On Grilling the Beef, Hip-Hop/Rap & Questioning a Legacy

A few days ago I flipped absentmindedly through this slideshow on Complex Magazine’s official site. My original intention was just to kill the time that I simultaneously had too much & not enough of, but I ended up learning a lot—mostly that there were fourteen other beefs in the hip-hop/rap world that I had no idea existed. To be honest, the only beef I had concrete details about was the one between femcees Nicki Minaj and Lil Kim, mostly because I was at an age to properly follow it and because it interested me on a level that my (budding) feminism was able to latch onto. Thankfully, I am now a little bit older and a little bit less obnoxious, so I  reread through the slideshow and left with some questions about beefing, its influence on the hip-hop/rap community (and thus, the black community) and its importance.

When I wrote On Femcees & the Hip-Hop Highlander, I wanted to include a brief history of beefing, but I realized I didn’t know anything real about beefing. Much like many other facets of hip-hop & rap, I knew what it generally meant, and I’d heard of enough legendary beefs to put two and two together. What I didn’t understand was why beefs happened and the true effects it had on the hip-hop/rap world and the black community. In the case of the Minaj vs. Kim beef, it was easy to understand why two black female rappers in a majority black male space felt the need to claw at each other; that was survival and considerably necessary for their careers. With that in mind, beef between black male rappers—which arises far more often & with more media coverage—seems almost arbitrary and nothing more than unnecessary displays of arrogance and power.

I’m not going to frame beefs as such, however, because I am hesitant to characterize any facet of hip-hop/rap with an attitude that seems (uncomfortably) reminiscent of the anachronistic views of either genre. It would be dangerously easy to write off beefs as men flexing their muscles, especially when you consider how and why beefs were created. Additionally, we knowthat beefs have substantial influence on the black community, especially in the aftermath of the 1994-1997 Tupac vs. Notorious B.I.G. I refuse to label beefs as significant if they are able to rally an entire community into opposing sides.

As a witness to an argument about the (non-existent) Minaj vs. Banks “beef, I heard that “beef has always [been a part of] hip-hop.” It was a statement and an arguing point all at once; I thought “duh” in agreement even though I was on the opposing side. It’s not enough to say that beef has always been a part of hip-hop/rap; we should be questioning what kind of parts it has played. Has beef always been needed? How has it changed?

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