, and when word of the incident reached a then-jailed 2Pac he sent out a message to Mobb Deep threatening violence. Mobb Deep immediately responded with the track Drop A Gem On ’Em which although its official release on the Hell On Earth album occurred after 2Pac’s Hit Em Up single which mocked Mobb Deep, it had been circulating on mixtapes and radio in New York long before. Nas also angered 2Pac by appearing to mock Tupac with a line Fake thug, no love, you get the slug, CB4 gusto your luck blow... in the track The Message, although Nas denied that this line was ever aimed at Pac.

Even Chino XL, a underground rapper from New Jersey with no eye on mainstream domination and no ties to Bad Boy Records, Nas or Mobb Deep, incurred 2Pac’s wrath on Hit Em Up by using him in a somewhat ambiguous simile "By this industry, I’m trying not to get fucked like 2Pac in jail" (ironically, the track to which this line belongs is a duet with proud West Coast representative Ras Kass). Chino soon responded with a freestyle on live radio, but it was either ignored or not heard by 2Pac. Because these rappers were all East Coast artists, and because they were often insulted in the same songs as in which 2Pac insulted Bad Boy Records, they are often believed to be part of a greater "East Coast vs West Coast" war driven by allegiance and territory. In fact, these disputes were for entirely separate reasons to the Bad Boy/Death Row dispute, and the ties between these artists and Bad Boy Records were either very limited or non-existent (Nas had in fact collaborated with Death Row’s Dr. Dre far more often than he had collaborated with Bad Boy Records artists). For these reasons, as well as the fact that many prominent artists from both coasts such as Redman, Busta Rhymes, E-40 and the Wu-Tang Clan were not involved in the dispute at all, it has become a widely held belief that the media’s labeling of the Death Row/Bad Boy feud as an East Coast vs West Coast battle driven purely by territory and allegiance is misleading and amounts to sensationalism.

Soon after the death of Shakur, Death Row Records folded as Afeni Shakur, Tupac’s mother, sued the label for allegedly cheating her son out of millions. Label head Suge Knight ended up in jail for unrelated probation violations. Lady of Rage and Nate Dogg have also filed suits against Death Row with similar allegations. Puff Daddy has also had multiple legal troubles, including a much-publicized case resulting from a shooting in a New York club; he has been acquitted, though fellow rapper Shyne was not. Bad Boy Records had for the most part maintained its place at the top of the industry since the death of Notorious B.I.G, with artist Mase achieving success before his early retirement (and un-retirement) and Puff Daddy (now P Diddy) himself achieving considerable commercial success.

More recently, Bad Boy has struggled as a record label due to a lack of marketable talent and allegations that Puff is more concerned with his other ventures (i.e., Sean Jean clothing). After Suge Knight’s release from prison, Death Row Records was reborn as "Tha Row", signing many artists including acclaimed young rapper Crooked I, former Dogg Pound member Kurupt, and Lisa Left Eye Lopes. Unfortunately Lopes was killed in a car crash not long after signing to the label, and none of their other signings have achieved much in the way of commercial success.

Jay-Z vs Nas

The tension between Jay-Z and Nas dates back to 1996, when Nas supposedly refused to make a guest appearance on Jay-Z’s debut album Reasonable Doubt. However, the relationship between the two rappers remained peaceful (Jay-Z even giving a shoutout to Nas in his album liner notes), and the tension never became a full-blown rivalry until after the death of Notorious B.I.G. The position of "best rapper in New York" seemed eerily vacant after the death of Biggie, and fans were eager to see who would take over his role. In 1999, two years after his death, Jay-Z (a former friend and collaborator of B.I.G.) released a song titled "The City Is Mine" which seemed to many people to be making a claim to the empty throne. This attitude also seems to be evident in the fact that Jay-Z’s album In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 was originally titled Heir To The Throne, Vol. 1. Nas, the only rapper in New York at the time who had a reputation capable of rivalling Jay-Z but who had never received anywhere near the same amount of commercial success, apparently responded to Jay-Z on his track We Will Survive (also released in 1999, on his album I Am...), which appears to dismiss Jay-Z as a serious rival as well as attacking both his claims of superiority and his continual evoking of B.I.G’s legacy (the verse in question is in the form of a letter to the deceased rapper) :

It used to be fun, makin records to see your response
But, now competition is none, now that you’re gone
And these niggaz is wrong — usin your name in vain
And they claim to be New York’s king? It ain’t about that

There was definite tension between the pair but no action for approximately a year, until in 2001 the beef exploded into the public eye as Jay-Z publically mocked Nas on stage at the Hot 97 radio station’s Summer Jam hip hop festival. Nas responded by delivering a calculated, personal attack on Jay-Z during a radio freestyle over Eric B. & Rakim’s "Paid In Full" beat :

And bring it back up top, remove the fake king of New York
You show off, I count off when you sample my voice
I rule you, before, you used to rap like the Fu-Schnikens
Nas designed your Blueprint, who you kidding?
Is he H To The Izzo, M TO THE Izzo?
For shizzle you phony, the rapping version of Sisqo
("sample my voice" refers to Jay-Z’s use of a Nas vocal sample in his song Dead Presidents)

Jay-Z responded with the track "Takeover" from his album The Blueprint, on which he attacked Nas for never matching the critical success of his debut Illmatic and questioned his authenticity as an artist. The song was very well-received by hip hop listeners, and many listeners and reviewers immediately dismissed Nas as a contender and feared for the end of his career. Therefore, it was a surprise to many when Nas responded with an equally well-received track titled "Ether" from his album Stillmatic, in which he mocked Jay-Z’s early years as an aspiring young rapper (in which he supposedly idolized Nas) and attacked him for being a misogynist and for exploiting the Notorious B.I.G’s legacy.

The positive response to Ether created enormous interest in the rivalry throughout the hip hop community, the music media and even mainstream news outlets. Jay-Z’s response was prompt, again attacking Nas’ authenticity and claiming to have slept with his ex-girlfriend in a radio freestyle that became known as "Super Ugly". However, this release was not as well received as the previous three tracks had been. The feud continued to simmer, and rumors of a live pay-per-view freestyle battle began to circulate but never came to fruition.

After the promoters of Hot 97’s Summer Jam festival refused to allow headlining Nas to hang an effigy of Jay-Z during his performance at 2002’s show, he appeared on Hot 97’s rival Power 105 and attacked both the music industry’s control over hip hop and the rappers who he saw as submitting to it, including Jay-Z, Nelly, N.O.R.E. and Jay-Z’s labelmate Cam’ron : "Y’all brothers gotta start rapping about something that’s real. [...] Rappers are slaves." After this incident both continued to go against one another on various tracks, the shots taken including Jay-Z criticizing Nas for his apparent hypocrisy on his The Blueprint²: The Gift & the Curse album’s title track, and Nas comparing himself and Jay-Z to the characters Tony Montana and Manolo respectively from the film Scarface, on his track "Last Real Nigga Alive" from his God’s Son album.

However, the feud died down somewhat towards the end of 2002, with no real winner decided (arguments go on to this day in the hip hop community about who came out on top overall, with the results of a Hot 97 radio phone-in revealing a close 52% - 48% split in favour of Nas), and both Nas & Jay-Z have since paid tribute to each other in interviews, likening the battle to a world title boxing match that pitched the best against the best, and pleased with the entertainment it provided fans. The rivalry also benefited both of their careers immensely, critically and commercially. Some observers even suspected that the beef was largely staged for the very purpose of increasing record sales.

Some Other Hip Hop rivalries:

50 cent vs Fat Joe
50 Cent vs The Game
50 Cent vs Jadakiss
Ja Rule vs Eminem and 50 Cent
Eminem vs Canibus
Eminem vs Benzino
Lil’ Kim vs Foxy Brown
Boogie Down Productions vs the Juice Crew
Eminem vs Everlast & Dilated Peoples
DMX vs Ja Rule
LL Cool J vs Canibus
Eminem vs Cage
Ice Cube vs Cypress Hill
MC Hammer vs LL Cool J
El-P (Company Flow) vs Sole (Anticon)
MC Lyte vs Antoinette

From Wikipedia

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