Tim Dog, “Fuck Compton” (1991)
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Line: “I’m so large I fucked Michel’le/ In the bathroom we was bonin’/ You shoulda heard how the bitch was moanin’/ Doo doo boo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo doo doo/ Shut up, bitch, you can’t sing.”
Years before East Coast vs. West Coast rap feuds reached a boiling point, Bronx rapper Tim Dog declared war on Los Angeles like a one man army, dissing N.W.A and DJ Quik on his debut album, Penicillin on Wax. Tim Dog, who was from the Bronx, didn’t know N.W.A or have any history with the group prior to making “Fuck Compton,” but the song was ugly and personal anyway, making tawdry claims about Dr. Dre’s then-girlfriend, Ruthless Records singer Michel’le, while also referencing the Dee Barnes assault that happened earlier that year.
Ice Cube, “No Vaseline” (1991)
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Line: “Y’all disgrace the CPT/ ‘Cause you’re getting fucked out your green/ By a white boy with no Vaseline.”
The most vicious volley in the war of words between Ice Cube and N.W.A was on Cube’s second album, Death Certificate. “No Vaseline,” which was a response to N.W.A disses featured on the 100 Miles and Runnin' EP and Efil4zaggin, featured a brilliant divide-and-conquer strategy. Cube alleged that N.W.A was getting bilked by manager Jerry Heller. The diss is vulgar and particularly vicious because it would be proven to be mostly true. Dre would soon leave the group over monterey issues, launching his own beef with Eazy-E and Heller.
Eazy-E, Gangsta Dresta & B.G. Knocc Out, "Real Muthaphuckkin G's” (1993)
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Line: “Dre Day only meant Eazy’s payday/ All of a sudden Dr. Dre is the G thang/ But on his album covers he was a she-thang.”
Before Jay-Z put Prodigy on that “Summer Jam” screen, Eazy-E would utilize a similar strategy of digging up old photos to diss Dre. After the brutal mockery of Eazy-E on “Dre Day,” Eazy fired back with a two-pronged taunt: that Dre looked feminine on the cover of the World Class Wreckin’ Cru’s World Class album, and that Eazy was still profiting off of Dre’s Death Row music.
2Pac, “Hit ‘Em Up” (1996)
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Line: “First off, fuck your bitch and the clique you claim/ Westside when we ride, come equipped with game/ You claim to be a player, but I fucked your wife.”
Still the gold standard for disrespectful disses, 2Pac’s explosive B-side to the “How Do U Want It” single was a barrage of insults and threats aimed at the Notorious B.I.G. Tension had been building for years; 2Pac publicly blamed Biggie for not warning him about the 1994 Quad Recording Studios shooting. And, during the 1995 Source Awards, Death Row CEO Suge Knight publicly poked at Bad Boy and Puff Daddy. On “Hit ‘Em Up,” 2Pac takes the energy from “Fuck Compton” and esclates things. 2Pac, alongside the Outlawz crew, takes aim at everyone from Mobb Deep to Bad Boy, with the most infamous moment being 2Pac alleging an affair with Big’s estranged wife Faith Evans, a rumor that had been circulating for months before the song was released. In fact, Biggie would later make a joke referencing the allegations on Jay-Z’s “Brooklyn’s Finest.”
Mobb Deep, “Drop a Gem on Em” (1996)
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Line: “Rikers Island flashbacks of the house you got scufted in/ You would think that gettin' your head shot's enough, but then/ Now you wanna go at my team/ Must have been drunk when you wrote that shit/ Too bad you had to did it to your own self”
Mobb Deep wasn’t the main target on “Hit ‘Em Up,' ' but Prodigy caught the song’s most brutal strays on the outro as 2Pac mocked his sickle cell anemia. Bandana P responded venomously on Hell On Earth, repeating a rumor that Pac was raped in prison during his 1995 incarceration while also mentoning the 1995 shooting. The song was actually the first single from Hell On Earth but the duo pulled it from radio after 2Pac was killed in September of 1996. Prodigy told Complex in 2011, “... we pulled the song off radio and told them to stop playing it out of respect for his family and out of respect for the dead. We were like, ‘Nah, stop pushing that.’” Mobb Deep would, however, still have the song on the album.
Cormega & Mike Delorean, “Never Personal (F*ck Nas and Nature)” (1998)
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Line: “My man took your fuckin’ gold chain/ And he’s wearin’ your shit in the projects, you’re a fuckin’ bitch.”
Cormega was featured alongside Foxy Brown and AZ on Nas’s 1996 posse cut “Affirmative Action,” but by the time The Firm had become an official supergroup and released its sole album, Nas had fallen out with Cormega and replaced him with Nature. Mega was furious and responded with a white label single in which he bragged that he and his crew beat up Nature and proudly displayed his chain around the Queensbridge housing projects where they all were from.
Eminem, “I Remember (Dedication to Whitey Ford)” (2000)
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Line: “I remember back when you had ‘The Knack’/ And I remember when you had your first heart attack/ I was right there laughin’ when I heard the news/ I just wish the cardiac woulda murdered you.”
White on White crime was rampant around the turn of the millennium when Eminem feuded with an assortment of caucasian rappers including Cage, the Insane Clown Posse, Evidence, and Everlast. After an incident in which Slim Shady allegedly disrespected Everlast in person, the former House of Pain frontman dissed Eminem on the Dilated Peoples track, “Ear Drums Pop,” inadvertently mentioning Em’s daughter, Halley. (The offending line: “Cock my hammer, spit a comet like Halley I'll buck a .380 on ones that act Shady.”) This infuriated Em and he responded on the B-side to D12’s “Shit On You” single, which featured diabolical references to Everlast surviving a heart attack.
Nas, “Ether” (2001)
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Line: “You seem to be only concerned with dissin’ women/ Were you abused as a child? Scared to smile, they called you ugly?”
Nas called Jay-Z a lot of things on “Ether”: a fan, a phony, “Gay-Z.” The lines that alleged that Jigga’s chauvinist womanizer persona was a response to childhood insecurities about his looks, however, felt like some of the song’s most disrespectful jabs, despite being some of the only PG bars on the entire song. In fact, Jay-Z would respond to this specific criticism the next year, on the Blueprint 2 title track, rapping, “They call me this misogynist, but they don't call me the dude to take his dollars to give gifts at the projects.”
Jay-Z, “Supa Ugly” (2001)
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Line: “Me and the boy A.I. got more in common than just balling and rhyming, get it? More in Carmen/ I came in your Bentley backseat, skeeted in your jeep/ Left condoms on your baby seat.”
On “Takeover,” Jay-Z hinted at a sensitive personal issue with Nas but stopped short of specifics, shrugging, “Just keep that between me and you for now.” After “Ether,” though, Jay was ready to reveal that he’d slept with Carmen Bryan, the mother of Nas’s daughter. It was really the raunchy detail of the line — and adding Allen Iverson to the mix — that went perhaps even further than 2Pac’s line about Faith on “Hit ‘Em Up.” The diss ultimately ended up being a failure: Jay’s own mother admonished him that he’d gone too far, and he later apologized live on the radio for the track.
Cam’ron & Jim Jones, “Hate Me Now (Remix)” (2002)
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Line: “Shorty, stay in your place before the AK’s in your face/ Take your daughter, R. Kelly, have my way with her face.”
Cam’ron was a relatively minor player in the Jay-Z and Nas wars. He mostly stayed neutral during his brief tenure as a Roc-A-Fella artist. That changed when Nas went to Power 105 and dissed Cam, Noreaga and Nelly on the radio. Cam responded heavy-handedly, spitting one of the most disgustingly unwarranted lines in hip-hop history over Nas’ “Hate Me Now” beat.
50 Cent, “Back Down” (2003)
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Line: “You’s a Pop Tart, sweetheart, you soft in the middle/ I eat you for breakfast, the watch was an exchange for your necklace.”
No beef has ever altered the career trajectories of both sides as dramatically as the G-Unit/Murder Inc. war that turned 50 Cent into a superstar and Ja Rule into a has-been. The most memorable diss is “Back Down”, where 50 brings up their personal history while also mocking Ja’s penchant for love songs. The “watch was an exchange for your necklace” line is in reference to a robbery Ja was the victim of. There would be more songs from this conflict but this is often seen as the moment where the outcome was decided.
Ja Rule, “Loose Change” (2003)
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Line: “Em, you claim your mother’s a crackhead/ And Kim is a known slut/ So what’s Hailie gon’ be when she grows up?”
After signing to Aftermath, Eminem eagerly backed up 50 Cent in the Ja Rule beef. Ja took advantage of Em’s very public family life to take some cruel shots on “Loose Change,” a song where Ja fires back at the entire Aftermath squad. Em would respond by gathering D12 and Obie Trice and releasing “Doe Rae Me,” a song where he warns Ja not to ever mention his daughter’s name again.
Gucci Mane, “Truth” (2012)
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Line: “I’m a big dog, he got the lil boy complex/ Go dig your partner up, n****, I bet he can’t say shit.”
Jeezy and Gucci Mane’s feud over their hit collaboration “So Icy” turned deadly in 2005 when Gucci was attacked by a Jeezy associate, Pookie Loc. Gucci shot and killed Pookie, claiming he was acting in self-defense. Seven years later, their beef was still simmering when Gucci made an extremely morbid reference to Pookie Loc on the closing track to 2012’s Trap God. The two rappers called a truce when they participated in a Verzuz battle in 2020, but things briefly got very tense when Gucci performed “Truth” just a few feet away from Jeezy, yelling how he put his “ass in the dirt." Gucci would later say he regretted the moment.
Troy Ave, “Badass” (2016)
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Line: “‘Cause I'm a savage, this gon leave you sad bitch/ Don't get suicidal like ya friend, here's a casket STEEZ burning in Hell/ my burner's in my belt, I'm really killing shit/ You niggas killing yourself/ Fucking weirdos, off the roof, ‘Steer clear yo!’/ This nigga’s tryna fly, he think he a superhero/ Splat man!/ Fuck you and that man.”
When Brooklyn rappers Troy Ave and Joey Bada$$ beefed, Troy Ave was all too happy to play the unrepentant villain. His bars mocking the 2012 suicide of Joey’s Pro Era associate Capital STEEZ, however, were so appalling that even battle-tested rappers like Styles P. and Royce da 5’9” stepped in to declare that Troy Ave had crossed the line.
Remy Ma, “ShETHER” (2017)
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Line: “I saw Meek at All-Star, he told me your ass dropped/ You couldn’t fuck for three months because your ass dropped/ Now I don’t think y’all understand how bad her ass got/ The implants that she had put in her ass popped/ I was like, ‘Damn, 90 days and you couldn’t have box?/ Did she at least compensate, start given’ you mad top?/ Her name Minaj, right, she ain’t throw you some bad thots?’/ He said, ‘Nah,’ that’s when I knew you was really a trash bop.”
When tensions between Remy Ma and Nicki Minaj came to a head, Remy rapped for over six minutes over the “Ether” instrumental. The entire diss is vicious but the most entertaining tangent in the track was a hilariously detailed story about Minaj’s allegedly surgically enhanced ass allegedly imploding. Nicki would respond with “No Frauds,” a song that is not nearly as disrespectful as Remy’s diss.
Pusha T, “The Story of Adidon” (2018)
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Lines: “A baby’s involved, it’s deeper than rap/ We talkin’ character, let me keep with the facts/ You are hiding a child, let that boy come home/ Deadbeat mothafucka playin’ border patrol”
and
“OVO 40, hunched over like he 80/ Tick, tick, tick/ How much time he got?/ That man is sick, sick, sick.”
The crescendo of Drake and Pusha T’s beef was a track full of tawdry revelations, including the quickly confirmed story that Drake had secretly fathered a song named Adonis. The line that really struck a nerve, though, was the Clipse rapper mocking the health of Drake’s closet collaborator, Noah “40” Shebib, who has multiple sclerosis. “Rap purists and people who just love confrontation, they love to say, ‘Hey man, there’s no rules in this shit!’ But there are fuckin’ rules in this shit,” Drake told LeBron James when discussing the beef on HBO’s The Shop. “When you mention defenseless people who are sick in the hospital that passed away, that really sent me to a place where, y’know, I just believed then and believe now that there’s a price that you have to pay for that.”
Spinabenz, “Who I Smoke” (2021)
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Line: “Twelve paramedics couldn’t save your fuckin’ life, boy/ Rod K dead and he ain’t never comin’ back, boy.”
A deadly rivalry between the Jacksonville crews ATK and KTA went viral in 2021 when ATK rappers Spinabenz and Yungeen Ace sampled Vanessa Carlton’s piano pop “A Thousand Miles.” The deceptively bright and catchy “Who I Smoke,” however, was full of morbidly disrespectful lyrics naming several KTA members who had been killed.
Megan Thee Stallion, “Hiss” (2024)
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Line: “These hoes don’t be mad at Megan/ These hoes be mad at Megan’s Law.”
The January 2024 release of Megan Thee Stallion’s single “Hiss” increasingly feels like the opening salvo in a historic year for rap beef. Meg didn’t call out other artists by name on “Hiss,” but her crystal clear targets included Tory Lanez and Drake. The biggest reaction came from Nicki Minaj, who felt that the reference to Megan’s Law, a federal law regarding the release of information about sex offenders, was aimed at Minaj’s husband, convicted rapist Kenneth Petty.
Drake, “Family Matters” (2024)
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Line: “There’s nowhere to hide, you know what I mean/ They hired a crisis management team to hide the fact that you beat on your queen.”
Drake’s first two 2024 Kendrick Lamar diss tracks, “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made,” were full of jabs at Lamar’s career, image and business dealings. Drake’s third track, however, had a much more grim tone as he levied the accusation, which so far has not been substantiated, that Lamar has been physically abusive to his longtime fiancee Whitney Alford.
Kendrick Lamar, “Meet the Grahams” (2024)
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Line: “Sandra, sit down, what I’m about to say is heavy, now listen/ Your son’s a sick man with sick thoughts, I think niggas like him should die/ Him and Weinstein should get fucked up in a cell for the rest of their life.”
Less than a half hour after Drake pushed the “red button” with his very serious accusations on “Family Matters,” Kendrick Lamar responded with “Meet the Grahams,” a song with its own very serious but largely unconfirmed allegations, including the existence of an 11-year-old daughter. The high concept track featured Lamar writing letters to members of Drake’s family, telling the Canadian rapper’s mother Sandra that her son is a pedophile who deserves to die, or at least rot in prison with rapist and disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.
