This week’s WHHAT (Weekly Hip-Hop & Tech) looks at how Biggie’s classic question What’s Beef? has changed with technology.
Technology Is Transforming Rap Beef
This Wired.com article from C. Brandon Ogbunuand and Lupe Fiasco does a lot of the heavy lifting and analysis of what many people have been observing but maybe not fully articulating the past few weeks:
Technology Is Transforming Rap Beef
Some previews:
What’s happening in 2024, as artists like Drake and Lamar trade bar(b)s via IG posts and YouTube clips, and their fans debate the merits on social media, marks a new era of rap beef.
Today there are many more ways to fabricate a song, and fewer ways to tell the difference between us and the robots
Artists now control the timing and pace of the releases. Unlike years past, when popular DJs often folded diss songs into radio sets, artists today can curate the release of these tracks, going directly to listeners via platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and X.
Whether we are enjoying it or not, we all wait for the next iteration.
Check out the rest of the article for some great insight and history.
You can follow co-author C. Brandon Ogbunuand on Twitter under the great handle @big_data_kane, a nod to legendary rapper Big Daddy Kane who interestingly just let off his own take on the beef:
Big Daddy Kane Says Fans Ruined Rap Beef, Calls J. Cole ‘the Greatest Lyricist of This Era’
“Samurai” - Lupe Fiasco
The article’s other co-author, Lupe Fiasco, just dropped a lead single “Samurai” off his newly announced project of the same name
Lupe’s work on the above Wired article is no surprise given his career-long references to technology, highlighted most recently by his Large Language Model collaboration with Google on TextFx, an AI-powered tool for rappers, writers and wordsmiths.
I’m looking forward to diving into TextFx as well as Lupe Fiasco’s recent scholarly work at MIT and Yale in future installments of WHHAT.
More “Beef”
In case you’re wondering about the GIF at the top of the newsletter, it comes from the outrageous and at times outrageously dark drama/comedy “Beef” on Netflix.
You’ll probably be able to tell if you’re in or out within 2 episodes, but if you’re up for a darker show, now is as good and random a newsletter as ever to recommend it.
Peace and have a great weekend! (that likely wouldn’t include starting “Beef” 😅).
✌🏽