The Beauty in Beef

[disgruntledhuman]

Back before rappers were trading bullets, they were trading insults on the mic. I'm thinking back to those days before it was taken out of the studio when rappers were throwing lyrical punches at one another. What's some of your favorite beefs in the rap world?

I always liked LL vs Kool Moe Dee, and I really liked Death Blow by Kool Moe Dee. KRS vs Shan.

Although catergorized as gangsta rap, I didn't see any real violence stem from this aside from the Dee Barnes incident... but I thought Ice Cube ripped N.W.A a new one with the No Vaseline track.

What are some other memorable beefs from the old days of rap that I have forgotten? Which ones are some of your favorites?

[Ander]

Definitely the Eminem VS Everlast (from House of Pain) beef. That came close to being a one on one encounter, but it ended with Eminem getting the last laugh. However, Everlast only made one diss track at Em, and at the end of the song, he says "fuck it, I don't want to waste anymore time on you, dude". Though, I wouldn't necessarily say this was an old beef. It happened around the late '90's, I want to say.

 :!:

And you can't forget the Eazy E VS Dre beef, but I believe it was one sided with Eazy E making that "Real Muthafuckin G's" track. I don't believe Dre ever made a reply to that diss, musically.

Ice Cube, along with all other NWA members, were not real gangsters. Out of all of them, Eazy E was the one with any charges. But, even he didn't do very much. He was probably a small time drug dealer, but that's all, really. He never got involved in any big time trouble.

[MOOG]

LL has been in so many diss wars over the years. Anyone remember that To The Break of Dawn track he did where he dissed One rapper per verse? One of the rappers was Ice T . Anyone know anything about this, why they had beef?

[disgruntledhuman]

From what I remember it started in Ice T's song Pusher. When he was being the "drug" dealer pushing albums to people, he said something about you want some LL and the person was like no. I thought that's where that came from.

I used to love when rappers would beef back before the whole east/west shit started. Back when it was Kool Moe vs LL or Ice T vs LL or BDP vs Shan, even Cube vs NWA. Back when a rapper would put out a whole song about another MC and before it was all about how they were going to kill each other. I miss the old days.

[MOOG]

Totally, it was all about skill rather than kill!! While we're on the subject of beefs, I read something  about a supposed beef between Rakim and Big Daddy Kane once. It started because Kane had said "the rap soloist, you don't want none of this"on Set it off  and the rap soloist was Rakim's thing and Rakim had said 'Word to daddy, indeed" on Follow the Leader. I don't think there was too much in it but someone had put up a shit load of money for them to meet in a battle but it never happened.

[Betamacks]

Yeah, plus those beefs made you wnat to get the records - they were entertaining - plus helped to sell records.

Do you remember in the early 90's there was always this thing about the gay rapper - the rap bandit in the source used to always hint about who it was but I don't think he ever revealled it. I always thought it was LL.

I know it's pretty immature and gossipy but did this ever get revealled ?

[shauny1453]

I remember LL vs. MC Shan

[shauny1453]

The Gay rapper was prob SNOW after being turned out in prison.

[DJM]

I always thought that LL was scared to battle Moe Dee. If they would have actually battled I think Moe Dee would have won. I remember reading a story on how LL showed up at a Moe Dee concert and jumped on stage in the middle of one of his songs. Later in the show Moe Dee spotted him and challenged him to a battle and LL said no. And even just in their music it sounded to me like Moe Dee wanted it much more. He had lines like "So you got paid/ Take the money you've made/ Bet it on yourself, are you afraid?" Where as LL had lines like "You don't really wanna battle. Why don't you just forget it."

[LiquidSwords]

One of my favorite battles is probably BDP vs. The Juice Crew. MC Shan kind of lost against KRS One because the brigde is over just murdered Shan lyrically. But kill that noise was still a good track along with Roxanne shante's have a nice day. Another favorite of mine is probably canibus vs ll cool j. I think ll cool j pulled kind of a bitch move with his whole 4321 verse. Canibus destroyed him on second round k.o, Idk I guess I just like an underdog story