A new age version of East Coast vs. West Coast beef has begun upon us. The main fighters? Joey Bada$$ and Ray Vaughn. The first jab thrown was by Joey with ‘The Ruler’s Back’ with “Too much West Coast d—k lickin’, I’m hearin’ n—as throwin’ rocks, really ain’t s—t stickin’,‘Cause if we talkin’ bar for bar, really it’s slim pickings,”. Here he’s referencing what feels like the rejuvenation of West Coast rap with the big run Kendrick Lamar has had. Famous battle rapper Daylyt was actually the first one to retaliate six days later with ‘HIYU’. On ‘HIYU’ Daylyt raps “To my n—as out in Harlem, thanks for all that you’ve done, To them n—as over the bridge, we tell ’em ‘Don’t be dumb’, To the uptown, to the downtown, to the midtown, I love y’all, The West up, but I’ll never dub y’all, for real,”. As we know, Joey is from Brooklyn which is across the bridge from Harlem.
Ray Vaughn then throws all caution to the wind and drops ‘Crashout Heritage’ and sends clear shots at the Pro Era rapper. The Long Beach rapper raps back “What’s with the sneak dissing? Taking shots then hide the uzi, cause the only bada– the world was recognizing is Boosie. Please don’t get confused with shooting them movies with really shooting. Was on Soul Album, So If You ask me, you look like you look like a goofy.” The first line is an obvious shot at his name, then he goes into Joey’s recent acting on Power Book III: Raising Kanan, before he talks about referring to Ab-Soul and Joey Bada$$ collaboration on Ab-Soul ‘Herbert’ Album. Joey then returns fire with ‘Sorry Not Sorry’, first he starts with small jabs putting on for hsi city before he directly address what’s going on with “F—k it, I want all the smoke, put my crеdit on the line, ‘Cause n—as can’t f—k with me, we talkin’ ’bout it line for line, The audacity of this n—a, he must be out his mind/ Haunted by the ghost of Biggie and Pac, I’m them combined,”.
The next shot comes from a new player in the game: CJ Fly. CJ Fly is from the New York rap collective Pro Era that Joey is also a part of. CJ raps on HIYU freestyle (a direct correlation to Daylyt’s song), and directly takes shots at the West and Ray Vaughn with bars that invoke thought. He says “We Brooklyn cats that do a little acting but ain’t Hollywood, it’s ’bout to get dark, won’t see the light of day, Tell son he need to lighten up, because we’ve seen more brighter rays, And if we talking bars, we got wide array/ You better watch out for the sharks while tryna ride the wave,”. Clearly the “won’t see the light of day” line is a reference to Daylyt and his rap name. The “we’ve seen more brighter rays” is another clear reference at Ray Vaughn and his rap name. Daylyt then returns the favor with ‘YHRR’. From the title alone, you can see the energy Daylyt is coming with the title as YHRR it is directly linked to the popularized New York phrase “Yerrrr”. On ‘YHRR’, Daylyt spits “I guess it’s all over jealousy, I became what you could never be, the nicest, and while you niggas cherish me. There’s no comparing me to none of y’all. One of y’all say my name and I’ll get to sonning, y’all for daring me, Apparently line f-, You niggas sound dumb! One of my lines your whole album!”
The West then shoots again when Ray Vaughn comes with ‘Impossible Patty’, where he takes direct shots at the Brooklyn rapper/actor with “Rappers turned actors, got the nerve of bein’ indirect. I don’t get it yet. Just know they bad for business, based on all the past decisions. Spent a band to make ’em twitch like DJ Akademiks.”. Again, a diss to Joey becoming a relevant actor in that world and that he believes Joey doing a lot of dissing but not saying who he is dissing. Joey then takes the last shot for a while when he dropped ‘Pardon Me’ and says “They mind struck, tell ’em step them rhymes up, slime. Know I’m worth y’all time, but y’all just ain’t worth mine … Nobody knows your name, kid, but I know what your aim is. I shoot you, I’m brainless, you shoot me, you famous.” . A direct response to Ray Vaughn on ‘Impossible Patty’ saying he’s not worth putting a name on his disses.
The next shot then come to 3 months later when Ray Vaughn rapped a freestyle for Justin Credible. While freestyling, Ray Vaughn states “Don’t need an opinion from a n—a who ain’t reachin’ the top. Claiming they got hits but they ain’t doing the job. Ain’t had a hit since like 19/99, what happened to the vibes. Oh, you turned a lil’ nas. Call of Duty live/ Goofy n—a better pick a squad/ ‘Cause they not like us,” He’s clearly taking a shot at the Pro Era rapper who one of his biggest projects was 1999 while also paying homage to Kendrick Lamar who both artists were TDE at a time. Joey Bada$$ returns fire on ‘Red Bull Spiral Freestyle’ saying it wasn’t the West vs. the East, but it is just simply that he thinks he is the best. Ray Vaughn comes back rather quickly with ‘H*e Era’ where he talks about how being with Ab-Soul won’t gone save him. Joey comes back the next day again with ‘The Finals’ where he talks about how Ray Vaughn will get kicked off TDE roster and he’s going to be the Reason, a reference at another former TDE rapper Reason. Reason being mentioned, he decided to jump in the battle too. Reason releases ‘The Dead Apple’, where he says he’s just throwing light jabs in response, but this was not his battle to fight. Popular LA rapper AZ Chike jumped in the battle next with ‘What Would You Do? Where he rapped “Tag me in, time to get a n—a gone. Yeah, you bad to the a*s. I’m just bad to the bone/ Gave you a lil’ snippet, you ain’t even worth a song. Shout to opium, I’ll destroy you on my lone/ How you a pro from your era, still ain’t make a hit song. N—a stick to the script, should’ve stayed in your zone,” . This was a diss to Joey’s name and his rap collective’s name Pro Era.
Daylyt comes back the same day as AZ Chike with ‘WRD2MIMVA’ and raps to Joey about how he’ll never get a reply from Kendrick Lamar. CJ Fly then responds the same day with ‘STINGray’, an obvious use of Ray Vaughn name. Joey replies the same day as well with ‘My Town’. On this song, Mr. Bada$$ takes aim at everybody. He talks about Kendrick when Joey says he’s the real boogeyman and then responds to AZ Chike when he refers to him as “A*s Cheek”. Ray Vaughn comes back the same exact day again with ‘Golden Eye’ where he calls out Joey for hanging out with Diddy in the midst of all the controversy. Daylyt sends shots back a day later with his song ‘Ayo’ where he talks about how Kendrick is not going to respond again. The Brooklyn rapper responded the same day when he rapped over an old Tupac beat with ‘Crash Dummy’ where he raps to Ray Vaughn saying Top Dawg won’t let him drop after this. Inglewood rapper YG then enters the fiery beef when he dropped ‘Hollywood’ where he too clowns Joey for hanging out with Diddy. Ab Soul put the final draw on the beef for now where he actually seems to enter neutral, to be expected because of his relationship with Joey. On his song, he talks about how some rappers need to check in cause he doesn’t know them. This recent flurries of song have brought back a generation of beef we thought died with past rappers, but as we can see it is alive and well. It is great to see a new generation of rappers being competitive and actively rapping with passion.
