One Song - A Brief History of Diss Tracks

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

This week on One Song, WE BEEF! Join LUXXURY and Diallo Riddle as they unpack the history and evolution of diss tracks, break down the Drake v Kendrick Lamar spat, and explore how disses work in other genres because, lest we forget, white people are messy too. The chaps are not alone on this journey: They are joined by comedian King Willonius who scored a viral hit with his contribution to the Drake v Kendrick battle, BBL Drizzy.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rick Rubin and Gladwell get ready to fight More than your record will be broken tonight Rank your time's up The train left the station Luxury's the king of Interpolation Malcolm my man We're not giving you flowers

We'd rather diss you for 10,000 hours We're the best pie When it comes to music Tell Malcolm and Rick You can suck my wh- Welcome to the podcast everybody This is one song The most controversial podcast in America right now

According to Reddit By the way that disc track you just heard was literally all jokes. Literally, Luxury and I cannot have more love for Broken Record. We're huge fans. And funny fact, we actually just shared one of their episodes on our one song feed. So please go check that out. Seriously, we don't want the smoke.

All right, all right. Luxury, my man. As you know, one song is a podcast that likes to be positive and show love. We give artists their flowers and celebrate great music. We sure do. We're nice, guys. But today, something different. Oh, boy.

We're going to get mean. So mean. nasty. That's right. Angry rage. It's about to get ugly up in the serious XM studios because this time on one song, we beef it. Beefing. We beaving. You ready to beef? Luxury. I'm ready. Are you ready for me? I don't think so. I don't think I'm ready. All right, so here's what's coming up. In recognizing the recent Civil War happening in rap by way of the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, we're going to take a a minute and talk about the history of rap beef. That's right. I'll be explaining how the art of the disc track isn't exclusive to hip-hop. What? That's right.

white people are messy too. So we're going to dig into the beefs found in other genres in history. That's right. And we also have a very special guest joining us today, a man who found himself on the front lines of the Kendrick and Drake Battle. His song was a perfect example of how rat beef is changing in the 24-7 social media and streaming AI era. That's right. We're going to be joined by our special guest today, King Wallonius, creator of the song.

We've all heard a jillion times recently, B.B. L. Drizzy. That's all coming up to date. on one song. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer DJN song writer Luxury, aka the guy who talks about interpulation on the internet. That's right. Diallo, where should we begin? Because this beef with Kendrick and Drake is evolving so fast. It's like impossible to keep up. Oh, I mean, it's impossible. I mean, like, actually, fun fact, since we started recording this episode, Kendrick has released three more songs. I don't doubt. I mean, I know you're joking. That could actually happen. So it's barely

No, I'm kidding, but that's how I felt that one night when I think Family Matters came out and then like 20 minutes later we had to listen to Meet the Grams. Like, it's been insane. The first four or five tracks was it happened in five days, right? It's a crazy amount of output. So we're going to get into it. And listen, rap beef and disc tracks go way, way back. I mean, we're talking the earliest days of hip-hop. You can actually argue that beef is where hip-hop starts.

And there are a couple of eras that I want to call attention to. One is the super old school era. Okay. You know, this is U-TFO. Standing Mr. Magic Up. They were supposed to come do a show for him, and they stood him up. So he gets a 14-year-old named Roxanne Chante, and then she does a response track called Roxanne's Revenge. People have talked about this a lot.

I mean, like, everybody sort of knows about the bridge by M.C. Shan and the response track of the bridge is old. by KRS1. And I think that was probably the first track I heard that was like a disc track. But I will say that I didn't know it was a disc track. Interesting. You know, I just thought it was a cool song. Yeah, because where I lived, we heard the bridge is over. I think a lot of us heard the bridges over before we even heard the bridge.

Yeah. You know, because the bridge is over was just a really, really cool song. And we didn't realize that it was speaking to a specifically New York beef. Oh, yeah, just talked about this on the Questlove episode, too. So, like, if you haven't listened to that, go back and check out that show. Yeah. He talks literally about the beat making and behind this. And Mr. Magic, too, shows up in that episode because Mr. Magic prompts the public enemy track.

Yeah, Mr. Magic had a lot of beef. Mr. Magic disc public enemy. And then, of course, public enemy, like sample Mr. Magic for their song, Cole Lamper with flavor. But I do want to play a little bit of the bridges over just because it was probably the first disc song that I heard, even though I didn't know how New York centric it was. Locked said, Chate has only good for steady pocket. Nancy Shannon Molly Mall is really only block it.

Like Junkie Fresh said, I tell you, And that was the earliest stuff, you know, you're not. Compared to Red Alertton, kids and we got to production. And that was the earliest stuff, you know, the stuff in the 80s. But Beef was not New York centric for long. Obviously, at some point, NWA said goodbye to Ice Cube. And then he released, I would argue, you know, maybe the most explicit and vicious attack, you know, distracks of all time, which was a song at the end of his death certificate album.

That was a song called No Vaseline. Set it off Like I just Like you just Went soft He was down With the AK And now I see you

On a video With Michelet Looking like straight Losos I saw it coming That's why I went So Like

I just love that brick The DAZ sample Oh Das Yeah Disco Jazz Really good use of that sample And I mean like For years

That was like The most brutal Like He talks about Each member of NWA Yeah And I always

noticed that He doesn't really Say anything Terrible about Dre The only thing he says about Dre really is like, Yo, Dre, stay to producing. There's also something like extra sinister, like the first, the stripped down beat of the bridge is over.

It's just like so stripped down. It's just a giant drumbeat and the piano line. It creates this cavernous kind of like angry. You feel like you're in a warehouse with mobsters or something like that. Like that's the cinematic feeling I have. But this one, the energy of the song is a different kind of sinister energy because it's like kind of happy. It's kind of upbeat.

Kind of contrasts. With the lyricism? I'm glad you bring that up because when I hear the bridge is over, I really hear like that, that amazing old school hip hop that is super stripped down. He's bringing in Super Cat. He's actually interpolating lyrics by Supercat and Barrington Levy Murderer. He's got a Billy Joel sample in there from, It's still rock and roll to me. That's so funny.

You still tell it lies to me. Another interpolation, by the way. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I feel like one is. so representative of where New York was in the mid-80s. It's just like stripped down to its bare minimum parts. And then Ice Cube, not only is his more lush, but it's like a funk sample. It's just so much more West Coast.

It's like this was how Keras One did East Coast beef. This is how Ice Cube does West Coast beef. Now we've talked about like, you know, sort of like beef in the old school era. Once the 90s come along, I would argue that we enter a new era, I would call it the mixtape era of beef. Okay. This is an era where, look, you don't have to wait for an album to come out to hear that beef song. Because in the 90s, you know, pretty much if you lived in a major city, you already know this, you could go to a guy who always had like a bunch of tape and you get a cassette.

And it would be like, you know, each side would have like all the popular songs of the moment and maybe one track that was completely never going to be on anybody's album. It's not promotional. It's just a rapper replying to somebody who had dissed him. on the previous mixtape. And I think this is where the Tupac and Biggie era comes in. Because, you know, there are songs by Biggie that were never on any of his albums, but you can get them on mixtapes. I think that's an important thing to point out to is that it's an amazingly important part

of hip hop culture from day one where there's references, lyrical references, that the listener is understood to understand. It's like a narrative. It's like a soap opera, essentially, that people are sharing in. And the participation in the music in that way for the listener is obviously really exciting. There's sneakdises, which I'm sure we'll be getting to in a minute. Like, if you have to be an extra layer of in the note to understand who they were referring to with this type of reference, it's not the name, it's some kind of proxy for the individual, like their behavior or one thing they did or a characteristic about that. And before we even move on from Ice Cube, he said essentially what you're saying here, which is, you know, there was a time when hip hop beef was really just for the hip.

hip-hop heads. Yeah. And I think that we're going to get to this. Right. By definition, that's what a head is. By definition, we were the only people who heard half of these songs, and we were the only people who knew what, where the disses were sometimes. You're schooled in the knowledge and understanding of what it all means. It was choir sheet music for the choir. And this is difficult, I think, for outsiders to interpret. I think that's part of why... Oh, I know, because now it's totally different. I mean, like, the fact that, you know, the Daily Beast or Slate has a take on the latest hip-hop beef just shows you there were in a much different place. But one thing that was great about the mixtapes is that you would get these verses that never showed up on anybody's album.

I want to play a snippet of this. It's called Live Freestyle. It was on, I think, of DJ Mr. C mixtape. And it is one of the few times that you have Tupac and Biggie, you know, alive and rapping on each other's songs. This is going to come into the Tupac and Biggie Beef only because they were both on stage. Tupac got up there and this is what that sounds like. So we're fucking Biggie. So many blessings.

And all my dick is in the pen. Here we go again. Ain't unseparate nuts from my maxit. Born in the kettle was a hustler. So we heard Biggie's verse on there. We heard Tupac's verse. And, you know, they were friends. You know, I was on a TV show with Marlon Wands.

And he showed me the picture one time. It's a picture a lot of us have seen a million times. It's a picture of Tupac and Biggie together. You know, they're standing next to one another, presumably friends that they're both shooting birds at the camera. If you do a wide angle, of that shot, if you find the widest version of it. It's ironic, you see in the background

a young Marlon Wayan sitting behind them. Oh, wow. Like, he was literally like, these guys were friends and we were all young. We were all in our early 20s. It's hard to hear these voices and not think of these as young 20-year-old men, but these were all 20-year-olds.

At some point, famously, Tupac goes to record a song while he's on trial in New York, and he gets shot in the lobby of Quad's Studios. And from that point on, they, you know, have a terrible relationship. And, you know, Tupac believes that Biggie and Puffy had him set up. Here's what's crazy. Who shot you? And Flavia in your ear are both recorded before the shooting.

Yeah. After the shooting takes place, both were used as evidence, so to speak, by, you know, people in the community to be like, oh, snap, he's rapping about Pock. Okay. You know what I mean? And that's interesting to me because, like, would you record something and then have your rival shot. That seems bizarre to me. No, it's probably not what happened.

It's probably not the case. But for those looking for evidence, the evidence was everywhere. I'm going to play a snippet from Flavian Year remix. If you look backwards after the shooting, it's like, oh yeah, UPS is hiring. Oh, Tupacom, Tupac played a UPS guy in poetic justice, which came out the year before.

You know, it just seemed like more than a coincidence. He also says, with that freestyle, you're bound to get shot. Now, we just played a freestyle. I was wondering if that was a connection to that. Yeah, well, there were people, you know, throwing this stuff out there. interpreted it that way, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, like, now, I'm sure you're thinking, like, oh, UPS, it could have been neat.

I mean, like, the whole thing is reminding, like, we're going to talk about the current day, the Kendrick Drake situation, as this concept, like, in the most giant way because of the internet. But even back then, the difference between an intentional reference on the artist's part versus an interpretation, you couldn't possibly know. So people would, I'm sure, be reading into it things that weren't necessarily intended by Biggie, by Pock. But the sequence of events that no one could have anticipated. Yeah, we don't know what the recording schedule is. In retrospect, oh, that line must have meant this thing that later happened that he predicted. No, it's a, the coincidences do happen. Call it the fog of war. Everything suddenly seemed in

intentional. I do think that, listen, I think that at some point, Biggie, who was never the type to throw Tupac's actual name into the line of the song, I think to a certain extent Biggie might be responsible for inventing the sneakdisc. Like where, you know, it's clearly about you, but you don't know if you're just being paranoid because you haven't said the person's name. Right. It's open to interpretation or misinterpretation. Yeah, exactly. It's so open an interpretation. And, you know, were these sneakdises or was Tupac and everybody who thought they were, Tupac, and everybody who thought they were, Tupac. this is being paranoid. It's interesting because Tupac is the opposite. Tupac is extremely direct. He says Biggie's name a million times. He says Puffy's name a billion times. And he's saying all kinds of crazy stuff.

And my own personal story about hit him up is I can still remember, and I told this story during the Quest Love episode, I remember sitting in the parking lot of Turtles Records in Atlanta and popping in, hit him up. And I listened to it just very briefly before I was like,

Oh, this is crazy. Yeah. Like, it was venom on a level that made no vasseling seem like a walk in the park. You never heard anything quite like this before. What was different about it? Was it the specifics? It was, it was so specific. Or was it the smooth jazz?

I'll go on record. I'll go on record. Well, okay, if I can. Let's just put this out there. There were some people who had some issues with what Questlove said on our episode about public enemy of all things. Yeah, yeah. And we got to talk about hit them up specifically.

I want to make it very clear for, for, I think. I think of our regular viewers. Some people took it out of context. They took it as Questlove attacking Tupac. It was not that at all. The song hit him up. All that Questlove was saying was he loves the Dennis Edward song. Right.

That Biggie sampled for the Get Money remix. And that is the reason for the record. The Junior Mafia. Yeah, the Junior Mafia song. That's why Tupac took that song. It was a reference, by the way. That was a little, not a sneak to us, but that was a reference for the head. If you listen to hit him up, there's really a woman who's a woman who's

like gammon. Like, you know, if you're in the no, then you connect the dots there. We don't always mention everything on this show. It doesn't mean we don't know it. It just means that our producer's saying, speed it up.

But anyway, all Heslow was saying was that he wasn't crazy about the instrumentation used by whoever the musicians were in the death row group, the death row band. A DJ premiere snare would have hit harder. And I want to say one thing to the Tupac fans.

I am one of you. I've been thinking about this ever since we posted the the Quest Love episode. It occurred to me that in the nascent internet era, before social media, long before that, when all you had were the chat rooms and the discussion boards,

my name, my handle was Mama's Only Son. And that is a Tupac reference. That is a Tupac reference. You fuck with Mama's Only Son. Put the phone on the run. Don't misinterpret anything we're saying. Mama's only son. By the way, my brother had a certain feeling.

He's like, why are you going around calling yourself Mama's Only Son? He's like, I'm offended. But I love Tupac so much. And I can remember the summer of 96, literally driving around, listening to hit him up all summer. Like, if you got in my car, like, there was a new Outcast album.

There was a new Tribe Call Quest album. I'm pretty sure. I think the love movement came out in 96. It might have been 97. But the fact is, that was the year, 96 is the year that All Eyes on Me came out. It was a double CD. He was fresh out of prison.

And that was all that me and my friend Keith Bernard, Shout out to Keith at, you know, Sissor Speaks. I love that man. We just drove around Atlanta that whole summer, blasting, hit them up. And we were some of the people most crushed when things got violent in Las Vegas that September. Can I just ask you, though, I'm so curious as a listener, you describe the experience of being a listener. I picture myself listening to metal, just as that example, to go back to the Metallica, the Anthrax, whatever it is. That for me is a mood.

Like, it's a moment I'm in. It's a catharsis. It's a catharsis. It's letting something out. But listening to that aggressive music pumps me up for the energy that I need to survive a night on the town with my boys, you know? Totally. It's almost like whoever they're dissing on the disc track, you know, they're dissing the people in your life for you. Right.

In fact, I know that when the Drake and Kendrick stuff really started blowing up, my kids were listening to all the disc tracks from both sides. And then my two eldest boys decided they were going to release disc tracks about each other. you didn't pick up your socks last week I was like I love the creativity but keep it clean and leave the parents out of it I want to move forward to the 2000s because this is a period where there are increasingly

disc tracks on people's albums but what replaces sort of like mixed tapes are mixed CDs and DVDs so this is sort of like the mixed CD DVD period I'm reminded of Lauren Hill it's talk about sneak discs She doesn't mention Wyclef, but everybody felt like this line was about Wyclef.

It's funny how money changes situation. Miscommunication lead the complication. My emancipation don't put your equation. I was on the humble you on every station. Someone play young Lauren like she dumb. I mean, God, lost ones is such a heartbeat. I love that song so much. You can't talk about the early 2000s without talking about songs by Jay-Z and Nas, respectively.

This was such a huge beef. In fact, one could probably make the argument that until Drake and Meek Mill comes along, this is sort of like one of the biggest beasts in hip-hop history. You know, at some point, Nas had gone a little bit quiet. He had gone about two years without releasing anything, you know, other than the QB collective stuff. And Jay-Z is like, you know, especially in the absence of Biggie, he's become sort of effectively the king of New York. But to hear Nas tell it, he can't be the king without taking out Nas. So, you know, sort of out of nowhere, Jay-Z releases a takeover.

I'm going to play my favorite snip of the takeover because to me, he opens up a new line of attack. You know, in the earliest days, you know, rap beef was all about, oh, you can't rap like me or I got more women. And then at some point it got really personal. And the whole culture sort of took a step bad because in the wake of the death of B.I.G. and Tupac, it was like, oh, don't go too far, guys. We don't want to lose any more of our heroes. Right. Stuff got too real. I've got too real. But Jay-Z opens up a new line of a tag.

I mean, like, this is one line I want to play. It's so funny to me because he's talking about a contract, like a deal point in Nas' contract with its publishing company. Let's hear this. This is from the takeover by Jay-Z. And you ain't get a coin, nigger. You was getting buffed in. I know who I paid God.

Search-life publishing. Use your... You said you've been in this 10. I've been in it five. Smart enough, Nass. Four albums in 10 years, nigger. divide that's one that be let's say two two of them shit we do

I mean there's so much to impact I love that track so much but I love what he says you ain't get a coin then I know who I paid Searchlight publishing which was MC Search yeah and he was the guy who put Nas on you know back in the live at the barbecue

you know that that was just a new line of it that has nothing to do with rapping that has nothing to do with the lifestyle that's literally just like oh you didn't your lawyer did a bad job um JZ came out with the takeover Nas responded with ether. Let's just play a snippet from that.

Negro, please. You know mustache having with whiskers like a rack compared to beans you whack and your man stabbed on and made you take the blame you ass went from jazz to hanging with cane to earth to big

and Eminem murdered you on your own shit. I'm sorry, I got to talk right there. There's no mustache having. He says you have whiskers like a cat. I almost left the room. I almost left my body with that one. What it brings up for me is how humor is so underrated. in terms of the power of these tracks.

Absolutely. But also how it's obviously the flip side of the coin maybe to anger. So humor sort of releases some of the pressure or sort of, it deflates and yet inflates the power of the anger, I suppose. But there's something really interesting that happens where it's like really, there's anger, there's anger, but then it's fucking funny. It's like. Now here's the deal.

What's the overall impact of that? That can really, if you, it's like when you're mad at somebody and then They're saying something, and suddenly it's funny, and you cannot help but crack a bit of a smile. And you're like, I can't be angry anymore, man. That was too funny. It was funny because we're going to talk about how some people have even found humor in, you know, this Drinking Kendrick beef, which is extremely dark.

The consensus is that Nas won that, considering that they thought that the takeover was the knockout punch, the fact that he came back with Ether. Is there any pattern for that he won? Now, people, this is important to point out, because. because this plays in a Drake and Kendrick, too. Jay-Z actually responded to Ether with a track called Super Ugly. That was my next question. Super ugly.

Is there any pattern to, like, being the most the last one to have a track? You know, sometimes being the last one wins. Sometimes it doesn't. But you'll see where this relates to the current kerfuffle. Shout out to the internet. Apparently that's my catchphrase. Jay-Z came out with Super Ugly. And in Super Ugly, he drops one bar in there about leaving a condom on a baby seat,

which is a reference to the fact that Jay-Z had started. hooking up with Nas's ex. Okay. At the time, people said, Jay-Z's gone too far. That's pretty cold. They said, hey, this is not cool. It's so much deeper than rap now.

It's very cold. Take that back. So, Jay-Z kind of had to, like, apologize for that track. Really? And about the time he did, everybody was like, Nas has won this beef.

So just think about that. As late as 2002, there were rules. You know, there were sort of community rules. Right. Like, Amnesty International, like, you know, rules of engagement. Yeah, there was.

War crimes were not. committed. The Geneva Convention of Rap Beef was still because again nobody wanted... Who's the Hague in rap? So now we get to the current era of rap beef. And I think no song represents

the current era of beef better than the song back to back, which you know, it was the second song that Drake had released against Meek Mill within just four days. Like that was incredible. And it spoke to the fact that we were in a new era of rap beef. You

You couldn't, months would pass between hit them up and a response from Biggie. Months would pass even between, you know, the time that the takeover came out and either came out. Right. But now we're talking about literal days. And there's also a third person involved in the beef, which is the internet, which is sort of like the crowd, you know. And everybody's like doing memes and like they're posting pictures and stuff. Like, it's a new era. And I think that back to back, more than any other song, represents that.

You gonna make me buy bottles for Charlemagne. You gonna make me go out of my fucking way. I waited four days, nigga, where y'all lack? I drove here in the rave playing A-R-R-F. I'm not sure what it was that really made y'all mad, but I guess this is what I gotta do to make y'all rap. I mean, oh. I mean, this song not only eviscerated Meek Mill,

it also was just a great song. Like, it was a song you could dance to. It blended with one of its previous hits, started from the bottom. like zero to 100. Like it blended in with so many other popular Drake club songs that you could just mix this one in.

I'll never forget when it came out. People talked about the album art and how that was a layer of attack. Like I feel like this was, I could be wrong. I'm pretty sure this is one of the first singles where the album art was a subject of much discussion.

Oh, wow. You know, so like it was just, there were double entendrednesses in there. Drake really brought, brought it just to a whole other level that honestly just, you know, it left Mick Mill where nowhere to turn. I love all the literacy required on the listeners part

to get all of it, for real. Yeah, again, this is also the first this is one of the first beefs in what I would call the genius era. On the Rock Genius website. So you could literally spend hours looking up what each line of back-to-back meant

and be like, oh no, so this is a reference to that and that's a reference to this. Like, it blew people's mind. What I love about this is like it's just as a Jew, literally like our scripture, right, the Bible is the Torah. And then that's the Old Testament or books from the Old Testament. But then what's considered the actual holy work is that that plus the Talmud, which is hundreds of years of religious scholars essentially interpreting and reinterpreting and responding to the previous interpretations as a living document. That's what rap genius is for rap. It's like there's the text, there's the song. itself, but then there's all the analysis and the analysis of the analysis, and I freaking love that. I love the intertextuality and the analysis and the collective musicology. Yeah, and I think, you know, for the record, I think rap genius started off,

it's now genius, obviously. But what it eventually became was a sort of needed place where you could go and do what you said, which is like, look up, like, oh, this is a reference to that, but it's also a second layer reference to this. And now it actually, I think, serves something of a purpose. I've heard people bag on it and say, that's not hip hop to be like, you know, going on a website and doing it all. But I would say, like, that's just where we're at now. People want to know that there's something behind the other. If you look at those Taylor Swift lyrics,

true swifties can tell you every single thing about, oh, when she said your body is blue, you know, like, that means this like, you know, that's just where we're at. And I think that that, God bless it. If baby boomers can talk about Bob Dylan, we can talk about Drake and Kendrick. That's the internet era. That's the fanfic era. That's like the cosplay era.

That's the involvement in the lives. and stories of our musical heroes that we are participating in and we take for granted now, but we have 25 whatever years of internetness or 30 years where that's just baked into it as we were about to see

the largest in this current kerfuffle, if I may borrow the word, du jour. Now I'm going to start as supposed to make a termulation. All right, well, coming up after the break, the only person aside from Jay Cole who has come out of this whole kerfuffle happy

and that's King Willonious with his song, B.B. Eldridge is. We have so much more coming up on one song right after the break. Welcome back to one song. Now, this beef has been a huge moment for AI-generated music. First, Drake released the song Taylor Made, which featured an AI snoop and an AI-tupac going after Kendry.

And then there's the song BBL Drizzy. For people that somehow have never heard the expression of BBL, it means Brazilian buttlift. And in one of the many disc tracks that this beef has spawned, Rick Ross alleged that Drake got one. So a comedian called King Willonius, the hashtag online decided to use that ridiculous phrase as the basis of a very lighthearted and awesomely catchy by the way song and it's turned into one of the few lighthearted moments

in the beef. The song was even remixed by Atlanta producer Metro Boomin when viral for second time as the basis of a chopped up sample and a trap beat. So without further ado, let's bring the man out at the center of this story and he will tell us more in his own words. Please welcome to the stage King Willonius. Thank you. Thank you. How are you? How are you feeling? Amazing man. This has been a very interesting, magical. Crazy times. Yeah, last couple weeks and just grateful to be here, man. So let's just address the elephant in the room.

Do you have beef with Drake? So I'm not beefing with Drake right now. Not yet. Not yet. This man has no beef with Drake. Yeah, I actually, I mean, I got a playlist filled with Drake's music. So, like, not beefing with him. Also, I just want to make a point.

I did make songs on the other side for Drake. they just didn't pop off. Like I had a song called Step on Me, where it was talking about, step on me with your size seven feet. Which is a Kendrick. Yeah, it was like, I tried to play both sides,

but those songs just didn't pop off. People's opportunity disser, yeah. BV.L. Drizzi is just a, it's just a funny word. Yeah, so. But I hope OVO hears that. He did, he did try and do a Kendrick song too. Yeah, if they want everyone wants me to come up to Canada and do some things with them, I'll be more than happy to help.

Yeah, yeah. And let's, let's get into. to this because one of the most fascinating parts about this is the use of AI. I want to know, like, what is the process of creating a song in AI? Yes, there's a couple different ways you can do it. You can just, like, type in a prompt and just have it make, completely make a song. You can type in a really vague prompt. Yeah, hey, I want to...

Write me a song with this title. Yeah, make a song about me going to Starbucks getting a latte. And it'll make a cool song, and you can pick the genre. It could be an Afrobeat song, whatever. And then you can do, like, where it's, like, custom lyrics. So you can, like, type in your own. lyrics and then have it create a song like that. Well, okay.

How specific did you have to get? Essentially, it was just like prompts like, you know, like 1960s. So you said 1960s, for me, for whatever, I hear like 70s soul. You think the AI was trying to nail 60s. That's why I typed in. Oh, wow. It was just like typing in like that. Male, vocalists, kind of really just like mixing prompts and just trying to figure out.

Because the thing is with these tools, it's like, you've got to do like a lot of iterations. So there were earlier versions that didn't quite weren't as good? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've made about 20 or 30 versions that I released, but I have about 100 that haven't been out yet. So I got like a gospel. I got a Gregorian chant. I need to hear the Gregorian chant. Yeah, man, Yacht Rock.

I don't know if you guys heard of Yacht version, of course. Yacht Rock, that's one of my favorites. But yeah, I was just going crazy because it just sounded so cool. So I was just just kept running it. But like the current version that's out right now, that's the one that just... But to be clear, it's not your voice. It's not your music in terms of... And it's not your face on the cover.

Not, it's not your face. By the way, somebody who created a show called Shervin Showcase with a person who dresses like that, people were like, oh, man, that seems like a Shervin Showcase. Oh, man. Dang it, I only wish... Season three should be AI, Sherman Showcase... Yeah, I'm just putting it out there now. I would love to write with you or write for you.

We know you know how to use those prompts, that's for sure. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm still caught up on the night. 1960s thing because, you know, like, to me it sounds like the temptations, but it sounds like, it sounds like maybe like David Ruffin in the early 70s, but you said 1960s. I'm trying to think who sounds like this in the 1960s? I'm sure that the internet will be more than happy to remember. I'm sure, right. But I'm just, I'm like almost drawing a blanket. Like who is,

who is singing in that soulful soul? It could be like the last summer of soul, like, you know, the best of document. I could have been on that. I could see it being there. Well, I think, so I think part of it is just like when you put certain prompts in, it's, it's, sometimes it's not as specific. Like, it'll add certain prompts to it. It's like you can type in certain things and then it'll give you, it'll add other prompts to it.

The machine is acting like a real human collaborator. It's like, I know what you want. But here's, I want to do something a little different, so here's what I'm going to give you. Right. I'm so glad you put it like that. It is acting as a collaborator because I think that when most of us hear like AI generated song,

we just think that like somebody lazily put in the most basic data and then a machine cranked out a song. But I will say, this is, I think it's probably safe to say at the recording of this episode, this is definitely the most successful AI song because it has so much of you in it. So I want to talk about the impact. When the song came out, what was the moment that you truly understood, yo, this song has blown up. When did you realize? So, man, it's so crazy, because I thought the song wasn't going to do anything. Like, I was, actually that day, I was,

I was entering an AI film festival. So it was a 40-hour AI film festival. And the deadline to submit was like 12 a.m. Pacific Standard time. And I was on East Coast. So I finished it like 3 a.m. I remember B.B.O. Drizzi was trending. And I just made the song. Didn't think nothing of it. I was like, I don't even get engagement on Twitter. So I was like, I just need to put this out or whatever. And then I remember it was starting to go up. It was like at like 5,000 views. I'm like, oh, this is kind of crazy. Look at me getting engagement. And then I had to catch a flight at 6 a.m. So I didn't go to sleep at all, hopped on the plane at 6 a.m. And it was at like 30,000 views.

Yeah, it was just going. And then I was like, yo, this is, this might be my moment. And I was like, am I on? Was it all positive? Were there like, were there any sort of negative? No, it was anything negative. Like, it was so crazy. Like, there was no negative.

You know, I've seen people getting married to BBO Drizzi. Oscar Meyer came out with BBL Glizzi. No. Which is insane. Which is insane for them to life. I do want to ask you a little bit about the Metro Boomer thing. So obviously, you create. made it this song.

Metro Boomin samples. I don't want to get too much into your legal situation or whatever, but like what are your copyright rights, so to speak? Yeah, what do you own technically? Yeah, you just sample it. O' you nothing or like, how does that work? To be honest, I'm learning everything like on the fly

because like I'd never consider myself to be in the music business. Like I was just like, I was comedian. Yeah, so like now I'm in it having meetings with like record labels and like people wanting to like sign me as. And I'm like, I'm a comedian. Like, but I tell some jokes in between the songs. Right, you know what I'm saying? Skit's first song and second, yeah.

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, like, as you said, man, like, this song really said, because it's pretty much the biggest AI song ever. So, which is still kind of blows my mind to just say that out loud. But, because I just, I just want to do comedy. So, like, I just want to make jokes. I want to make funny songs. And, like, but now, you know, it's just like, it's kind of like set of precedent. And, like, you know, for musical artists, like, you know,

they can, like, sample songs. Like, they don't have to do with, like, so it's a, it's going to be interesting how all this plays out in the future. Yeah, you make a good point, because if Metro finds an actual song from the 1960s, he's got to swim through a, you know, swamp of all kinds of... Permissions to clear the sample, to clear the publishing. Masters. This probably be looked at in later days is like the moment we figured out how to do this with AI,

because so many issues are in one place for this one song. Congratulations to you being a musician, comedian, having record labels, having this moment, enjoy. And we know we're going more songs and more jokes from you. Man, I've been going, like, since they took it down from Spotify, like, I've been going crazy. Like, yeah, just dropping, I dropped this really dope track. It's like a soul version of Captain Planet. It's just like, it's so dope. It's just fun to make music.

Like, created that song without AI. Like, to go to the studio, to get a soul singer, like, to make the cover art. I would have completely missed that moment, you know? It's insane. There's so much to impact here that has nothing to do with the rap beef. That's literally just like, AI, is it just another tool in the creative person's wheelhouse? I think you've made a strong case that it is. Yeah, too.

I agree. Seriously, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate your job, man. King Walonius, everybody. Avocado Papi. All right. Thank you. And by the way, before you go, where can our listeners find more of your work?

Instagram, TikTok, King Malonius on all platforms. Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Lectury, one thing that you and I were really fascinated by is this idea that bees and diss are not confined to hip-hop.

So walk us through how these feuds play out in other genres. There's some really fun historical feuds that precede the rap era and even the modern era. We can go all the way back to the 30s in Brazil. Some of the earliest, like, back-and-forth songs that were written as like a diss, one artist dissing the other artists specifically. If we can describe that as being dystery. How long have you had that one ready to fire off? I was so happy that you laugh like that,

because I felt like a very genuine laugh. That wasn't, thank you so much. And I did have that one in the chamber this whole time. Some people know that I said there should be an app where every time a new disc track comes out, you get like in your inbox the song, the artwork, a link to the genius page. And the name of this app? discontent discontent.

Oh, discontent. So many layers. Oh my gosh. I mean like, hey, if you guys are, if we have any VC, if we have any venture capitalists listening, I am reachable, just DM me. Anyway. Let me take you back to Brazil very briefly, the setup is that in the 30s, Samba is a new genre.

It's a rhythm, basically. It's a little faster than tango and rumba. And it's emerging from the favelas and for all the Portuguese speakers. All the Portuguese speaker out there, I'm likely to mingle one or two words. So the fevalas, which are the slums of Rio, as I understand them. And this music was not favored, shall we say, by the government. In fact, composers were thought to be leaders of African cults. And sometimes samba gatherings were shut down.

Musicians were arrested. They destroyed the instruments. So it's kind of a controversial genre. So there are a group of people called Malandros. It's an expression that they take on as a badge of honor to be, quote, bad boys to be a malandro. The first track in this diswar of 1933 is by a gentleman called Wilson Batista. It's sung by Silvio Caldas, and the song is called, and again, apologies to native Portuguese

speakers, Lenso No Peskoso. So just so you know, what he's singing in here. These lyrics. My hat tilted to the side, wood-souled shoe-dragging, kerchief around my neck, razor in my pocket.

I swagger around. I provoke and challenge. I am proud to be a vagabond. I know they talk about this conduct of mine. I see those who work living in misery. I'm a vagabond. Don't mess with me. I want to see who's right.

So he's like, this is 1933 Brazilian gangster like song. Yeah. And a gentleman named Noel Rosa, who was a white sambista, Samba writer, but white. And some airs, I think, of musicianship on kind of a higher plane, had a comeback song.

And this song is called Rapaz Folgado. Again, not sung by the artist themselves. This is sung by Arasi del Amieda. But this is 1933. It's a response song. I'll play it for you. Then I'll tell you what she's singing. Okay, so if you recall the lyrics from before

about the kerchiefs and the, in the shoes. Stop dragging your wood-sold shoe because a wood-sold shoe is never a sandal. Take that kerchief off your neck. Buy dress shoes and a tie. Maldro is a defeatist word.

All it does is take away the value of sambistas. I propose to the civilized people to call you not a Maldro, but rather an idle youth. Shots fired. Shots fired. You got a home. And this goes back and forth a few more times.

There's another song that Batista comes back with called Mochino de Vala, Pretty Boy, and he accuses him of being a pretty boy from the rich middle-class neighborhood, right? So calling him to question his class and his authenticity to even be participating in the musical genre. Excuse me, does this have echoes of some of the issues still being debated in some of these disc tracks of the modern era or what? You know, that's a really old disc track. It's a very old district.

It's a very, 1930? 1930. 1930. Both of those songs. What's crazy as I know of one even older. Oh, man. All right. Show us what you got.

Antonio Salieri. and Mozart You went back to Mozart. Yeah, they did. Mozart. Mozart's hit him up. Mozart came with this. Mozart came with this.

Fuck you, Sonny. Erie. Oh, Antonio couldn't even show his face. You got me with that one. Beef is old as music itself. I'm sorry. Let's continue. Deceptively beautiful, melodic cadence.

The anger and rage. The original subtextual dis. The first sneakness. Intertextual, wow. It's incredible stuff there. You had to get on whatever the genius scrolls and be like, oh, I see you Mozart. All right. That's amazing.

We're nerds. Okay. So there are a few more patterns as we go through history of the sort of kinds of disc tracks that are taking place. In Jamaica in the 60s, we have kind of a trend. It happened a few times of Skah and Rocksteady artists in the pre-regay era, like angry at their producers. So Lee Scratch Perry has a track called People Funny Boy,

where he's shouting out Joe Gibbs, his former friend and producer, saying, now that you're at the top, you turn big shot. And all I've done for you, you not remember that. I won't go through the entire wonderful post-Beedle breakup back and forth. This is one I feel like I know a little bit about, yeah. This is an important one because there's several tracks that go back and forth between Paul McCartney and John Lennon. It sort of begins with John Lennon in an interview

in Rolling Stone after the breakup saying that we got fed being side men for Paul. Paul fires the first salvo with 1971's too many people where he says, that was your first mistake. You took your lucky break and broke it in two. Basically saying, hey, we had this good thing going, man. The Beatles were, and you broke it in two. You broke it up.

I will play for you because it's my favorite. in the series. John's, how do you sleep? He comes back hard. How do you sleep? Let's hear a bit of it. I want to talk about how do you sleep. Long time listeners of the show know that I always say that John died right before I think

he would have hopped on the bandwagon and released an entire hip-hop. He would have loved hip-hop. I do feel like, how do you sleep? Feels like a hip-hop disc record because, number one, I always said, like, tempo is important. Like, this is like the dark song. You know, like, he slows the tempo way, way, way down. And it's like a slow sort of like, it's like sticking a knife in you, but driving in the blade slowly. But this is like, we're not going to be friends anymore.

But ironically, they were friends before his death. So there you go. But it's funny. I mean, you're making me think about the energy of the music matching the lyrics or being a counterpart to it and how there was a distinction between, you know, the bridge is over, music and lyric content and then into the ice cube with no Vaseline. Here, you're absolutely right to mention that that slow molasses, it's dragging it out. It's like, I'm going to make you suffer through listening to this six-minute song. I even feel like in its own way, Ether might be the same tempo as takeover. I think they're actually simpler.

But Ether felt slower. Like, it was almost like, Nause was like, slow the beat down. I want to make sure that I can get these words into every single bar. You know what I mean? You hear every phone. I want you to hear every single thing. And yeah, once again, the double entendre diss of everything you did was yesterday. Right, right.

It's over, it's old, and all you have was that one damn song. It's a brutal track. Right. It's a brutal track. That goes back and forth a few times, and they ultimately kiss and makeup as it were. And then there's a trend that happens around this time, perhaps inspired by the Beatles' internal back and forth, or the post-Beatles back and forth, I should say, where there's this dissing other artists phenomenon. So you've got Carly Simon with Yerso Vane with its sneak dis factor. to this day, it's never been fully revealed.

She did admit that one verse, at least, quote unquote, was about Warren Beatty, but she's never fully come out and said, who the entire song is about her if there's other people. We've also got Neil Young, Southern Man, which is kind of like a very well-written treatise on anti-like referring to the slavery and the legacy of it. And segregation, yeah.

And segregation. And then Leonard Skinner comes back with Sweet Home, Alabama, with this kind of, Southern man, don't need him. around, but certainly not the greatest comeback. I will say one time my wife and I were out on Valentine's Day, and we went to a little hotel. We were just like, oh, let's go to that little hotel and drink at the bar. And there was a piano guy there.

And he kicked it in a sweet home Alabama. And I had had just enough glasses of cabaretay to go over and request a change of pace. I know. I pivoted in my chair. I'd yelled loudly across the entire place. I was like, this song is pro segregation. and the people were horrified. He stopped playing the music at the piano.

The people in this bar are horrified. Security actually came up, black guy ironically, black security guard came over and he's like, sir, I believe you're talking. And the guy at the piano was like, no, no, no, he's actually right. He's actually right. I'm going to play something else. Credit to him.

So he saved me from getting kicked out of the bar that night. It was a good Valentine's Day. We didn't even really get into the details, but there's so many different ways to incorporate your enemy into a diss song. In hip-hop, you can rap over their beat, which is what Tupac obviously did essentially for him-up. You can reference their songs in your lyrics, you know. There's so many subtle ways to, like, work in the titles of their songs, you know, flip it on them. Or the sneakness, which is a perfect segue, because in this next song, this might be my overall favorite diss song.

And it's Queen's Death on Two Legs. It is the opening track on Night at the Opera, which is the album, which is known for Bohemian Rhapsody. but this is a slamming takedown at that former manager does not name him but he knows who it is and he sues them and they end up settling out of court

but there's nothing specific in the song other than it's a song about hey you ripped us off and here it is you suck my blood like a leech you break the law and you breathe you screw my brain

and it goes on and on Every single line is a scathing takedown line about what you are and what you did to me. There's no subtlety to it other than the not naming. So I love this track just as an anger song. This is probably one of my favorite teenage anger songs outside of the Metallica canon. That's interesting because part of me thinks it's never fair when a musician or an artist goes after somebody who is not a musician or artist. Because they can't respond in the beef. Like that's not.

Well, they can sue you successfully. And by the way, you may not have the empathy you had when you realize that this was the gentleman who signed the band to one of those classic early 70s, especially like terrible deals where the band was young and didn't have proper representation. And the rules of music industry, legalities, and copyright are so complicated that he took advantage of them so that everything they made prior to this record, the guy owned, but all he had given them was access to a recording studio. In light of this new information, sympathy withdrawn. And one of my favorite categories is the dissing Courtney Love song, of which there are many. That's good, because that's a musician, dissing, a musician. A musician, dissing a musician. Courtney Love of Whole and, of course, wife of the late Kurt Cobain, was not a very favorite individual in certain communities in the mid-90s and early 90s.

And the foo Fighters song, I'll Stick Around, it turns out, was about her, specifically this line. Yeah, that's a young foo fighter, young Dave Grohl calling out Courtney Love, who is complicated arrangement. We won't be judging it, but obviously the widow of his former bandmaid and friend, a lot of complexity going on there. But this was his energy, this was his disc track, this is his expression of frustration and anger towards her. But he wasn't the only one.

Stone Table Pilots had a song called Too Cool Queenie. But interestingly, another artist who you might not expect to have a disc track against Courtney Love, and that's this one. I did not know this story. That's really interesting. What is Gwen's issue with Courtney? Gwen's pissed because Courtney was in an interview in 17 magazine said, I'm not interested in being the cheerleader.

I'm not interested in being Gwen Stefani. She's the cheerleader, and I'm out in the smoker shed. That's hilarious. So Stefani responded, I've never been a cheerleader. So I was like, okay, fuck you. You want me to be a cheerleader? I will be one. And there she is on that track being a cheerleader.

Not only does Gwen win in that feature. But I like the fact that two grown adults care what was written in 17 magazines. That really shows you where we're at. I think that when musicians go out musicians, somebody on the internet was like, these are grown adults writing poetry towards one another. Violent poetry. And that's only when it gets into a song because, I mean, like, I just love the idea of competitive artists.

You know, like I'm reminded of how much Jack White is. the white stripes hates the black keys. The white stripes, the black keys. The imagery is perfect. It's like white and black. And then, you know, of legend is Prince versus Rick James. You know, and Rick James thinking like, oh, man, you know, like this, you know, he's just a little bit younger and he's a whole lot shorter. And why is he getting the chances that I was denied?

I love the shade that Mariah verbally throws at J-Lo, even though I love them both. I love both these people. You can love both people on both sides of the beef and still sort of like enjoy a back and forth the same way you might like, you know, all the kids getting in a circle and clowning one another. And I would be remiss to perhaps the mother of all like claustrophobic disc track scenarios is Fleetwood Mac's album rumors. And the fact that there are songs about an individual in the band and an individual at the, it's not even the Beatles where they've broken up and gone their separate ways. We're still in the damn band together. They're on stage every night, and Lindsay Buckingham is singing this to Stevie Nix.

The whole thing is so mean. Loving you isn't the right thing to do. Like, that could be a hip-hop. How can I ever change things that I did? Do. If I could, maybe I... I'm not sure I hear the hip-hop in it, but I hear you. How can I...

It's a little soft for him up, but this part. This is so angry, though. Because they're looking at each other and singing harmony. That is, that is, that is, that is, ballsy, that is nerve. That is, there's no sneak disinvolved. There's no uncertainty who's shouting at who in this thing. So that to me is insane. And they got through it, but not without like collateral damage for the other marriage,

which dissolved between Christine and John. Christine McVee on keyboards and John McVee on bass and Mick Fleetwood, the drummer gets involved and sleeps with Stevie. It's a mess, but a beautiful mess and one of the most highest selling records of all time. We couldn't talk about beef without talking about that one. So, Diallo, we're coming to the end of the show.

As a closing thought, let me ask you this. In 20 years, when people look back on this moment and the Drake and Kendrick beef and everything going on, what do you think it'll represent, this moment in hip-hop? Man, dang, I just, I hope it's remembered as an exciting time for hip-hop, you know, not just some sad, dark time. I will say at one point, uh, when all these songs were coming out, it's like, oh, man, this is all so bleak and like, are, are people just lying? And, you know, I just needed some happy music. Yeah. And so I'm going to go rogue right now and, uh,

do a one more song. I'm going to say for my one more song this week, I'm going to recommend a new song that sounds like an old song. It's, uh, from 2017. And I, but I only discovered it this year when another DJ put it on at a party. The song is called Lose Yourself to the Groove, and the group is APX. It feels like an 80s boogie track, and it was something that I listened to that feels light and summary

when things got particularly dark. Here's Lose Yourself to the Group by the APX. So that's songs for 2017. I love buggyne. Feels like 1980s, 3, 84. Yeah. So we've gone full circle. We've gone all the way back to about the time

MC Shan released the bridge. bridge. That's beautiful. I love it. All right, luxury. Help me in this thing. Well, I've been producer, DJ, and music ologist, luxury. No, you're not. You're lame. You're a fraud. I'm sorry. I can't come back from that. I've been designated. You've been designated.

You've been doing so many beeps. The rage is coursing through our veins. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Dialla Riddle. And this has been one song. Please stay safe out there. Be kind. Rewind. And by the way, if you've made it this far, that means that means that you like the show. And we appreciate the

Listenership. So please tell your friends, like and subscribe on the podcast platform of choice. Give us five stars. Write us a nice review. Everything helps. Keeps the show going. Not the least of which is sharing it with your friends. So send a copy over them. And you can find us on Instagram. Send it on the WhatsApp. All of your WhatsApp threads, all your text threads. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo at D-I-A-L-O. And I'm Luxury at L-U-X-X-U-Y. And that's the same on TikTok for you, right? On TikTok, I'm at Diallo-Riddle, so you have to type in my last name. R-I-D-D-L-E after the D-A. This episode is produced by Matthew Nelson with engineering from Marcus Homme.

Additional production support from Casey Simonson. The show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Wiles and Leslie Guam.