I’m a proud carnivore: the beef is served on my dinner plate. Slabs of tenderness, doused in grease and love with some sort of potato-based side dish; perhaps a cola, if you will. So pardon my disappointment… but I feel like there’s a shortage of beef in hip-hop right now. We’re getting a little too used to the cloned meat we taste through subliminals in songs. The hors d’oeuvres we scrape up from an empty shot on Twitter or someone straight flexin’ on Instagram leaves me, to simplify, empty.
I’m in a room full of vegans with a carnivore mindstate. This is what hip-hop has become.
For a little context, allow me to redefine “beef”: Beef is a staple in the diet of a culture that has spent decades in overdrive, with masculinity, sexuality, pride, greed and broken relationships at the core. Beef is saying someone’s name in a song when everyone’s waiting for it. Beef is a wordsmith being thrust forth into the coliseum where we are the bloodthirsty spectators, lusting with every piece of audio. Beef is about respect, and how it’s earned and kept. Beef transcends art and thrives in life. It is an essential, unavoidable chess piece in the human identity that we all confront one way or another.
And then the thuggery went digital. And now, we have nothing left to whet our appetites.
Obviously, I’m not expecting lives to be lost over rap songs. That is a nonsensical and fairly stereotypical request. But Jesus Actual Christ, we are in crisis mode with an impending epidemic on the horizon: the ability to hide behind characters. Why waste four minutes when you have two or so sentences to talk down on someone? The soapbox provided via radio and television still exists, but very rarely will anyone step to the plate. When someone does, it is a barrage of empty threats, followed by another two sentences and a marketing plan for a VH1 show since everyone has one (connect the dots on who I’m talking about. Or turn the television on).
The proliferation of social media has enabled our favorite talking pieces to build a collective force field around them to avoid the beef coming to them. Diss songs are never direct anymore; the fat and protein we receive from someone serving an aggravated assault on an enemy’s character is now shrouded in secrecy and code. We no longer go to wax… we go to the timeline.
The examples are piling up by the minute. Recently, R&B crooners Chris Brown and Frank Ocean allegedly had a confrontation outside of a studio in L.A. over a parking spot. Nah. It was definitely the Twitter feud we saw last year. An ongoing Philadelphia rivalry between renowned battle-rapper/“My Drink N’ My 2 Step” artist Cassidy and MMG workhorse Meek Mill took several open shots in the realm of the light-blue bird before they exchanged diss tracks. The saddening (not really) breakup of the Money Team saw a twitter beef between loudmouth boxing champ Floyd Mayweather and G-turned-Vitamin-Water-slinger 50 Cent before a $5 million offer to box each other eventually surfaced (the details are still being hashed out. On Twitter. Go figure).
Now something deserving of its own paragraph is the cardinal example of MMG bawse Rick Ross’s cocaine kingpin façade finally meeting him with death threats, cancelled tours and bullets. Apparently, he is currently engaged in a feud with the legendary Chicago-based Gangster Disciples over his symbolic disrespect of their major figurehead Larry Hoover on his smash hit “BMF (Blowin’ Money Fast)” as well as his claiming of GDs’ symbol on a recent mixtape and plenty more we have absolutely no idea about.
Remember the 90s when gangsters didn’t own computers? Now they come equipped. The GDs have made multiple death threat videos banning Ross and his MMG cohort from entering Chicago until he handles whatever business is left. Even Cassidy was in one of them. Intersectionality, folks.
A question for the new generation of hip-hop consumers: When is the last time you heard a decent diss record from your favorite artist? When was the last time a feud of WWE-esque proportions excited you to the point of watching every footprint for the next line? Do we even have towns, cities, high schools, or entire coasts taking sides anymore? No. A threshold for mediocrity in hip-hop has ushered in a new era of bland, diluted material for storylines to build foundations upon. We don’t take it to the streets; we take it to the tweets (Christ, that was corny). This beef is no longer grass-fed, free-range or any other hipster foodie term most rappers don’t use; it is grocery-grade chuck, longing for a purpose… and a middle finger. And we sit, logged in, waiting for the flame to return.
Column over. Time for me to subtweet about yet another rapper I don’t respect. Now, is that boredom… or zeitgeist fuel? I’ll let the Internet Gangsters decide.
Got a beef of your own? E-mail Michael at mdpenn@wisc.edu
