Rap Culture | Kendrick Lamar's new verse started a stir shaking rap circles – This is what the “beef culture” is all about

The rap world caught fire last weekend when the American rap music megastar, who had spent a long time in silence Kendrick Lamar started the biggest “beef” of the 2020s.

Biiffs have been a big part of rap culture since its early days. In this context, a beef usually refers to a situation where two artists publicly mock each other with their own songs. Biiffi comes from the English word beef, which means to complain about another.

Sometimes the situations even culminate in the publication of entire mock songs.

“Beefs have a lot of such cultural heritage. For example, it has been possible to have battles in clubs, and pretty soon, when rap moved from just live music to records, the making of diss records started, and through that it has become rooted in that culture,” says the long-standing rap artist Are eli Try Jaala.

Fresh the situation started when a rap artist appeared last Friday Future and music producer by Metro Boomin We Don't Trust You -album. For what's on the disc Like That –the song had Kendrick Lamar's verse hidden in it, which has been interpreted throwing mud at two other top names in modern rap music, Drake's and J. Cole on.

In the United States, the case has already reached large proportions, as several major entertainment media, such as Variety and complex, have reported on the matter.

Rap circles have debated for ages who is the best rapper at any given moment. The topic is almost as sure a way to create arguments as playing Monopoly between friends.

According to Jaala, rap is generally a suitable platform for struggle, because it generally uses a lot of intertextual references.

“I think it's always nice when there's a little competition, especially if it brings more good music. There are many examples where many artists may have made the best music of their career [biiffin aikana]. For example LL Cool J, 50 Cent and Canibus released their best songs right in the middle of the beef.”

since the 2010s Kendrick Lamar, J.Cole and Drake have ended up at the top of many lists of the best rap artists in a random order.

All of them are multi-Grammy-awarded artists, but Kendrick Lamar has collected a whopping 17 songs. He is also the world's only Pulitzer Prize-winning rap artist.

J. Cole is also a rapper praised for his lyrics, who burst into the public's consciousness in 2014 with critical acclaim Forest Hills Drive -album. Drake, on the other hand, is used to seeing often at the top of the sales charts, and he has been strongly shaping the rap sound of the 2010s with his distinctive style.

Over here the idea of ​​three verses was also referred to in Drake and J. Cole's joint recording released last year First Person Shooter in the paragraph.

J.Cole says in his part like this:

“Love when they argue the Hardest MC. Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or us? We the big three like we started a league, but right now, I feel like Muhammad Ali.”

In the clip, J. Cole talks about how he loves the competition among fans about who is the best rapper. Aubrey mentioned in the song refers to Drake and K-Dot to Kendrick Lamar. At the same time, however, J. Cole puts himself on a pedestal when he compares himself To Muhammad Alito one of the greatest boxers of all time.

Kendrick Lamar apparently took umbrage at this and took it as a sneaky diss towards him, as he utters Like That in the song “Fuck sneak dissin', first-person shooter”. At the end of the stanza, Lamar takes a direct stand on the whole “big three” idea.

“Motherfuck the big three, nigga, its just big me.”

by Kendrick Lamar the entire almost minute-long section includes several straight and less straight references to the personalities and productions of Drake and J. Cole over the years. For example, Kendrick Lamar compares himself To Prince and Drake to Michael Jackson. Prince and Michael Jackson was notoriously tense.

“And your best work is a light pack, nigga, Prince outlived Mike Jack,” raps Lamar.

Drake and Kendrick Lamar have shot before lyrical bullets at each other, but Lamar's latest verse is unusually direct foxing. J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar, on the other hand, have not publicly clashed, so Lamar is now fighting a war on two fronts.

Steaks the popularity grew especially during the golden age of rap in the 1990s, when rappers from the east and west coasts of the United States took turns taking on each other with their songs. Perhaps the most tragic beef in history also dates to the same period, Tupac's and Notorious BIGwhich eventually escalated to the murder of both rappers.

Over the course of history, the bickering between wordsmiths has calmed down, and beefs in particular no longer usually end in violence.

Jaalan there are usually three types of steaks. Often it's just a traditional competition in rap. Sometimes, especially the smaller artists, on the other hand, seek attention by challenging the bigger artist to a battle. Sometimes, on the other hand, there can be genuine personal disputes in the background.

“It's impossible to say where it comes from. Of course, one can speculate whether Kendrick has had a little longer period of feeling and [Futuren biisi] it was a good channel to go check them out. Especially if the internet detectives are right that Future and Metro Boomin have had some kind of feud with Drake, maybe that's what brought these three guys together.”

Also Finland got a taste of beef culture a few years ago, when in 2020 Gettomasa and Lukas Leon publicly measured each other. Biiffi started when Lukas Leon released a song called Gekkomasato which Gettomasa responded with a song Sit down. The beef ended shortly after Gettomasa's answer, when the rappers said they had agreed on the matter.

It is still impossible to say how big a beef the dispute between North American artists will become. It will only be considered a proper beef if Drake and J. Cole respond to Kendrick Lamar.