Results for “hip-hop hierarchy/rivalry”

Songs

Hip Hop

Mos Def

Mos Def treats hip hop as both craft and condition -- a language, a livelihood, and a lens on Black American history that he…

artistic craft and discipline Black lineage and history music industry exploitation

Mo Money Mo Problems [Amended]

The Notorious B.I.G.

A victory-lap posse cut built around a mournful hook that undercuts all the boasting: success has made the narrator a target…

success and paranoia envy and betrayal status display

euphoria

Kendrick Lamar

This is Kendrick Lamar's opening salvo in his 2024 feud with Drake, a slow-building diss track that escalates from clinical…

authenticity vs performance cultural appropriation of Blackness manipulation and dishonesty

Rose Hip November

Vashti Bunyan

A brief, hushed instrumental-scale miniature that treats a single autumn day as a small ceremony, pairing seasonal images with a…

seasonal change rural pastoral life folklore and superstition

Go to Church

Ice Cube

A crunk-era posse cut in which Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg trade boasts built around a single taunt: prove your toughness or admit…

performative masculinity authenticity vs. fraudulence street credibility

Going Back to Cali

The Notorious B.I.G.

A breezy, boastful travelogue in which Biggie plays tourist in Los Angeles while never once loosening his grip on his East Coast…

coastal identity and rivalry hedonism and excess braggadocio

Country Cousins

Talib Kweli

A track built around regional hip-hop kinship, tracing how a Brooklyn upbringing steeped in New York rap culture connects…

regional identity in hip-hop cultural kinship and slang as connective tissue coming-of-age through music

MIDDLE CHILD

J. Cole

J. Cole positions himself as hip-hop's bridge generation, flexing competitive bravado while pivoting into mentorship and social…

generational responsibility authenticity vs. materialism hip-hop legacy

Where I'm From

Digable Planets

This posse-cut catalog builds a portrait of a hip-hop upbringing not through a single narrator but through overlapping voices…

cultural identity and community Afrocentric consciousness hip-hop as inheritance

We the People....

A Tribe Called Quest

A Tribe Called Quest opens their comeback album with a song that fuses street-level survival talk with a chorus that mimics the…

racism and xenophobia economic precarity media distortion

Sweet

Common

"Sweet" is Common's confrontational rebuttal to the softer, more romantic image he'd cultivated on prior albums, delivered as a…

reclaiming masculinity/toughness hip-hop legacy and authenticity boasting and self-mythologizing

Award Tour

A Tribe Called Quest

A victory-lap travelogue disguised as a posse cut, where the pleasure of touring the world with a hip-hop crew becomes the whole…

hip-hop craft and lineage global travel and touring life authenticity vs. imitation

Time & Space (A New Refutation Of)

Digable Planets

This is Digable Planets' mission statement for the whole Reachin' album: a loose, jazz-inflected verse suite about hip-hop as a…

Afrofuturism and cosmic identity hip-hop as communal ritual New York geography and scene-building

Sex, Drugs and Violence

Public Enemy

Public Enemy uses three loosely connected vignettes of unsolved shootings tied to hip-hop culture to indict the industry and…

media complicity violence in hip-hop culture commercialization of black death

What They Do

The Roots

A mid-90s Roots track built around a single defiant refrain, positioning the group's artistic integrity against a hip-hop…

authenticity vs. commercialism artistic integrity hip-hop lineage and craft

9th Wonder (Blackitolism)

Digable Planets

A loose, jazz-inflected posse cut in which the Digable Planets crew trade boasts about style, borough pride, and lyrical…

borough/regional pride Afrocentric and cosmic imagery lyrical dexterity as identity

Mathematics

Mos Def

Mos Def builds a dense, statistics-driven indictment of American racial and economic injustice around the conceit of numbers,…

mass incarceration systemic racism economic inequality

It's Good To Be Here

Digable Planets

Digable Planets frame their own arrival on the hip-hop scene as an interstellar landing, spinning a mock-sci-fi mythology in…

Afrofuturism as playful self-mythology hip-hop and jazz lineage group identity and unity

The Magic Number

De La Soul

De La Soul turns Schoolhouse Rock's arithmetic lesson into a manifesto for the trio itself, using the number three as a stand-in…

group identity and unity originality vs. imitation in hip-hop numerology/mysticism as playful device

Excursions

A Tribe Called Quest

Q-Tip opens The Low End Theory with a genealogy lesson, tracing hip-hop back through his father's love of bebop and framing rap…

lineage and continuation of Black music integrity versus phoniness time and history repeating

The R

Eric B.

A late-80s Eric B. & Rakim track that doubles as a comeback statement and a victory lap, addressing fans who waited through a…

hip-hop mastery community and borough pride patience and delayed gratification

Still D.R.E.

Dr. Dre

A comeback statement dressed as a boast, in which Dr. Dre answers years of speculation about his relevance by cataloguing…

reputation and legacy authenticity versus commercialism loyalty to origin/streets

Ether

Nas

This is the definitive diss track of the Nas–Jay-Z feud, a single sustained assault built to end an argument rather than…

rap rivalry and hierarchy authenticity vs. fabrication legacy and lineage

Raising Hell

Run-DMC

The title track of Run-DMC's landmark album is a boast-battle anthem built almost entirely from self-crowning imagery and…

braggadocio hip-hop supremacy battle rhetoric

B-Boys In the Cut

Beastie Boys

A rapid-fire posse cut in which the trio trades boastful, joke-stuffed verses over old-school-style delivery, leaning into…

braggadocio nostalgia for hip-hop's roots wordplay for its own sake

Rapp Snitch Knishes

MF DOOM

MF DOOM turns a satirical eye on rap's tough-guy posturing, mocking MCs whose lyrics function as confessions that could be used…

hip-hop authenticity and posturing self-incrimination and surveillance street credibility vs. performance

Notorious B.I.G.

The Notorious B.I.G.

A posthumous Bad Boy track (from the 1999 'Born Again' album) built as a victory-lap anthem, stitching together a Biggie verse…

posthumous myth-making excess and materialism hyper-masculine bravado

Royalty

Gang Starr

A late-90s Gang Starr track that pairs Guru's understated boasting with an R&B hook from K-Ci and JoJo, framing self-respect and…

self-respect and dignity black excellence/regality authenticity vs. commercialism

The Dreamer

Common

Common uses the framework of the American Dream and Martin Luther King's rhetoric to narrate his own rise from Chicago's South…

ambition and self-mythology the American Dream legacy and lineage

Coffin Nails

MF DOOM

Coffin Nails is an instrumental beat from MF DOOM's Special Herbs series, the long-running set of production-only tracks he…

mortality vice and self-destruction underground hip-hop craft

Eye Know

De La Soul

"Eye Know" is De La Soul's sunniest love song, built on a Steely Dan sample and playful Daisy Age slang. Both Posdnuos and…

courtship and seduction wordplay as intimacy group identity and self-naming

Hit It Run

Run-DMC

A boast-driven b-boy anthem in which D.M.C. asserts lineage, dominance, and craft over Jam Master Jay's stripped-down beats. The…

braggadocio hip-hop lineage and authenticity self-naming/identity

Elevators (Me & You)

OutKast

A come-up narrative that traces Outkast's rise from broke teenagers riding public transit and writing rhymes to minor local…

upward mobility authenticity vs. fame Southern hip-hop pride

Rosa Parks

OutKast

A brash, funk-driven boast track in which Outkast repurpose a civil-rights phrase as a battle-rap taunt, using the chorus as a…

competition and dominance in hip-hop staying artistically ahead Southern regional pride

As the Rhyme Goes On

Eric B.

A dense, self-referential display of MC craft in which Rakim narrates his own performance as it happens, treating the rhyme…

self-reflexive artistry mic authority and lineage hip-hop as physical/mental control

Hollis Crew (Krush-Groove 2)

Run-DMC

An early foundational Run-DMC record built almost entirely around boasting: each MC takes a turn establishing his name, his…

braggadocio and self-mythologizing identity and naming hip-hop lineage/crew loyalty

Me & Mr Jones

Amy Winehouse

A blistering, funny complaint about a lover who keeps letting the narrator down, built around a chant of ownership that keeps…

possessive love betrayal and self-deception ambivalence

One Beer

MF DOOM

A boozy, freewheeling posse-cut of a track built on the pun of "one beer" doubling as "one beer left" and a coded jab at fake…

intoxication as metaphor for scarcity/competition hip-hop authenticity vs. imitation supervillain persona

Moment of Truth

Gang Starr

Gang Starr's title track is a meditation on accountability and betrayal dressed as street philosophy, moving from meditative…

betrayal and loyalty accountability/karma paranoia at success

Steve Biko (Stir It Up)

A Tribe Called Quest

A three-MC posse cut built almost entirely from boasts, wordplay, and Queens pride, borrowing the name and instrumental cue of…

hip-hop bravado and lyrical skill group identity and borough pride fleeting social consciousness