It may be surprising to many people that I am a passionate fan of rap beefs. It is often fashionable in these times for people to look down on the Romans and other peoples for their fascination of gladiatorial combat and other forms of bloodsport. People clutch their pearls at the thought of bear-baiting and think that bull-fighting is savage and cruel. Yet as someone who loves the thought of two people engaging in a no-holds barred rhetorical contest over their reputations and legacy and who has personally relished the thrill of smacking down other people through the power of my own pen (and keyboard) in similar contests suggests that I am not superior to the savage instincts of earlier generations of humanity. Nor do I claim to be, nor do I think I have ever claimed superiority to others because of refined sensibilities that see no joy in debate and conflict and a supposed lack of emotional stake in the outcome of contests that I hope can be influenced by my own rhetorical skill. That is to say, I appreciate rap beef as someone who is an outsider to hip-hop culture because it reflects a version of the sort of debate and rhetorical culture I personally enjoy, I see it as a slightly less elevated form of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and only slightly, as we will shortly discuss.

How does it feel for someone who is an obvious outsider like myself to cheer on a rap beef? Let me begin answering this by saying that this was by no means my first rap beef that I had a passionate interest in. I would say that the first rap beef that ever exercised my deep personal interest was actually LL Cool J vs. Canibus. Canibus was the clear underdog, and taking offense at LL Cool J’s behavior regarding one of his verses, made the mistake of opening an attack with the track “Second Round K.O.” against the far more popular rapper. LL Cool J replied with the scathing “Rip The Jacker,” in which he insinuated all kinds of things about Canibus along with a great deal of ad-hominem attacks against his small size, his lack of stature within the rapping community, his association with Wyclef Jean, and supposedly bad prison experiences, while deftly replying that if 99% of his fans were chicks, as Canibus had tried to pin on him, that 99% of the other rapper’s fans didn’t exist. It was effective if somewhat below-the-belt rhetorical sparring and the result was predictable in that LL Cool J had demonstrated his manhood and ability to defend himself and was able to go on before while Canibus no longer had any hope of a mainstream career because people would quote the lines from the diss track back at him. He later engaged in a similarly unsuccessful rap contest against Eminem, whose fondness for diss tracks I have long appreciated and enjoyed, not least because of his willingness to be uncomfortably honest when making them (see, for example, “The Warning” against Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon as a response to Mariah Carey’s ill-advised “Obsessed” single and video).

There is a certain thrill that one gets by cheering on a rap battle, especially one that plays out over several tracks. What kind of disses will be made by the two sides, how will the two artists respond to their critics, hopefully with their own bars (sorry Aubrey), and successfully frame the duel and make the appropriate combination of offensive and defensive maneuvers. I have to admit that I greatly enjoyed Drake vs. Kendrick and largely agree with the opinion that Kendrick won in a commanding fashion, and many other people far closer to the culture have given solid reasons as to why that was the case. I have nothing in particular to add to that insider’s perspective, coming as an outsider as I do. Being an outsider to hip hop culture who is fond of rap beefs, though, sometimes brings with it some dangers, and included with that is the tendency to catch a few strays. In this particular rap beef, I was left with the feeling of having to think about what my enjoyment of this beef says about me personally, about how broad of a brush Kendrick meant to paint in “Not Like Us” concerning the behavior of colonizers (which I have already spoken about earlier), and about the nature of Drake’s apparent projection in his misunderstanding of “Mother I Sober” and his own lack of self-awareness about his contribution to generational patterns of abuse and trauma in his own broken family and the root causes of his own deep insecurities and emotional immaturity. Having done a fair amount of soul time to wrestle with my own past and my own personal and family background, it was clearly obvious to me that Kendrick had done the same kind of time himself (it is, indeed, the theme of his last album) and that Drake had not. That this influenced my view of who was more successful in the rap beef I do not pretend to deny.

There were indeed other angles that the two artists explored that are worthy of a broader discussion. One of these involves the problems of the music industry itself. As is common when it comes to the business of art, musicians tend to be a highly exploited ‘commodity’ within the music business. Music labels (and movie studios) engage in all kinds of financial shenanigans to avoid paying money off of successful artists to let them share in profits while narrowly defining what can be used to pay off album advances and promo budgets, leaving most artists trapped in long-term indenture contracts where they bear a great deal of the risk and lose a great deal of the profit. Both Drake and Kendrick, in their own way, discussed the corruption of the music industry that both were involved in by commenting on how many points that were taken away from their profits (Drake, in “Pushups”) and in Kendrick’s commentary (most notable in “Not Like Us”) that artists were involved in policing some of the immoral aspects of the music industry. There is a long history of musicians engaged in the exploitation of others (especially but not only women) to gratify their own lusts and to take advantage of the easy availability of sexual favors to those who are successful artists, and it appears that music labels view this as an alternate means of currency by which artists can be “paid” by the industry in a way that does not diminish their own profits and which can even at times give additional profitable material to other aspects of their business lines (like gossip magazines and shows). In our enjoyment of the competition between two rappers, do we notice and reflect upon ourselves and upon the systems that are involved in the world in which we live, or do we just pass the popcorn and cheer on the gladiatorial bloodsport that is provided for our entertainment?