The Joey Bada$$ vs. Everyone Beef Is Fun, But What’s It Really About?

On New Year’s Day, Brooklyn rapper Joey Bada$$ took aim at Kendrick Lamar with a track called “The Ruler’s Back.” Kendrick has yet to respond, but TDE rapper Ray Vaughn, TDE affiliate Daylyt, and other West Coasters have spent much of 2025 shooting back at Bada$$ in his stead. After a contentious week of back-and-forth dissing, most think Bada$$ has held his own against the onslaught of disses. L.A. rapper and commentator Glasses Malone, who is friendly with Kendrick, seemingly admitted that Bada$$ has earned a reply, noting on X, “Joey know sure as shit bars are coming his way. When is the question.” But there’s another, more pressing question: What the hell was all that about, anyway?

When Drake and Kendrick finally got to it last year, most people understood that it was a years-in-the-making scuffle between two artists seeking to be the defining MC of their era. This beef, by contrast, has been a pretty low-stakes affair, full of artists with little or no known prior tension, seeking attention more than anything. There have been nearly 100 tracks coming from everyone involved, and none of them will reach most people’s best diss songs pantheon.

While the spirit of hip-hop is a good enough reason for some fans to salute the battle, others wonder if it’s all about Bada$$ trying to spark a buzz for his rap career. He hasn’t dropped a project since 2022, and when discussions about “the Big Three” took off last year, few if any people mentioned him — even though he rose to prominence alongside Kendrick, Drake, and J. Cole in the early 2010s. There’s a sense that Bada$$’ Hollywood career is eclipsing his music, and his bars during this feud properly reminded people of the promise he showed on 1999, the debut project made when he was just 17. This month was a chance for Bada$$ to, as Drake said on his version of “The Heart Pt. 6,” “get the pen workin’.” But it was also a chance for Joey to capitalize on the attention and inform fans that his next album is coming on Aug. 30. For some, dissing Kendrick, and apparently buying the trademark for TDEast, looks more like clout-chasing. Maybe two things can be true. 

Hip-hop heads have credited the artists involved for keeping things lit over the past week. But are they lighting the Olympic torch or a dumpster fire? It didn’t take long for the battle to extend past main characters Bada$$, Vaughn, and Daylyt, with media personality Justin Hunte tabulating 49 different artists jumping into the fray. On “Spinners,” artists Swavay and Ben Reilly dissed Reason for allegedly using elements of their “Bishop” and “Osborn Park” songs in his “Dead Apple” diss. Mr. Muthafuckin eXquire dissed everybody on “No Jumpin’,” his first song in a while. L.A. rapper and media personality AD’s X post urging, “Don’t call a LA nigga next time you get robbed or want to come outside,” took things past friendly competition. The drama is deviating from its origins, which never had much of a root cause in the first place.

In wrestling terms, one could understand if, say, Kane interrupted a match to help his “brother” Undertaker defeat an opponent. But things would get confusing if a wrestler with no relationship to anyone in the ring popped up, and more followed him, turning a one-on-one into a royal rumble. That’s what’s happened with the recent battle. It’s a spectacle, for sure. But spectacle alone doesn’t captivate those with a discerning eye. 

The issue with dissing just for the sake of dissing arose after a couple of rounds of Bada$$ vs. Vaughn. There wasn’t much fresh terrain to cover once they ran out of name flips and career breakdowns. And in rap, the low-hanging apple of homophobia is still too ripe for the picking. On “The Finals,” Bada$$ rhymed, “On the low though, I really think you niggas is homo,” using the well-worn “oh-oh” rhyme scheme for an equally archaic low blow. In return, Vaughn rapped, “I hеard y’all was slidin’ on Diddy,” and added another line insinuating with no proof that Joey is on footage of Diddy’s infamous “freak-offs.” 

At this point, using “you’re gay” as an insult should be considered as childish as saying someone has the cooties. Unfortunately, that’s not how many spectators seemed to see it; few decried the obvious homophobia in those bars. For some, expecting no gay slurs in a diss song is like expecting no rhymes. But hip-hop’s “that’s just how it is” mentality toward homophobia reflects a community overrun by exclusive, ultimately hateful worldviews. Studies have shown that homophobic rhetoric is too often linked to real-world exclusion and even violence; society’s othering of queer people through jokes is on a spectrum with hate crimes toward them.

And the evocation of Diddy, currently on trial for racketeering, is particularly troubling. As I’ve written before, “We’re consistently so fascinated by queerness that it takes precedence over sexual assault,” which is presumably why Vaughn felt that a punchline about “Diddy parties” was worth poking at the trauma Cassie and other alleged victims have faced. 

Fans of this kind of lyrical sparring often assert that battling is the essence of rap. But in actuality, quality lyricism is the essence of rap — sometimes that means battle bars. Rapper Pink Siifu pushed back on the hysteria surrounding the battle, posting on X, “EVRYTIME A RAP BEEF HAPPEN NXGGAS LOVE SAYING REAL RAP IS BACK SHUT TF UP’! MEN TALKING BOUT OTHER MEN EVERY BAR AINT THE ONLY GREAT RAP’!” This year Siifu released BLACK’!ANTIQUE, another stellar album in his catalog. When people talk about hip-hop’s demise, or act like diss songs are today’s prime example of #realhiphop, they’re slighting artists like him.

Outside this battle, Ray Vaughn recently released an EP called The Good, The Bad, & The Dollar Menu, where he tackled heavy topics such as a frayed father-son dynamic, incarceration, and dealing with losing his child’s mother during childbirth. The impressive comeback project exemplifies hip-hop as a cathartic tool to capture the human experience, providing a balm for the artist and his listeners. But instead of talking about this project, the hoopla has mostly focused on Vaughn dissing Bada$$. That’s not fair to him or to hip-hop as a whole. Diss songs can be fun, but they’re not reviving hip-hop. Rap doesn’t thrive off of beef, it’s sustained by great projects from the likes of Vaughn, Siifu, billy woods, MIKE, Niontay, Boldy James, and the dozens of other spitters who’ve dropped impressive bodies of work this year. 

For those who grew up watching URL/SMACK rap battles and ciphers, the past month was a welcome change of pace from headlines about allegations and legal troubles that have dominated recent months. But for those who want a little bit more from rap, like an actual reason for dissing someone, it’s been a tiresome clout-chase marathon.