The past few months have seen a resurgence of rap “beef” in the world of hip-hop. The beefs have even slipped into the realm of R&B. The artists who have been recently “beefing” are Remy Ma v. Nicki Minaj, Soulja Boy v. Migos, Soulja Boy v. Chris Brown, and a triple threat between Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and Big Sean. They involve disagreements between who has the best bars and has ignited the rap community.
The first beef was between Soulja and the Migos, more specifically, Quavo. Big Soulja was upset at Quavo after Quavo denied that Soulja Boy was on good terms with Migos. As a result, Soulja Boy felt utterly disrespected and began to slander Quavo and his Migos brethren. He even went as far as making a diss track insulting the Migos. Although this beef trended on Twitter at one point, not all hip-hop fans cared about this beef, mostly because Quavo never responded.
“Nobody cares about Soulja Boy,” said senior Josh Baines, who is an avid rap fan.
Soulja Boy eventually stopped beefing with the Migos, but that is only because he found himself another target.
Soulja Boy’s next target became the one and only Chris Brown. Brown initiated the beef this time by calling out Soulja Boy for leaving a promiscuous comment on Karruche Tran’s Instagram account. Tran is Brown’s ex-girlfriend, and Brown took exception to Soulja Boy’s comments. The two artists then exchanged threats on both Instagram and Twitter and the conflict escalated to Brown challenging Big Soulja to a boxing match. The boxing match was scheduled to occur in March and seemingly everyone wanted to be a part of this beef. Rapper 50 Cent and professional boxer Floyd Mayweather offered to promote the fight.
Many rap fans were excited for the fight as Brown and Soulja continued to exchange words, but in February, Brown decided to back out of the fight. This was much to the dismay of both artists’ supporters, but Brown said that the fight was not worth it. Most people who bothered to pay attention to this “beef” would say Brown won because he is more successful, but others disagree.
“Soulja Boy will always be more successful because he can hit that Superman on Chris Brown any day of the week, and ‘Kiss Me Thru the Phone’ and ‘Crank Dat’ are ultimate bangers,” said die-hard Soulja Boy supporter senior Ian Liboro.
The last two disagreements are between Remy Ma and Nicki Minaj and Kendrick Lamar versus Drake versus Big Sean. Remy Ma dropped an “Ether-like” diss track on Nicki Minaj called “Shether” seemingly out of nowhere. The world raved about how savage the song was and patiently waited for Minaj to respond. Nicki then dropped three songs that fans deemed underwhelming, although they were not as effective as Remy Ma’s track. Despite this, the world stopped caring about this “beef” after the first week.
The final rap beef is arguably the most important “beef” of recent memory as it involves three of the top artists in the rap game today: Kendrick Lamar, Big Sean, and Drake. So far, the “beef” between these three, with the addition of J Cole, has been an argument over who is the King of Rap, as the proverbial “crown” changes as each of them release an album. Most of the disses between the three have been subliminal, as none of them have mentioned each other with the exception of Lamar, who called out a plethora of rappers on Big Sean’s song, “Control.” Fans want the three to outright call each other out in diss songs to see who the best really is, but more level-headed fans think otherwise.
“They’re all different styles, but they’re the best at their own styles. They make different types of rap; you wouldn’t compare Lil’ Uzi to Tupac,” said Baines.