Favourite Beefs & Disses - Parental Guidance - Explicit Lyrics
The history of the diss track has been a long and glorious one. Ever since the early days of hip-hop culture, laying down a track dissing your rivals and haters has been to rap, like bread has been to butter.
From the Boogie Down Productions tune South Bronx dissing MC Shan, to Eminem's Killshot putting Machine Gun Kelly in his place, and many more in between, the diss track has given us some great tunes.
So today I'd like to celebrate some of my favourite diss tracks of all time, arising from some of the most infamous beefs in hip-hop history, and I invite you to peruse this list, and post your faves in the comment section.
Boogie Down Productions
I mentioned BDP's South Bronx above, a tune featured on their seminal album Criminal Minded. However the album had a few noteworthy diss tracks on it, the beef originated because back in the day, there was a dispute as to where hip-hop actually originated.
Crews like BDP said that hip-hop started in the South Bronx, whereas MCs like MC Shan, Roxxanne Shante and Marly, Marl claimed that it all started out in Queensbridge projects, located in Queens New York.
This dispute forged the early sound of hip-hop, and my favourite track was The Bridge Is Over, by (Blastmaster) KRS-1, and DJ Scott La Rock, otherwise known as Boogie Down Productions.
NWA
I was just 17 years old when I heard NWA's album Straight Outta Compton, and as a fairly sheltered working-to-middle-class youth from London, England, I had no idea what it was like to live somewhere like Compton, California. So NWA decided to let me in on it, and wow, was I shocked.
I remember listening to Fuck Da Police and thinking; 'Wha-??? They can't say that!' Lyrics like:
...and when I finished
it's gonna be bloodbath
of cops dying in L.A.
Yo Dre, I got somethin' to say
FUCK DA POLICE!
FUCK, FUCK, FUCK DA POLICE!
Woah! Bit heavy isn't it?
Within months I was witnessing the six LAPD officers beating Rodney King half to death getting acquitted of any wrong doing whatsoever, even though the evidence was there for all to see.
'Ah right, I see now...'
So this next diss track is unique because it doesn't diss another rapper or rival group, it is purely about the Los Angeles Police Department of the early '90s.
Eazy E
NWA only ever released that one album, Straight Outta Compton, and the film by the same name goes a long way to explain why. Safe to say there was no love lost between the guys after the fame hit.
This was shown in Eazy E's track Real Muthaphuckkin G's, a track whereby he disses Dr Dre for being a fake studio gangster living off the notoriety that he, and the other 'real Gs' had created for him.
It was a shame to see such a creative force driven apart by the money and fame, however the beef did produce some great tunes, and this one in particular is my fave out of the lot.
Eminem
We jump forwards a few years now, and we come to perhaps one of the greatest rap lyricists of all time. Of course we will talk about Biggie & Tupac, however when it comes to the art of the diss, I believe that there is none better than Marshall Bruce Mathers III, a.k.a Eminem, a.k.a Slim Shady.
Eminems dissography is vast, in his younger day he did not hold back and nobody was safe. Whether you were the president of the United States, an actress, pop star, model, another rapper, it didn't matter, everyone was fair game to Em.
This quickly built him a reputation as the man you just didn't diss, because if you did he would bring out a track that would have everyone bopping there heads to, while laughing their asses off.
For me the absolute pinnacle of his diss tracks was the Nail In The Coffin song, aimed at Ray Benzino, the then editor of the popular hip-hop publication, Source magazine.
Benzino made the mistake of trying to diss Eminem by likening him to figure-of-fun rapper Vanilla Ice, whilst at the same time mentioning his family, particularly his daughter Haille Jade Mathers.
The gloves came off, the mic plugged in, and possibly the most brutal and savage put down in the history of hip-hop diss tracks, was issued forth, the rap diss rained hell on Benzino.
The last line of the tune was:
Let it go dog, it's over. and he did, if it was a boxing match, Benzino would have been a battered and bloody body, slumped in the corner, unable to continue.
My favourite stanza:
If you really was selling coke
Then why'd you stop dummy?
If you slew some crack
You'd make a lot more money than you do from rap!
Pow! And just like that, Benzino was silenced.
2Pac - Hit 'Em Up
This last one is a bit sad really. Biggie and 2Pac were originally friends, however things went sour after Pac was shot visiting Biggie at a studio in New York. It was this incident that started the infamous East vs West Coast beef, whereupon rappers from New York and LA went at each other in track after track.
Nick Broomfield's excellent documentary Biggie & Tupac reveals that the whole debacle was started by the evil gangster producer, Suge Knight, who is now in jail for running down two people with his car.
It is rumoured that Suge owed Pac $6,000,000, and rather than pay him, he engineered a beef between the two former friends, which sadly ended in them both losing their lives.
In Broomfield's documentary he gets an ex-LA cop to admit taking the money to the hitman who killed Biggie, unfortunately this man never testified in a court of law.
As sad as the whole incident was, it still managed to produce one of the best diss tracks of all time in, Hit 'em up
The West coast/East coast beef died with Tupac & Biggie. Hopefully, so too will Suge Knight die in a stinking jail cell for what he did to those two legends.
WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE DISS TRACK? DO YOU EVEN HAVE ONE, WERE YOU AWARE OF THE GENRE? WHATEVER THE CASE, AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
Title Image: by Louie Castro-Garcia on Unsplash