Rap beefs are an essential part of culture. We anticipate and keenly follow rap beefs not only because these are highly entertaining but also to see if a rapper actually has the bars and delivery that their bravado boasts.
Some end in tragedy, like Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac. Both rappers met tragic ends entirely too soon. Still, most give us epic diss tracks that outlive the conflicts and become classics, themselves contributions to the hip-hop canon.
We’ve also gotten a few duds, Nicki Minaj’s Big Foot, immediately comes to mind. Or the ridiculous rap beefs like the one between 50 Cent and Kanye West, which now with time to reflect, I feel was just an industry move to push units on both album releases. Yes, one thing capitalists know to do well is capitalize on the culture and culture producers to turn a profit.
In the 2024 landscape of rap beefs, we have a lopsided event, in my humble opinion, as Drake is many things, but I highly doubt that rapper is one of them. He’s been able to rap, sing and do bops for the ‘gram and the club, going on almost two decades, but as Yasiin Bey famously said, “Drake is pop to me, in the sense that if I was in a Target in Houston, and I heard a Drake song, It feels like a lot of his music is compatible with shopping.”
And I have to agree, his music is forgettable at best and overly saccharine at worst. He’s also, I feel a lightbright who observes and repackages Black culture to present it as safe for white consumers. He also needs to stop texting minors. Does he move the culture? Not for me. If anything, he is reproducing souvenirs for a mostly white audience. Honestly, a wider conversation needs to be had on how the culture is vastly consumed by the very same white audiences it was born to rage against. But an artist has got to eat, I know that best, so I would NEVER, knock another artist’s hustle, well at least not publicly.
On the other hand, is Kendrick Lamar, a Compton rapper, lauded by both the establishment and the culture, as one of the greatest artists of our time.
He’s alright; he doesn’t shift the earth for me, but if his music moves the pulse of the culture for some, by all means, I cannot deny anyone how they connect with the art that they connect with.
What’s alarming to me, and what has continued to shock me, is how these two men have, on record, to a beat, incriminated themselves and each other on various unethical and even illegal actions. Everything has been called out: pedophilia, domestic violence, culture appropriation, child abuse, child neglect, addiction, and the list of allegations goes on and gets deeper and darker with the release of every diss track. Now I don’t know if we have become so desensitized to violence as genocide and mass bloodshed is happening globally. Where some of it is obscured from the news cycle, some of it is profusely reproduced for all to see the devastation in real-time. Whatever the case, people are clapping and waiting for the next release. I have to wonder if we’ve finally descended into a spiral of apathy and lack of humanity that we soullessly cheer on while the accusations are hurled like glass bottles in a bar fight. We watch, we’re entertained, we are aware of the danger, but everyone just watches from a safe distance as the glass shards travel to and fro, clapping and commenting, “Now that’s a diss track!”
Some have commented on how soulless we became with the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. People either being totally fatalistic, nihilistic or both. Honestly, setting the stage for where we currently are, bodies being used for target practice all over the world, and we just say, “Well, what does any of THAT have to do with me?”
I think this current rap beef speaks far more to our human condition than, let’s say, anything we may share online about our own thoughts, desires and politics.
We are sitting down, listening and bopping our heads, and that’s telling.
Sista D Barnes tweeted on May 4th, “Reduced to a punchline in a song that made millions… meanwhile, I CANNOT PAY MY RENT.”
and this I saw because of a quote tweet by Tango Jordan “This rap shit abuses women and celebrates abusive men.”
, and honestly, yes. Hip Hop needs to take a good hard look at itself. At this point, the culture needs a reboot, as it has strayed so very far from its origins of “Fight the Power.”
