But what really leaves a lasting impression on the minds of Hip Hop fans, is a great diss record.
Luckily for us we’ve been blessed with a ton of exceptional diss records over the decades since Hip Hop’s inception, but there are some that are just upper echelon. The crème de le crème.
There are our picks for the best diss records ever.
10) To da Break of Dawn – LL Cool J
No conversation about Hip Hop diss records can take place without mentioning the legendary LL Cool J. LL is no stranger to battling as he’s been in his fair share of lyrical scuffles since the 1980’s. But out all of his diss records, To da Break of Dawn is without question his best one.
Featured on his classic album Mama Said Knock You Out as well as the soundtrack for the movie House Party, LL rips apart not one but three MCs in one song! First he annihilates his longtime nemesis Kool Moe Dee (Songs that ain’t strong, brother you’re dead wrong/and got the nerve to have them Star Trek shades on), belittles MC Hammer (you little snake in the grass/you swing a hammer but you couldn’t break a glass/gimme a lighter – woof/now you’re cut loose, from that jheri curl juice), and then ends it off with destroying Ice-T (I’m not Scarface, but I want more beef/before you rapped you was a downtown car thief/working in a parking lot/a brother with a perm deserves to get burned).
There’s not too many rappers that have a better record in battling than LL, and this is a sample of why.
9) Back Down – 50 Cent
If there is one goal when it comes to a diss record, that goal is to finish your opponent for good. And if there is one song that accomplished just that, that song is 50 Cent’s Back Down. By the time 50’s debut album Get Rich or Die Trying came out, he had already unleashed a vicious onslaught on his sworn enemy Ja Rule that seemingly had Ja’s career already being sized up for a coffin. Once Back Down dropped, this pretty much was the nail in the coffin and the lowering of it into the grave for Ja Rule.
With a sinister beat by Dr. Dre as the backdrop, 50 delivers the death blow (I’m back in the game shawty, to rule and conquer/you sing for hoes and sound like the Cookie Monster). The rest is history.
8) Fuck wit Dre Day – Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg
Some of the most scathing diss records come in situations where one-time friends turn into enemies. And this brings us to Dr. Dre’s Fuck wit Dre Day off his masterpiece debut album The Chronic. It is well known about the nasty breakup and separation of one of Hip Hop’s most influential groups, N.W.A. This led to multiple diss records from each one-time member, but on Dre Day Easy E was the main target.
With the help of a young and upcoming Snoop Doggy Dogg, both Dre and Snoop unleash hilarious lyrics taking shots at Easy E, Tim Dog, Luke Campbell from 2 Live Crew, and a subliminal shot at Ice Cube (Spot him, got him, as I pulls out my strap/got my chrome to the side of his White Sox hat/you trying to check my homie you best check yo’self/cuz when you diss Dre you diss yourself, motherfucker).
What really distinguishes this diss song from others is that it was accompanied with a hysterical music video that adds visual humiliation to Easy E, Luke Campbell, and N.W.A.’s manager Jerry Heller as icing on the cake.
7) 2nd Round Knockout – Canibus
There are very few rappers who had the hype and promise of Canibus back in the mid to late 1990’s. He slayed countless guest appearances and freestyles, and many proclaimed him as a can’t miss Hip Hop legend in the making. Canibus lyrical skillset was something unseen and you would have never thought any rapper would even consider battling him. But much to our surprise, the legendary and seasoned battle rap god LL Cool J stepped in the ring to challenge him.
This beef all started over what could be perceived as a terrible misunderstanding. LL enlisted Canibus as a guest MC on his classic posse cut 4,3,2,1 that featured Redman, Method Man, and DMX. LL mysteriously took offense to a line Canibus initially used referencing borrowing the mic that LL had tattooed on his arm. He ordered Canibus to change his verse, which he did, but subsequently wrote his own verse dissing Canibus!
Understandingly so, Canibus fired back with an epic diss track that many feel is superior to any diss LL has thrown at him. With a surprisingly dark and menacing beat by Wyclef of The Fugees, and an even more surprising guest appearance from Mike Tyson, Canibus meticulously exposes LL’s flaws.
Whether it’s LL’s hypocrisy (Frontin like a drug-free role model, you disgust me/ I know bitches that seen you smoke weed recently), or his fan base (Mad at me cuz I kick that shit real ni—az feel/while 99% of your fans wear high heels), Canibus delivers a blow that in most cases no one can recover from.
6) The Bridge Is Over – KRS-One
It’s one thing to diss an individual; but it’s an entirely different thing to diss a whole borough. Few rappers would have the gall, yet the respect to do so and get away with it. Ladies and gentleman, enter KRS-One.
Like LL Cool J, KRS is one of the legendary MCs who’s been in quite a few battles over the years, yet he’s one of the MCs you can argue that has never taken an L in a battle too. Taking offense to MC Shan’s and Marley Marl’s classic song The Bridge (which may be another case of a terrible misunderstanding), KRS uses a Caribbean style flow to shoot down Shan, Marley Marl, and even Roxanne Shonte.
The most memorable line of the whole song is definitely a shot that KRS takes at all of Queens (Manhattan keeps on making it, Brooklyn keeps on taking it, Bronx keeps creating it, and Queens keeps on faking it).
5) The Bitch in You – Common (formerly known as Common Sense)
A reoccurring theme on this list is rappers misinterpreting each other. This happens once again in the case of Common vs. Ice Cube. The origins of this beef stem from Common’s classic song I Used to Love H.E.R., where Common metaphorically raps about Hip Hop as if it was a woman that he grew up with. In the song Common references the woman going out to the West Coast to gain more exposure, but at the cost of changing her taste in music which he was disappointed about.
Ice Cube took offense to this as he felt Common was implying Hip Hop took a turn for the worse when the West Coast began to influence it. At the time Ice Cube had formed the group Westside Connection (which featured Mack 10 and W.C.), and he addressed this on the song Slaughterhouse (used to love her, mad cause we fucked her/pussy whipped bitch, with no common sense).
With Ice Cube igniting the beef, Common unleased the savage diss song The Bitch in You. On it Common chastises Cube for having to run to the east coast for his first solo album, falling off after his first solo album, hypocritically speaking about violence and Islam simultaneously, amongst other things. The song was so vicious that Cube didn’t even attempt to respond it.
4) No Vaseline – Ice Cube
The breakup of N.W.A. was one of the most volatile breakups in Hip Hop history, as animosity was plentiful between all members of the group towards each other. The first member to feel the brunt of the animosity was Ice Cube. Cube left the group over financial concerns, which in hindsight was a very wise decision. Unfortunately, the other group members didn’t see it that way at the time and they took shots at him on N.W.A.’s song Real Ni—az.
That proved to be a critical mistake for the remaining members of N.W.A., because that gave Cube the green light to bombard them with a diss so devastating that they couldn’t even respond.
What makes this song so great is that Cube dedicated a verse to each member and blasted them for getting screwed financially by their manager Jerry Heller, questioning their attempts to try and sound like him, and moving to neighborhoods that lack diversity.
3) Hit Em Up – 2Pac
You know a diss song is about to be great when it starts off with “That’s why I fucked your bitch you fat motherfucker”. We all know about the one-time friendship that 2Pac and Notorious B.I.G. had, we know about the infamous robbery/shooting of 2Pac at Quad Studio, and we all know that 2Pac felt that B.I.G. (also known as Biggie Smalls) and P. Diddy (known as Puff Daddy back then) knew he was getting set up ahead of time. This set the stage for 2Pac delivering the epic diss song Hit Em Up, which took dissing to a whole other level.
Where do we begin? Pac claims to have slept with the Biggie’s wife (singer Faith Evans), that Biggie slept on his couch and he had to beg women to let him sleep in their house, Biggie copied his style, and that he was going to kill him.
But Biggie is not the only person 2Pac scorched on this song. Lil Cease, Lil Kim, Mobb Deep, Chino XL, and Bad Boy as a staff/record label/crew got a resounding “Fuck You” from Pac. This song would be much higher on the list if it wasn’t for unnecessary versus from the Outlawz, but this let us all know that there were no boundaries that a diss song can go.
2) Takeover – Jay-Z
If you followed Hip Hop closely in the mid to late 90’s, you knew it was inevitable that Jay-Z and Nas were going to have to battle at some point. The two traded subliminal disses for years as they both tried to position themselves as not only the King of New York, but the King of Hip Hop.
Add to the mix Prodigy of Mobb Deep having some not so nice words for Jay-Z in an article featured in The Source magazine, and you have the perfect storm for what would turn out to be the most memorable battle in Hip Hop history.
On Takeover, Jay starts off his onslaught by destroying Prodigy. His verse towards Prodigy was first made famous at the 2001 Hot 97 Sumer Jam where he showed an embarrassing picture of a young Prodigy dressed in not so flattering dance attire. The picture was the least of the sting, as Jay mocks Prodigy’s height (You little fuck, I got money stacks bigger than you), his childhood (when I was pushing weight, back in 88/You was a ballerina, I got the pictures I seen ya), and his record sales (No, you’re not on my level, get your brakes tweaked/I sold what your whole album sold in my first week). This turned out to be so damaging to Prodigy that many believe this ended his career as an elite MC in Hip Hop.
Jay finally takes aim at Nas and delivers nearly fatal blows to the Queens MC. Jay attacks Nas with precision, referencing his fall from grace (Went from Nasty Nas to Esco’s trash/had a spark when you started but now you’re just garbage), his street credibility (you ain’t live it, you witnessed it from your folk’s pad/scribbled in your notepad and created your life), his business acumen ( so yeah I sampled your voice, you was using it wrong/you made it a hot line, I made it a hot song/and you ain’t get a coin ni—a, you was getting fucked/I know who I paid God, Serchlite Publishing), his rapping ability (Ni—a switch up your flow/your shit is garbage, what you trying to kick knowledge), and using innuendo to point out that he slept with the mother of his daughter (because you know who, did you know what with you know who/just keep that between me and you).
The consensus thought there was no way Nas could recover from this and that his career was finished. But…..
1) Ether – Nas
Takeover would have taken out 99.9% of other rappers and ended their career. But what this did to Nas was wake the sleeping giant and moved him to make the greatest diss record of all time, Ether. In fact, the term Ether has become a fixture in the Hip Hop lexicon and is used when somebody is badly dissed at the highest level (ex: He just got Ethered).
The genius of Ether starts from the very name of the song itself, as Jay-Z was seen as a rapper who was linked to cocaine and the epitome of a drug dealer. Ether is used to cut and breakdown cocaine, so in essence Ether was going to be the song that breaks down Jay-Z. And that it did.
Starting off with a slowed down rant of 2Pac saying “Fuck Jay-Z”, Nas begins to son Jay as it is widely known that he was a in awe of Nas and reached out to him several times to make songs (I know you ain’t talking about me dog. You, what?? You been on my dick ni—a, you love my style).
While Takeover had a serious tone, Ether has the tone of kid snapping jokes at an over matched opponent during recess. Nas mocks Jay with a barrage of insults ranging from changing his rapping style because of him (all I did was give you a style for you to run with/smiling in my face, glad to break bread with the god), Jay’s sexual exploits with Foxy Brown (Foxy got you hot cuz you kept your face in her puss/what you think you’re getting girls now because of your looks, ne-gro please), getting overshadowed on his own song (Eminem murdered you on your own shit) , mimicking Jaz-O’s name (Shawn Carter to Jay-Z, damn you on Jaz’s dick), his frequent use of the Notorious B.I.G.’s lines in his songs (how much of Biggie’s rhymes is going to come out your fat lips), and him having to act contrite to Jadakiss (you pop shit, apologize ni—a, just ask Kiss).
Both Hip Hop icons have since buried the hatchet and have become friends, but their epic battle was one for the ages.
