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The rap music industry is currently embroiled in the first legitimate ‘hip hop beef’ in years!.
If you’ve been too busy following the FBI’s pursuit of hip hop mogul Diddy – you might’ve missed this! Or maybe you’ve just been a bit overwhelmed by actual global conflicts and the extreme stress faced by global financial markets.
If you’re below the age of 30, there’s also the possibility that you don’t even know what a ‘hip hop beef’ is. Put simply, it’s a type of personal conflict between rappers, most clearly manifested in songs degrading one another. So basically, it’s when rappers start using real names in their songs.
Currently the two sides of this current rap beef are: Canadian former child star ‘Drake’ and the Compton short king Kendrick Lamar. Both of whom had initially made their names in the late 2000s as the modern brand of rappers who were more focused on love songs and civil rights messaging than the gangster elements that had defined the genre in the decades prior.
But things have changed. As these mid-to-late thirties multimillionaires begin having children and settling down, it seems they all want to show the world they still have that dog in them. In the space of 72 hours they have permanently ruined each others reputations by attempting to cause as much humiliation as they can without adhering to the traditional rap beef model of extreme homophobia.
However, this war of words between two introspective millennials is hardly as exhilarating as the mid-1990s pioneers of hip hop beef, whose legitimate affiliations with organised crime had global audiences glued to the nightly news in the expectation of imminent murders.
They would also release iconic ‘diss tracks’ that their fans could actually dance to, or work out to.
The likes of Tupac and Biggie Smalls, along with the dozens of colourful characters that made up their respective entourages, had glamorised gang violence to the point where their mansions and Cadillacs could not protect them from being spectacularly assassinated on the streets outside major cultural events – such as music industry awards nights or Las Vegas fight nights.
That is not to say this Kendrick v Drake rivalry won’t escalate to the same level of bloodshed as yesteryear, with their 7 minute slam poems that could’ve easily just been tweets.
Much like 30 years ago, this cold war could result in real gunfire, especially with a Mike Tyson fight scheduled for next month.
Even if the modern Tyson fight is about as authentic and exciting as the modern rap beef – this is still where rappers would traditionally shoot at each other. Lets not let history repeat itself again.
