In the early days of hip-hop, beef was a way of challenging your friends and rivals (who were sometimes one and the same) on wax to showcase one another’s skills. Sure, bragging rights were involved, but it was all for entertainment of the audience. Somewhere along the way the meaning got lost. Beef became all too real when both Tupac and Biggie were slain as a result of their diss records leaving the musical matrix and becoming a real-life blood bath. Later, the entourages of Foxy Brown and Lil’ Kim traded gunfire that inadvertently led to Kim’s incarceration on perjury charges.
Around the turn of the decade, though, beef started to become culturally acceptable again as violence was for the most part kept out of the tear. Nas and Jay-Z’s war of words led to one of the most intriguing “which side are you on” arguments in hip-hop history. The bravado makes for entertainment value as well as potential for records sold (who wants to buy the loser’s album?).
This strategy has been employed in recent years by R&B crooners like Trey Songz, R. Kelly, Mario, The-Dream, and countless others. Does the R&B thug beef tactic hold weight, though, or is it a bunch of hot air?
Trey Songz in particular lately has sent warning shots out toward R. Kelly for using auto-tune and reportedly becoming irrelevant, as well as trying to best Mario on his own track.
Mario for his part asserts that “Trey does that all the time. He gets on records that are hot, that he may wish were his, but they aren’t. … I’ve been doing this for a minute and I don’t put myself in the same lane as Trey or anybody else.” Them’s fightin’ words!
Elsewhere, Dream recently threw shade on J. Holiday, for whom he wrote and produced his biggest hit “Bed”, saying: “Him getting that record had nothing to do with J. Holiday. You would know if me and J. Holiday really had a good relationship—you’d see us [together] more often. He’d probably be on my album. I would probably be on his [new] album, which I didn’t do a song for.”
So, where’s the beef? And I mean that in the sense of, “where’s the meat (pause) of this conflict”? Why do I care if Trey Songz throws shade at R. Kelly or Mario, Mario throws it back, or if The-Dream writes off J. Holiday?
The truth is, I don’t. I just can’t take dudes who sing love songs for a living trading barbs seriously. No shade — I’m an R&B head ’til death and I will knock a good love joint just like the next person. But I’m not thinking I can hear your heart crying out for me when I’m plotting on getting brolic with the dude giving me the stank eye from across the bar.
There’s a way to uphold your masculinity while still singing ballads. Creating empty beef is not a viable option. Hell, rappers these days can barely get right, and most of them survive based on street cred. R&B fellas, take heed and be lovers, not fighters.
