Like a cleaning soap opera, you skip an episode and lose observe of the story. For the previous month, two of essentially the most profitable hip-hop artists of current instances—Kendrick Lamar and Drake—have been embroiled in a back-and-forth rap beef that reached new ranges over the weekend as Lamar launched “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us,” and Drake dropped “The Coronary heart Half 6.”
The battle is perhaps essentially the most newsworthy music occasion of the primary half of 2024, as each MCs voiced robust opinions about one another on the diss tracks, resulting in secondary discussions fueled by fan hives, trolls, assume items, and social media threads. And whereas the early exchanges might need solely barely piqued some listeners’ curiosity, the stakes went up following the discharge of Kendrick’s “Euphoria” final Tuesday. At that time, the meat grew to become one thing larger, evolving (or devolving) from the usual stuff of rap and into stormier waters. This consists of accusations and exchanges round severe subjects: racial authenticity, home violence, illegitimate fatherhood, ethical posturing, grooming, hypocrisy, colorism, and even colonialism.
The battle is now mature sufficient to warrant some bigger reflection. Particularly, an examination of what this beef tells us concerning the marriage between hip-hop, battle, and on-line tradition.
No promoting marketing campaign can generate the anticipation that rap beef creates, typically out of skinny air. Whether or not we’re having fun with it or not, all of us look forward to the subsequent iteration. By means of Drake and Kendrick Lamar, we’re reminded of simply how shortly public squabbles can seize consideration—and the numerous ways in which the ecology of digital house in 2024 can form how these conflicts occur.
For one, artists now management the timing and tempo of the releases. Not like years previous, when fashionable DJs usually folded diss songs into radio units, artists in the present day can curate the discharge of those tracks, going on to listeners by way of platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and X.
Second, the conflict on fact within the age of misinformation now renders fact-checking irrelevant; no matter somebody accuses one other artist of in a music is perhaps true or false. Whether or not we imagine it’s principally about whether or not we wish to imagine it, whether or not the message aligns with our preexisting views. And whereas dodgy accusations have all the time been true in beef raps, the velocity by way of which falsehoods can unfold in the present day makes it simpler for absurd claims to tackle a lifetime of their very own.
Lastly, there may be the specter of pretend songs, generated by synthetic intelligence. This makes us double-clutch earlier than clicking a hyperlink, as we scramble to debate the authenticity of what we’re about to listen to. Saying somebody employed ghostwriters was essentially the most damning accusation in hip-hop. Immediately there are a lot of extra methods to manufacture a music, and fewer methods to inform the distinction between us and the robots. This particularly got here to the fore in April when Drake launched “Taylor Made Freestyle,” a observe that seemingly used an AI-generated model of Tupac Shakur’s voice. (The rapper eliminated the music after Shakur’s property despatched a cease-and-desist.)
Battle rap, whether or not it takes the type of in-person face-offs or is finished by way of diss tracks, has all the time been certainly one of hip-hop’s flagship sports activities, outlined by banter between artists, usually—however not essentially—derogatory in tone. It has roots in “the handfuls” and associated relics in African American tradition that thrive on spontaneity, humor, and wit (usually at others’ expense). So whereas “battling” will be strictly completed for the sake of competitors, “beef” requires some extent of private animus between the events. What’s occurring in 2024, as artists like Drake and Lamar commerce bar(b)s by way of IG posts and YouTube clips, and their followers debate the deserves on social media, marks a brand new period of rap beef.
Even this abstract has some recency bias: Aggressive poetry existed in elements of the world centuries earlier than hip-hop did. But, there’s something particular about how battle occurs in hip-hop: Beef has pushed a few of the hottest songs ever made, and has been linked to real-world violence. It’s a problem that hip-hop displays on for small home windows (usually following the lack of a well-liked determine, like after the deaths of Shakur and The Infamous B.I.G. within the mid-’90s), after which it returns to enterprise as common: Rappers A and B change taunts, possibly a number of instances. Generally a winner is asserted. Generally it doesn’t matter. Generally there may be violence; typically there may be formal peacemaking, like when Jay-Z and Nas ended their beef onstage throughout a present in 2005. Typically, there may be widespread consideration: rinse, rap, repeat. Within the digital world, the cycle strikes on the velocity of a click on.
