Overthinkers, raising the bar like the flag at Iwo Jima
Dropping you haters for your rhyme misdemeanors
Snooping outside the studio, that’s where I seen ya
Bite our style, your throat burns like you’re chugging drain cleaner …
… and so on.
Diss tracks are a staple of hip-hop, what with its premium on credibility, freestyling, lyricism and ostentatious display. But hip-hop didn’t invent the diss track. Hardly.
So we rounded up the Overthinking Posse – the Lenza, the Fenza, Ol’ Dirty Perich and Stokesface Killah – to crack the deepest wax on the block. I’m talking deep in the record crate, son. I’m talking old school.
What, Overthinkers, is the Best Diss Track Prior to Hip-Hop? SOUND OFF.
And stay tuned to the end for a verdict from our Surprise Celebrity Guest Judge!
“Roll Over Beethoven” – The Lenza (Lee)
Although Chuck Berry was a fairly well established artist by the time “Roll Over Beethoven” dropped in 1956, he was making a pretty big leap in dissing two of the music world’s all time greatest hustlers, Ludwig “Vee to the Izzan” Beethoven AND Pyotr ILL-yich Tchaikovsky IN THE SAME SONG.
Let’s do a quick comparison to see how these three MCs stacked up against each other at the time:
 Beethoven |
 Tchaikovsky |
 Berry |
|
| Number of Years in Da Game | 186 | 116 | 30 |
| Number of Tracks Dropped | 138 | 80 | 4 |
| Gaudy Oil Painting Portrait? | Yes | Yes | No |
Today, we consider Chuck Berry to be one of the all time greats, but at the time, he was a brash upstart taking aim at the heaviest of the heavy hitters and telling them to get the f— out of his way. Imagine if B.O.B., Drake, or another young rapper took aim at James Brown AND Michael Jackson in the same song. That’s how serious of a diss this song is.
“The Catilinarian Orations” – The Fenza (Fenzel)
Just to give you a sense for how awesome the Catilinarian Orations were, I’m going to retell the story of them with somewhat more recent people and places.
So, let’s say that Jay-Z is President of the United States, and it’s an election year. The Game ran for President on the Green Party ticket or something and lost really badly four years ago, but he’s going to run again anyway. In the last election, G-Unit shot a bunch of people either for him or in spite of him — it’s never really clear to what extent the Game was even in G-Unit at the time, but the election was shady, and The Game’s record sales and poll numbers drop.
This time around, he raises some money, but not enough, and he’s having some problems in the primaries. It doesn’t look like The Game is going to win the election. But he’s rap’s MVP, and he ain’t going nowhere — so, he starts going to extreme measures. He murders 50 Cent and carries his head through the streets. He makes a run of Krystal bottles with his face on them and hands them out at polling places. He walks into the U.S. Senate one day and starts asking people if they have any interest in burning down the Capitol and the White House and killing Jay-Z. He gets together a whole lot of armed thugs in Baltimore with the intention of taking DC by force. It’s not exactly clear the full extent of what he’s doing, but it’s clear the Game is pretty far out of line, and Jay Z is going to respond.
So, first, Jay Z fires a shot across The Game’s bow — he gets Congress to ban putting your picture on Krystal bottles.
Then he gets serious.
Jay-Z calls a special joint session of Congress on top of the Statue of Liberty, inviting The Game and his posse as well. The pedestal is ringed with armed guards, and the air is thick with helicopters.
On top of the Statue of Liberty, in his suit with American flag lapel pin, and on national television, Jay Z records a blazing diss track against The Game. This diss track is so blazing that 2,000 years later, children who don’t even speak English will study, memorize and recite this diss track in school — it will be part of every intermediate curriculum in learning English, and it will be seen as the authoritative guide to writing diss tracks in any language. The recording of it will also be Jay Z’s best-selling album.
The Game is so shamed by this diss track that literally nobody will talk to him. The reporters won’t take pictures of him. The West Coast rappers don’t care that Jay Z is East Coast, and The Game’s appeals to G-Unit are ignored. All that is clear is that The Game is a first-degree punk, and that he just got told. The Game goes back to Baltimore, but the first time he sees the police, he bum rushes them himself and is shot to death.
Jay Z will go on to record a whole bunch of The Game diss tracks, even long after The Game has died, blaming The Game for every instance of political corruption on record, as well as global warming and a failure to pass effective healthcare reform. In the future, it will be almost impossible to remember which one is which, but they’ll mostly be sold on compilation albums, so it won’t matter
Swap President Jay-Z with Roman Consul Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Game for failed consular candidate and conspirator Lucius Sergius Catilina, and the Statue of Liberty with the Temple of Jupiter Stator, and that’s pretty much how it happened.
Pretty much.
“Hitler Has Only Got One Ball” – Ol’ Dirty Perich
The year’s 1939. Germany has just invaded Poland. Having already annexed Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland, and having signed a non-aggression pact with Russia, the Nazis have become a threat to contend with. The coming years would bear that out, with England’s disastrous loss at Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain.
So it took some wicked sack to call out Hitler.
There’s no definitive author of the song “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball.” Toby O’Brien, propagandist for the British Council in 1939, has claimed credit for it. But there’s not even one definitive version of the song. There are as many variations on the lyrics as there were decoy plans surrounding D-Day.
The most illustrative one goes as follows:
Hitler has only got one ball,
Göring has two but very small,
Himmler is somewhat sim’lar,
But poor Goebbels has no balls at all.
Damn. That’s four lines about Hitler’s entire crew and their nuts.
Filthy lies, I assure you.
This deserves enshrinement as the Greatest Diss Track Prior to Hip Hop for two reasons:
(1) They called out Hitler. Though he ultimately lost the Second World War, in 1939 Hitler was the most important person in Europe. And Britain dropped a track dissing his genitals. That shit’s cold.
(2)“Hitler Has Only Got One Ball” is sung to the tune of the Colonel Bogey march. It’s the whistling march from Bridge on the River Kwai. You’ve heard it; everyone who speaks English has heard it.
Got it? Sing the song to that tune. Catchy, ain’t it?
Congratulations – Britain has just infected your brain. From now until you die or go senile, you will never be able to hear that song without hearing, “Hitler … has only GOT ONE ball … Goring … has two but VER-Y small …” Never. It’s stuck.
Lots of people devote attention to the viciousness and power dynamics of a diss track. But no one ever bothers to record a really catchy one. The Commonwealth of Britain – and O’Brien’s claims aside, the entire country deserves credit for this one – wrote a song so infectious that it singlehandedly won World War II.
Did I just claim a song about Hitler’s testicles won the Second World War? Yes.
“Pus Raimons e Truc Malecx” – Stokesface Killah
I dunno guys. Are any of these really diss tracks? I mean, you don’t hear rappers heaping abuse on fascist dictators, or on traitorous Roman politicians. (Although man, wouldn’t that be just the coolest?) Mr. Lee got closer to the heart of it with Roll Over Beethoven, but even that’s a little off: you don’t really fire off a diss track at a dead guy either. No, a diss track is an insult to someone who’s still around to be insulted. And for this, I think we need to look at the medieval Occitan lyric.
Wait, where did everybody go? Come back! There’s pie! Dammit.
It’s too bad everyone stopped reading, because the similarities between troubadour songs and rap are kind of fascinating. Both are largely male-dominated genres with a few notable women. In both, the division between poetry and music is severely blurred, or maybe even absent. Troubadours, like rappers, tend to refer to themselves by pseudonyms, and in the third person. (One poem by Cercamon — which was certainly not his real name — ends with the line “Cercamon says: he is hardly courteous who despairs of love.” It’s not such a jump from this to “My name is Hov’, H-to-the-O-V, I used to move snowflakes by the O-Z.”) And both genres are strangely obsessed with their own authenticity. “First off, every rapper hasn’t got a gun. Second, every rapper hasn’t killed someone,” spits British MC Crazy Titch, who is in fact keeping it real by doing time right now for homicide. Meanwhile in 13th century Occitania, Arnaut de Marhuelh thanks the “other troubadors” who have lied so much about being in love that his own (sincere) (adulturous) verses will slip under the radar. The troubadours even had something similar to a posse cut, where a whole bunch of them would take turns singing verses on a single topic. And they had diss tracks — whoo boy did they ever.
When I went searching for an example, I came across a great one by Arnaut Daniel. And I decided that I couldn’t use it, because it was too dirty to link to from our website. (It’s a little hard to understand what he’s talking about at first, but once you figure out the metaphor, it is filthy.) After spending an hour or so looking for another one, I decided just to go for it. I mean, hey, I’m not forcing you to read the thing. Enjoy. And when you’re thoroughly shocked by this little assault on your sensibilities, take a minute to mull over the fact that Dante Alighieri gave Arnaut a shoutout in the Inferno.
What makes this the ultimate diss track? Consider poor Dame Enan. There’s an entire human life, there, and the only way we even know she lived is that she’s the target of this scatalogical insult. If she had a wikipedia entry, all it would say is “Medieval French noblewoman, known for her smelly butt.” And probably “Non-notable, flagged for deletion.” That is one hell of a diss, my friends.
Celebrity Judge
You’ve seen the nominations. Now, here to lend his authoritative verdict is none other than the King of Poor Judgment in Rap Feuds, Canibus!
Mr. Bus, which of these do you think is the best diss track?
Yo, you better give me the respect that I deserve or I’mma take it by force
Blast you with a 45 Colt, make you somersault
Shock you with a couple hundred thousand volt thunderbolts
Before you wanted a war, now you wanna talk
It’s about who strikes the hardest not who strikes first
That’s why I laugh when I hear that whack-ass verse
That shit was the worst rhyme I ever heard in my life
Cause the greatest rapper of all time died on March 9th
God bless his soul, rest in peace kid
It’s because of him now at least I know what beef is
It’s not what I would call this, see this is somet–
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM
Whoa! Holy … you see that? Who’s that guy? That guy in the hoodie?
Damn … I didn’t see anything! I’m outta here!
Time to vote, Junior Overthinkers. Pick your favorite in the poll – or nominate your own in the Comments!
