Why Diss Tracks are Good for This Era

When authenticity has been watered down to "nice online" for the sake of "personal brands," seeing people be artistically mean is healing.

Kendrick vs. Drake, but cute.

Once upon a time, a friend of mine assessed my internet presence. He said, as diplomatically as he could, “I think people would be surprised how nice you are in real life.” which was a nice way of saying I’m a bitch online.

I mean, maybe not always, but I definitely am aware of the fact that I’ve fought publicly on the internet. And while I can blame the fact that being Black and a woman on the internet gives a lot of randos the impression that they can say whatever they want to you however they want, the truth is I’m also the youngest sibling and grew up in a house where shit talking was an art.

A lot of people only know me from a single project like What a Day or my YouTube channel, maybe like 4 people saw the cooking show I hosted for a season in 2017. And because of this people assume that I am one way all the time. “I’ve only encountered you as smart and informative, so it’s hard to imagine you making someone eat their words on the bird app.” Perception is weird. Parasocial relationships are weirder. Alas, I contain multitudes.

And that explains, in a nutshell, why I am enthralled by rap beef. A lot of people just know Drake as that guy who puts out dance-y tampon shopping music like “In My Feelings” or the “Toosie Slide.” He’s a hit maker, and a large portion of the 2010s “song of the summer”s came from his catalog.

Kendrick Lamar, kDot, by comparison is known for his incredible rap talent, and his artistry with wordplay. He samples songs intentionally and is a bit more poetic. So when he decided to call himself the #1 rapper in the world on the Future song, “Like That,” Drake and J. Cole took offense. “F* the big 3, N* it’s just big me,” was the first shot in the battle.

J. Cole dropped a weak rebuttal, and then sheepishly on stage admitted it “didn’t feel right in his soul” and deleted the song from streaming and bowed out. People clowned him, but we are now at the stage of the diss battle where people know Drake should’ve just done the same.

Drake made a song, then Kendrick dropped a song, and then another. And in his rhymes he basically dissected everything everybody likes about Drake and explained why he sucks. He relitigated the Millie Bobby Brown of it all, with Drake too often appearing next to incredibly young women and girls. And then he also blew up his entire crew and label’s spot calling them “certified pedophiles.”

For obvious reasons this is devastating for Drake. The song immediately went to #1. His clapback is barely in the conversation, and to add insult to injury, after Drake insulted producer, Metro Boomin a while back telling him to “go make drums,” Metro has inspired a freestyle challenge, dropping a beat called “BBL Drizzy” and has upped the ante with a $10,000 prize and offering a free beat to the musician who wins (Metro Boomin, for the casual listener, is a monster producer in the industry, having hits with all the biggest artists and incredible success with soundtracking the Spiderverse series).

TL;DR: The rap beef of today is iconic. In a time when everyone and their mom is preaching the gospel of “authenticity,” when they actually mean “palatability,” it’s refreshing as hell to see people be honest and frankly, negative. Kendrick made a full list of things he hates about Drake and said it out loud.

Kendrick didn’t mince words in “euphoria” or…ever.

Imagine if you or I did something like this and posted it. People would unfollow. They’d cry foul! They’d be in the DMs trying to coach us on how to apologize, and to bow out instead of stand up and be honest. Meanwhile, Kendrick is showing us that art is art whether it’s all ~positive vibes~ or not. He’s showing us there is excellence in the low road too. That maybe we don’t all have to be role models or perfect examples or FAKE. He’s got the most authentic brand of anyone out today, and I don’t think we ever extend that opportunity to women, and especially not women of color.

We see this in politics, too. The republican party learned years ago that whoever is talking their shit the loudest (whether it’s true or inoffensive or not) is going to make the headlines, is going to shift the culture. There’s a reason it’s 2024 and we still haven’t had a woman president, and partially it’s because our culture won’t let women be human beings with a full breadth of emotion and ability to speak—or don’t you remember the uproar when Hillary Clinton called republicans “deplorables?”

Trump literally called people rapists all while being held liable for rape and somehow that hasn’t slowed down his life at all. AT ALL. Meanwhile, if a woman talks about being assaulted she will face backlash. It’s not right.

So forgive me, down here in the gutter, for eating this beef up. I hope that one day women are given a runway like Kendrick, or Drake, or Anthony Bourdain, or Gordon Ramsey, or Perez Hilton, or or or or or or.

-A