Joyner Lucas and Tory Lanez trade blows in the most unexpected Hip Hop dispute of 2018. Two talented rappers exercising their lyrical ability. Both going all out, this was the spirit of hip hop in full force. But who won?
3 Minute Read
I think I found out about this from a video Joyner put on his Instagram, basically of Tory saying he could out-rap Joyner, and with Trippie Redd, looking high as fuck, co-signing this.
Going in to this, I had no idea what to expect from Tory, I always had the idea that Tory was just a "poor-mans Drake", therefore I believed Joyner would outright smash him. This meant there was a little bit of pressure on Joyner to do the business here, especially when Joyner has made it public that he believes he’s underrated. Finally, he got the chance to go at someone.
Joyner Lucas - Zeze freestyle
Round 1: For me Tory flowed so well over the ‘Lucky You’ beat, he absolutely blew me away, I never knew he could spit like this. Although, from what I hear, and from the comments I have read, apparently, he has been rapping like this from day 1, apparently this was an example of ‘old-school Tory’.
However, the problem I have with his ‘Lucky You freestyle’, is the same problem many people had, the song was fire, but there wasn’t really any disses. This may have been intentional, maybe he was just trying to show he could rap better over the same beat. That was completely wiped out when Joyner came through with his ‘Litty freestyle’. Which was an actual diss. At this point it seemed easy for Joyner, he tears this beat up, constantly switching up his flow, even with a cringey bar about having a threesome with Tekashi 69, Joyner took the W, 1-0.
Round 2: Even though Tory had the advantage of hearing Joyner’s 'Litty' verse first, his ‘Litty Again freestyle’ was undoubtedly better. Making some good points about the hype he has created for Joyner, managing to get Joyner to a million followers on Instagram, when not even Eminem and Chris Brown could do that. And his Joyner impression was fucking hilarious. Overall ‘Litty again’, despite having an inaccurate bar about Joyner not having any plaques (Joyner has a plaque from Lucky You), this diss was quality. Tight flows, funny rebuttals, and you could kinda tell the disses hit hard. 1-1.
Tory rapping from the perspective of Joyner: “Don’t nobody ever wanna book me for a show, I ain’t go no songs, when I go I spit freestyles, try to make a song about depression, but nobody ever get it, so I take it out on popping ni**as beats now”.
Then Joyner dropped his, (in my opinion) underwhelming ‘Zeze freestyle’. I feel as though there was too much filler in this song, he even said in an Instagram live that he was going to do a freestyle over this beat anyway, so to me it all seemed a bit ‘hashed’ together. Like, the disses were sound, especially where he exposes Tory for copying and biting other rappers, but he didn’t seem to say anything new on this track. The beat is amazing, but I’m surprised he tried to make a diss track on it, it just didn’t seem like the one.
So, after hearing all the tracks, I had the score at 1-1. But to really decide on a winner I had to take everything into consideration. The way I did this, was by seeing how my opinion on the rappers has changed following the beef. All Joyner really did is confirm that he is a good rapper, whereas Tory completed changed my pre-conceptions. ‘Litty Again’ was in my opinion, the best track that was released in the feud, it was the cleverest and contained the best jabs at the other person.
However, both will feel as though they have won, there’s no surprise that the public opinion is pretty 50/50. Tory will have gained a lot of fans from this, especially people who are really into technical rappers. As for Joyner, he should just continue to ride the wave, this is easily the most hype he’s had around him in his career. From his features with Chris Brown, to his feature on Eminem's ‘Kamikaze’ to this beef now with Tory, this will probably do him so many favours for when he releases his next project ‘ADHD’.
And this has been great for Hip Hop as well. Two mainstream rappers going at it, simply to see who’s better. 2018 has definitely seen a return of the competitive element of Hip Hop, with a few different beefs popping up throughout the year. I can’t imagine there'll be much more of the Tory/Joyner dispute, but who knows? I thought it was gonna end after Joyner's Litty verse. Either way, congratulations to both of them for stepping up, too many rappers nowadays wouldn’t have the balls.
Links to all the tracks
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