The history of the battle rap. Who's the illest on the mic??

Beef is a Hip Hop feud or a Hip Hop rivalry that can occur through a misunderstanding or just because, and it's defined as a controversy in which two or more rappers create a rivalry that is manifested by each slandering and confronting the other in a number of ways. Another way of saying it is to just call it a "diss", which is one rapper disrespecting another one. When two rappers or emcee's battle, it's simply to determine who can rhyme the best, who's wittier, and who's head is in the right place. Basically, just who is the freshest. Hip Hop is very aggressive, highly competitive, and it's similar to a contact sport.

Hip Hop feuds have been around for at least two decades, and they can spawn at any time over any situation. Since its birth it has created some fantastic music. Careers have been ended, and some have been propelled into superstar status because of it. Many Hip Hop artist owe their very careers to beef; KRS-One, 50 Cent, Roxanne Shante, LL Cool J, and several others. Beef is a 2003 documentary that chronicles a majority of the premier feuds in Hip Hop which began in 1981, it's directed by Peter Spirer and Narrated by Ving Rhames. The documentary features archived and exclusive interviews by Ice T, KRS-One, Mack-10, Common, Damon Dash, Angie Martinez and many others, as well as plenty of diss songs along with video clips.

The documentary is well put together and kicks things off with the earliest recorded battle between Kool Moe Dee and Busy Bee, it showed the birth of the lyrical battle emcee, and the light-hearted and fun nature of the battle. It was just basically about who could rock the party. Another famous battle in Hip Hop lore was also KRS-One vs. MC Shan, and here you will hear from both artist. I just can't help but notice that Shan was still mad about that battle. It's all in his voice plus he even had new lyrics to battle KRS again.

The documentary also goes into the business aspect of beef, and how it can spill over on to record, by going into a very vicious beef between Ice Cube and NWA, which began when the former noticed some slick behind the scenes tactics going on with their contracts as a group. He left the group to pursue his solo career, only for his former crew to attack him, and as he responded the disses only became bigger. I also enjoyed another view, which happened to be the thug element becoming a factor, in which, a beef developed between Tru-Life and Mob Deep, this resulted in Tru-Life taking their words on wax seriously, and invading a recording studio with guns and beating the hell out of Mob Deep's camp. The infamous East Coast/West Coast feud, or the Biggie vs. Tupac beef is somewhat covered, but just not completely. I'm actually happy about that since there was so much coverage on it in magazines back then, and I was actually afraid of this turning into a Tupac vs. Biggie DVD. I know the ending to their feud was tragic, but seriously, I been sick and tired of hearing about their feud.

There's a large amount of information covered here that can prove very entertaining to someone who doesn't follow rap, or to someone who is just brand new to it.  The feature runs at a brisk pace and it's completely uncensored. My only issue is that at least one major feud was only glanced over, with no interviews from the two rivals at all, while another one isn't covered at all, which happened to be a pretty serious beef right there that actually spilled onto the street, with one guy claiming that dudes rolled up on his rival with burners ready to blow his ass away, as far as I know, he may or may not have sent that, but it was in his rhyme and if that was true then someone could have been bodied.

Beef is a very good documentary of the battle rap. I highly recommend it to anyone who are fans of the genre, or to anyone who may have the slightest interest. The feature is 105 minutes.

Pros:
-A very good history lesson for those unfamiliar with the hip hop genre, lots of video clips and interviews

Cons:
-Could have used more information