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Underground > Radio & Music >

The Bridge Is Over

21:37 / 11.09.06

I was just listening to the Game's new Lloyd Banks diss, 100 Bars, and thinking how weird it is that he's turning into a pretty good rapper. That single that flipped a reggae sample from a Wu Tang record, and his funky old-school nostalgia cut, We Gorillaz with Juice. (The bit where they go back and forth about which celebrities they want to sleep with is so funny!) It's all enough to make me go buy one of his stupid G Unot T-shirts.

But anyway, it made me think about diss records. Which are your favourites, recent and all-time?

Nas fans please note: Ether is not better than Takeover!

13:42 / 13.09.06

no rest for the(da?) wicked, by cypress hill.

so many fools swingin from ma sack,
less talk about the one who had ma back
down in the west coast, so lemme kick it
to the motha-fucka who calls himself wicked...

my introduction to talkin squack about some dude on your album, and i remember finding it quite invigorating.
all i had heard so far was shit like led zeppelin and weezer and the punk canon.
i'm sure diss records exist all over the other genres i was into, but it was a bit of an eye opener for me.

cypress hill were, as i recall.
timing and that.

not my favourite band by any stretch, but the beats were so damn thumping, the lyrics so harshly delivered and the subject matter so deliciously antagonistic that this teen was into it like a crackhead is into crack.
it should be stated, in the interests of full disclosure, that i also discovered rage against the machine around the same time, learning to love them in much the same way as a smackhead does the smack.

i dont get the same tingle these days, but the memory of the tingle remains.

Kiltartan Cross

18:55 / 13.09.06

Bob Dylan's Positively 4th Street always felt good to me;

"You've got a lot of nerve,
To say you are my friend,
When I was down, you just stood there grinning.
And you've got a lot of nerve,
To say you have a helping hand to lend,
You just want to be on the side that's winning."

Which I was always told was about Phil Ochs, although t'Wiki says it might've been broader aimed. Good song if you're feeling a little bit bitter and twisted at your fellows. It goes on in much the same vein.

miss wonderstarr

06:32 / 14.09.06

That's interesting. Is "Like A Rolling Stone" a diss song about anyone particular, too?

Kiltartan Cross

12:07 / 14.09.06

I think it's a "maybe", Wiki suggests it was partly self-referential. To be honest, I never really thought about it...

...another one springing to mind from way back in the day would be Carly Simon's You're So Vain. She seem's to've taken some delight in dropping contradictory hints about it, with Mick Jagger being the most likely subject. Never really listened to the J.J. song that samples it, although it seems to be excellent form to sample a diss for a diss.

19:30 / 14.09.06

The first one to mind is Sage Francis, who is perpetually dissing the mainstream rappers stereotype (although he's not alone, I'm sure a slew of other "underground" rappers do the same thing). Particularly in my mind is "Gunz Yo".

Also on the dissing of a large group of people on the top of my mind is "Radio Radio" by Elvis Costello.

Janean Patience

21:20 / 14.09.06

Is "Like A Rolling Stone" a diss song about anyone particular, too?

Edie Sedgewick, from what I heard. Poor Little Rich Girl and regular in Warhol's Factory. Coming at this from a Warhol rather than a Dylan direction so could be wrong.

Kiltartan Cross

11:05 / 15.09.06

Good grief. I've just been browsing Wiki's big list of answer songs - dreadful behaviour, I know, but I just couldn't stop - and there's plenty in there I'd never even realised were answers; Sweet Home Alabama?! That'll teach me to listen closer.
It's worth a browse if you're feeling trivia-inclined, and really rams home the sheer diversity of insult and response songs. Mind, be warned, it kinda evokes the atmosphere of an internet forum...

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:34 / 15.09.06

The first one to mind is Sage Francis

Very true, much in the same way that one might 'Mind The Gap' when using the London Underground.

16:38 / 15.09.06

sage may be a preachy wank with a dodgy line in self importance, but he does know his way around a lyric.

he does do an anti-religion track that makes me want to slap the microphone out of his hands, but. a proper slap; rap his knuckes and make him clutch his wrist stuff.

that said, a lot of rappers i like are wankers. it often seems to come free with a mindest that invests it's own words with such importance that amplifying them seems altruistic.

was there anything in particluar that irked you about him?

Kiltartan Cross

18:51 / 15.09.06

There's something about his delivery which is just a bit off, to me. Like he's a fraction of a second out all the time... you reckon?

Janean Patience

07:47 / 20.09.06

I was misinformed about Like A Rolling Stone, I'm afraid. It's not about Edie at all. That's some kind of rock myth. Thought I should correct that.

Mind you, it's probably one of the few songs that isn't about Edie. She was some kind of a 20th century muse, evidently. Check her out on Wikipedia for a list.