What’s Beef?

Beef=Bread. It’s no secret that throughout its history, Hip-Hop has thrived both commercially and artistically on the antagonism of its biggest names. Since the days when The Herculoids rocked the block parties of the Bronx, the open confrontation of the break, DJ, and later MC battles was responsible for the emergence of hip-hop’s earliest stars (Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation, Caz, and others come to mind). As battles became increasingly popular, the shift in prominence from breaking and DJing to the MC came to define our modern notion of hip-hop. Not only that, but think about the really ridiculous explosion of talent that was coming directly from those streets and beginning to take the mainstream music establishment by storm. If the beef-culture and one-upmanship hadn’t shifted focus to the lyrical dexterity of the MC, who knows what would have happened to Kurtis, Cold Crush, Kool Moe Dee, the Furious Five, Spoonie G, and the rest. Maybe without this latent antagonistic spirit, Hip-Hop would have taken the glossier, less lyrical route of the Sugar Hill (not to diminish their contributions to the culture in any way). Although beef was more of a benign and creative catalyst and not yet the primary commercial engine of hip-hop, it would soon become the most marketable part of the genre. As we all know, controversy sells. But I will spare the rest of the history lesson because most of you have either heard it or lived it. Let’s just say that fairly soon after, beef became embedded in the economic fabric of hip-hop. Roxanne was UTFO’s signature joint but the spin-offs, disses, and remakes that it prompted were the real source of its popularity. I mean, Roxanne’s Revenge sold more than 250,000 copies in NYC alone, and it was purely a diss record. And we all know The Bridge Wars pretty much put KRS ONE on the map and dragged on for years…as long as they were profitable. But just because rappers quickly figured out the formula beef=bread doesn’t mean that it stopped being a powerful creative force in hip-hop. It is one of those rare situations in rap where money and corporate interests didn’t corrupt. We can all name about a hundred classic beefs, and odds are most were motivated at least partially by industry interests. But the thing about rap beef is it is governed by an innate sense of originality and individuality. The desire to show up your opponent always pushed the artistic envelope—and it always made for damn good music. But things have changed. I hate to sound like the disgruntled old-timer when I’m not even old enough to have seen half the things I’m writing about. But let’s be real: in this era of vlogs and youtube vids, half-assed diss records, instant access exclusives, blog cartels, and overblown hipster hype, beef just ain’t what it used to be. The symptoms of this decline are visible everywhere—all you need to do is take virtual trip to your closest rap blog. A few weeks ago, my boy sent me a track by Charles Hamilton called “Crack a Blogger” (not that I’m in the habit of bumping him). In it, I heard him throw shots at Jadakiss and nearly the entire Aftermath squad (among others). It just started to bug me out how someone who was virtually unknown a year ago and has never proven his worth in any substantive way could be coming at Kiss—a quick-tongued, highly respected vet with classics under his belt and more than ten years in the game. Then I saw a clip from the now infamous “Joe Budden TV” that compounded my disbelief. Another Internet rapper challenging an established legend—this time it was Method Man. Now unlike Hamilton, I’ve always liked Budden. He’s a talented, thoughtful MC, unfortunately with a hyperbolic sense of his own importance. Now there was a time when an up-and-comer had to challenge a recognized vet to get on—or at least accept any challenge presented. In ‘88, LL proved himself by showing he could hang lyrically with the likes of Moe Dee. In ‘94 an alternative-leaning Chicagoan who had just changed his name to Common decided to accept a challenge from Ice Cube, rap’s established tough guy. Regardless of the contenders or their motives, it was always came down to the music. It was always about the Show and Prove. As Jadakiss once put it, “this is hip-hop, and battles stem back to the music.” But today, the battle needs the music less and less. Explaining the Buddens and Hamiltons of the world is more complex that it may seem. Sure, we can attribute this phenomenon to the obvious explanation: ease of access—the Internet makes everyone a contender. Not everyone can actually spit, but anyone can leak a diss record to the blogs or post a video. In this virtual Wild West, there’s no oversight and anyone can say anything to anyone, regardless of how outlandish the claim may be. But there’s more. These guys are, in no uncertain terms, internet rappers. Their knowledge and scope of understanding is limited to their virtual world, their blogs, their hype. The only consciousness they have of their own buzz is via the Internet. Sure, they may be “internet-big” because they got props on nahright or eskay, but this distorts their buzz, it exaggerates their value, and it deludes them into challenging and disrespecting the greats. Finally, the internet has forced them to invert that classic equation that defined rap beef for so long, beef=bread. Because the Internet takes away the “bread” aspect and makes it much more difficult for artists and labels to profit off of music, these rappers seem to substitute skills for hype. Way back when beef created record sales, the labels and the rappers knew that the battles had to seem real. They had to come with their hardest and most creative 16s to convince the fans of their validity—their economic livelihood depended on it. Now that pressure to legitimize and thus generate income from beef has evaporated. In the Internet era, the equation reads Beef=Buzz. Buzz is a lot less tangible than bread, and with the Internet, a whole lot easier to generate.