Kanye West released one of his most epic rants during a stop in Seattle while on his Saint Pablo tour. Apparently, Kanye isn’t on good terms with Jay Z. Kanye went after Jay Z on several professional and personal issues.
He first blasted Jay Z by claiming his verse from Drake’s “Pop Style” was removed due to disagreements between TIDAL and Apple. Kanye also announced that the highly anticipated Watch The Throne 2 album will never be released. Things eventually got personal as Kanye scolded Jay Z’s actions following Kim’s robbery.
“Don’t call me, after the robbery, and say, ‘How you feeling’? You want to know how I’m feeling? Come by the house,’ ” West yelled. “Bring the kids by the house, like we’re brothers.”
Although it will possibly just be remembered as another Kanye rant, the drama between Kanye and Jay Z has the potential to become a classic rap beef. Rap stands as a genre of music where the song itself can become competition. Since the days of MC Shan vs. KRS-One; LL Cool J vs. Kool Moe D; and Ice Cube vs. N.W.A, rap beefs have fueled hip-hop.
Jay Z’s beef with Nas in 2001 served as the peak clash of the rap titans. Jay Z and Nas were both lyrically skilled, but Jay Z was gaining more momentum as his celebrity status began to surpass Nas’ in the early 2000s. Jay Z hit first with sneak attack, “Takeover” from his classic album The Blueprint. But Nas’ diss to Jay Z, “Ether,” was so scathing that the word “Ether” eventually became a slang term for the act of destroying an opponent. Following the beef, Nas’ career began to flourish again and Jay Z continued his rise as the most successful rapper of his generation.
Since the Jay Z and Nas beef, there have been pedestrian beefs in rap. Kendrick Lamar challenged nearly all of his rap contemporaries with his epic verse on 2013’s “Control.” But other than a respectable comeback from Big K.R.I.T. on “Mt. Olympus,” most of the rappers Kendrick called out on the song never gave him a legitimate challenge. In 2015, Drake was able to humiliate Meek Mill with the witty “Back to Back.” But Meek Mill proved that he wasn’t a battle rapper and eventually got “bodied by a singing” rapper.
However, Kanye and Jay Z could give rap a much-needed boost by clashing on record. Jay Z vs. Kanye could throw a few diss records at each other over the next few months to get things charged. Once the beef dies down, they can announce a resolution by reuniting for a summer tour. By the end of next summer, the two can come together by finally releasing Watch The Throne 2.
Jay Z once said, “Hip-hop needs events, it needs certain things to happen at certain times, like a spark of energy. Like a [Dr.] Dre album or those moments in time that you look back on when Snoop Dogg first came out, it was like 800,000 [albums sold] in the first week. Those events are needed in hip-hop, and it just felt like it was too far in between.”
Kanye vs. Jay Z in a lyrical battle would be the most important hip-hop event in over a decade.
