The Year’s Coldest Rap Disses (By People Not Named Kendrick Lamar)

The best rap disses tend to impact in three different ways: They’re vicious, they’re targeted, and they’re petty. Sometimes they’re softer jabs, subliminals meant to bring on death by a thousand cuts. Other times, they’re as blatant as a brick with your name on it hurtling toward your face. A tried-and-true tradition of the genre, they range from obscure curiosities siloed off to hardcore fandoms (Canibus never fully recovered from LL Cool J’s scathing “The Ripper Strikes Back”) to earthshaking cultural moments (Nas’ “Ether,” Tupac’s “Hit ’Em Up,” Pusha T’s “The Story of Adidon”) capable of breaking or redefining entire careers.  

This has been a ripe year for the rap diss. Even before Kendrick Lamar and Drake brought their long-simmering beef to a boil in March and then kept the world locked into their hip-hop soap opera for months, the energy felt particularly combative. Old wounds were reopened; Kendrick’s pedophilia accusations against Drake seemingly inspired several other rappers to bat around heinous claims of their own; modern stars fought back against industry titans; former partners switched sides; rap-adjacent figures got bored and decided to bar some adversaries up for kicks. Below, I’ve compiled nine of my favorite 2024 diss tracks that aren’t part of the Kendrick-Drake canon.

Megan Thee Stallion: “Hiss”

Targets: Drake, Tory Lanez, Nicki Minaj, haters in general

From the time she dropped her breakout mixtape Tina Snow six years ago, Megan Thee Stallion has been playing defense. She was a formidable presence from the start—a rapper’s rapper who can dazzle with punchlines as icy or fiery as the anime character that inspired her Todoroki Tina alias. But each of her five studio albums were tailed by tragedy, controversy, violence, or just the general air of misogyny that plagues all women who rap. On “Hiss,” Meg eviscerates several targets in her scope, never playing the victim but ready to end the argument. 

Meg is a great rapper because, like her idol Pimp C, she knows how to flex control. When she rides a beat, it’s with both hands on the strap. She knows where to put emphasis on words and how to make a nameless callout hit like nails in a coffin. “These hoes don’t be mad at Megan, these hoes mad at Megan’s Law,” she snarls, a shot for Nicki Minaj and her convicted sex offender husband so brutal that even the parents of Megan Kanka—the 7-year-old girl the law is named after—felt the need to respond. That same ire burns for exes and collaborators who use Meg for attention; men like Drake who talk cash shit on record and act like groupies in real life; publications and influencers farming misinformation surrounding her trial with Tory Lanez, who was later sentenced to a decade behind bars for shooting her in the foot in 2020. “Download JPlay since y’all niggas got so much to say,” she says, turning the commissary wiring service into a cudgel. Meg’s always had fangs, but “Hiss” flaunts them at their most poisonous.

Sukihana: “Cocaine”

Target: JT of City Girls

The friction between Miami rappers Sukihana and JT caught fire quickly earlier this year. What started as a line about a nameless person cracking a veneer while eating crab legs on JT’s single “Okay” spiraled into a tornado of trifling disses and IG Live rants. But even JT’s talk of names like “Sardine Suki” can’t compare to “Cocaine,” the feud’s most salacious and catchy song.

Sukihana’s appeal on “Cocaine” doesn’t come from witty wordplay but from how bluntly she can get at her nemesis without directly calling her out by name. Putting pressure on JT about her previous arrests and the jealousy she allegedly feels for Ice Spice and her City Girls partner Yung Miami is bad enough, but how do you recover from a line like “I can tell by that white tongue you eat booty grazy”? The transphobia sprinkled throughout is heinous, to say the least, but otherwise, Suki and producer Twink Da Beatman give “Cocaine” an elastic, over-the-top vibe full of laughs and gasps. And Suki doesn’t leave without defusing whatever ammunition people might have about her history on OnlyFans: “Everybody seen it, I squirt, I piss/I don’t give a motherfuck, I’ll suck dick again/Everybody know my tea.” Hell hath no fury like a rapper with nothing left to lose.

Latto: “S/O to Me”

Targets: Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj

Don’t let the title fool you—“S/O to Me,” the closing track from Latto’s third studio album, Sugar Honey Iced Tea, is more than just a bout of self-assurance. That’s not to say the Atlanta rapper and one-time Jermaine Dupri reality show champion doesn’t puff her chest out a little bit. But Latto’s talk of earning rap notoriety over “one of these bitches that they signing and slide on the shelf” after pushing through her less-than-stable home life is bolstered by a handful of disses tucked into corners of the song’s two verses. The most pointed bars are reserved for Nicki Minaj, who’s been having an awful year on the diss front, and Ice Spice, with whom Latto’s had static since the Bronx rapper took up with Minaj last year. While Latto’s earlier single “Sunday Service” lit the match (“Do you rap or do you tweet? ’Cause I can’t tell; get in the booth, bitch!”), “S/O to Me” pays it off with some powerful controlled explosions of its own. 

Latto’s greatest talent is her delivery, assured but just laid-back enough to find the rhythm and bounce in a threat, a flirt, or a flex. That nonchalance is deftly deployed here over a soulful beat from Saint Mino and Coupe that feels more than a little like a riff on Drake’s infamous timestamp song series. It’s what makes Latto’s specific shots at Ice and Nicki so devastating—she’s ready to take the kill shot but is questioning if it’s even worth it. “Funny thing about it, you can’t look me in my eye, sis,” she says, coldly invoking Ice’s government name. Nicki doesn’t suffer any name puns, but her husband (“You fighting for radio play, he fighting a government case”) and elder status (“You aging in the face, but whatever, that’s old news/The crown is coming home soon, I’ll sit on the throne soon”) are aggressively dragged through the mud. As wild as these lines are, they feel like warning shots. In her mind, and through her performance, Latto’s already destined to win.      

$ilkmoney: “2 Fah 1 Bo-berry Brandon Biscuit Special”

Target: Icytwat

Virginia’s $ilkmoney is the kind of rapper who sounds ready to Thanos-snap anybody out of existence on a calm day, so naturally, I expected his diss mode to be thermonuclear. We got that and then some with this track aimed at producer Icytwat, his former partner in the group Divine Council. After years of back-and-forth feuds and makeups amid the Council’s disintegration, Icytwat set off a new round by tweeting secondhand accusations of sexual assault against $ilk, which $ilk vehemently, if flippantly, denied. Not even a week later, $ilk came back with a musical response—nearly five minutes of lyrical warfare that even the sharpest rapper would have a hard time one-upping. 

Half the fun of listening to $ilkmoney rap is the breathlessness of it. He crams words and references into bars, creating dense pockets that stretch beats by producer Khalil Blu to their limits. That centrifugal force is even more powerful when he’s focused on one subject, and he uses as much time, space, and energy to eviscerate his rival however he can. Ribbing Icytwat over false apologies and his tenuous relationship with A$AP Rocky is just the warmup. After a switch-up to a hazy drum loop playing over a haunted Anita Baker sample, $ilk digs into addiction (“I’d do a whippet too if I wasn’t having shit” gets gasps out of me to this day), cheating, and hurls his own heinous accusations (“Lucki and Carti hard copy that hang women over balconies”). It’s hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t, but this game of chicken is so electric. This was a Drake and Kendrick-level event for Divine Council fans, one that $ilk walked away from with blood on his knuckles.

Shaq: “The Big Man”

Target: Shannon Sharpe

It’s funny to think that the only two rap songs Shaq has released in the 21st century are diss tracks. The first was his inexplicable 2017 reply to British comedian Michael Dappah’s “Mans Not Hot,” a song Dappah recorded as the character Big Shaq that went viral that year (Dappah’s reply to the reply quickly put the non-situation to bed). The second, this year’s “The Big Man,” sees the basketball legend and RIAA-certified platinum rapper going after former Denver Broncos tight end-turned-sports commentator and podcast host Shannon Sharpe. What could these two men, each with millions of dollars and media empires to their names, possibly be mad enough about for a song to come of it? During an episode of the Nightcap podcast, Sharpe claimed that the former Laker, who won an NBA MVP award during the 2000 season, was jealous of Denver Nuggets player Nikola Jokic, who won his third MVP title in four years in May. That assertion was enough for Shaq to briefly reopen the floodgates.

Shaq isn’t exactly the most flexible rapper, but he takes to the mid-tempo beat of “The Big Man” decently well. Even so, it’s fun to watch him trip over himself for just under 30 seconds, thinking of ways to say he’s richer and flyer than Sharpe. “You are not in my spot, you’re like a pee-wee,” he says, voice as flat and serious as a jury duty notice. There’s nothing here as salacious or devastating as Sharpe having sex on IG Live earlier this year, but it’s fun to hear Shaq find ways to keep himself entertained.

Remble: “Not Like Us Freestyle”

Target: Ralfy the Plug and the Stinc Team

Ralfy the Plug: “Jada Pinkett”

Target: Remble

It only makes sense for these two songs to be considered together because they’re so intertwined. Remble and Ralfy the Plug have never made music together, but they share an indelible connection to the late L.A. underground rap icon Drakeo the Ruler; the former is a protege, the latter is his blood brother, and both were involved in Drakeo’s Stinc Team collective. After Remble released his formal debut, 2021’s It’s Remble, the San Pedro rapper went a bit quiet, reappearing briefly in 2023 with a handful of new singles, while Ralfy has stayed prolific, with three projects and dozens of songs to his name this year. But on the heels of Remble falling out with the Stinc Team, he put California on notice with his own “Not Like Us” freestyle that airs out his former colleagues. The most scathing bar comes early on, a direct shot at Remble’s one-time affiliate delivered in that cold, hilarious staccato: “I been talkin’ to Drakeo, like, why you leave me here with Ralfy?”

Ralfy wasted no time responding with “Jada Pinkett,” a track set to a slightly modified version of wrestler The Undertaker’s walk-out music and focused on dismantling Remble in any way he can. What starts out silly (“I know a nigga goin’ bald ain’t say my name”) turns bleak pretty quickly, with accusations of sexual assault and pedophilia flying by the third bar. These songs run at a parallel in that way: Remble diss is deadpan and cavalier over a raucous beat, while Ralfy’s is tightly coiled and hushed, under pressure like a dented soda can. Both have their charms, both draw blood, and both attempt to stake their claim to California’s new wave.

B.G.: “Hands Up”

Target: Hot Boy Turk

The fate of the Hot Boys as a unit has been up-and-down for years, but one bond that seems broken beyond repair is between B.G. and Turk. On stage at Essence Festival in July, where the Hot Boys briefly reunited (minus Lil Wayne and Turk), B.G. vaguely addressed Turk’s absence, implying it’s Turk’s own fault that he wasn’t invited onstage with them. Turk replied on IG Live, matching B.G.’s energy by chastising his “weak ass raps” before going on to spill more tea on the Drink Champs podcast. B.G. followed that up just over a month later with “Hands Up,” a diss intent on setting the record straight.

What makes “Hands Up” stand out is how no-nonsense it is. There are no lyrical gymnastics, spilled tea, or labored-over concepts at play. Really, the song feels like B.G. walked into the booth with some thoughts on his mind and just hit record, an old-school, meat-and-potatoes way of going about things. The section on Turk comes just after the halfway point, when B.G. drags him over the coals for speaking on him to Drink Champs while obliquely referencing the same unforgivable acts he mentioned during Essence Fest. This one lands because the sense of betrayal is palpable—if you won’t reunite with someone to play a show as big as Essence Fest, will you ever? Like B.G. says earlier in the song, he keeps it real the only way he knows how: “D.A. asked me to turn it down, streets said ‘I better not.’”

Cam’ron: “Whoa” Diss

Targets: Anthony Edwards, Diddy, the Minnesota Timberwolves, Adidas

I’ve always found it admirable that even now, years removed from his peak, Cam’ron still keeps a freestyle ready to go at all times. His 2023 rap over J. Cole and Yachty’s “The Secret Recipe” showed he was willing and able to keep the pressure on when he’s inspired. This year, Minnesota Timberwolves shooting guard Anthony “Ant-Man” Edwards inspired him to take it even further after Edwards referenced a time when Cam said he’s “an all-star, but not a superstar yet.” That’s all it took to get Cam back in the ring for a short and sweet opportunity to flick the Timberwolves, and Edwards specifically, on the nose.

Just how petty is Cam’ron? He’ll tell Edwards he’s trippin’ while wearing the jersey of Dallas Maverick Luka Doncic—the guy who played an outsized role in ending the Timberwolves’ playoff run this year. Over the iconic violin and drums of Black Rob’s “Whoa” beat, Cam sounds relaxed as he jumps from subject to subject, turning the disintegration of Kanye West’s Adidas deal and his own viral interview on CNN about Diddy into cool bits of Killa Cam talk; the kind that kept heads bobbing through the Purple Haze and Public Enemy #1 eras. “This loss luckless, so here, I’m bossed up/Kyrie Irving with the shit, don’t get crossed up/Shooters; pardon, that’s just my own thoughts/Luka, I’ll send ya home on ya home court.” Unlike Shaq’s “The Big Man,” which was a lark made by someone who hasn’t thought seriously about rapping in years, Cam’ron sounds energized here. I hope Jordan Poole disses him next season.