Being petty is an inextricable part of the human condition, but some people elevate it to an art form. Many of those folks belong to the rap game.
By this point you've probably seen it all. At times, it's calling out other artists for perceived slights. In other moments, it's making fun of something that's a matter of life or death for someone else. As seen in recent instances, artists like Blueface, 50 Cent and 6ix9ine have made a name for themselves due to their historic levels of pettiness.
For his part, Blueface earned a slot on the First All-Petty Team when he kicked a couple of his relatives out of his home last summer. He threw some proverbial salt in the wound when he rapped about it on a song less than a month later.
Meanwhile, 50 Cent, who's been trolling other rappers years before the term was used in this context, has become a legend through dozens of jokes so far below belt they've reached the core of the Earth. All it takes is a quick glimpse at his Instagram account to see that Fif's got no chill and never has.
Another person who's solidified himself as an all-time petty artist is 6ix9ine. The "Gooba" artist has gone to shockingly great lengths to try to debase people in the rap game ever since he began his social media antics in 2017. The fact that his Instagram name was "I'm back" and "They mad" once he was released from prison to home confinement lets you know that he's all about being as petty as humanly possible.
Anyone can have a petty streak, but these guys bring a new meaning to the phrases "over doing it" and "you didn't have to do that." Today, XXL takes a look at the many times rappers were pettier than you. Peep the list below.
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6ix9ine
6ix9ine Hangs Out With the Alleged Mother of Chief Keef's Child and Trippie Redd's Ex-Girlfriend
Before he was arrested and put into federal custody because of federal racketeering and firearms charges, 6ix9ine embarked on a nearly year-long streak of pettiness. One such instance involved him taking one of Chief Keef's alleged baby's mothers, Aareon "Slim Danger" Clark, to the Gucci store in New York City to go shopping. Tekashi had been beefing with Chief Keef at the time—the feud appeared to stem from Keef's associate Tadoe being accused of assaulting Tekashi's friend Cuban Doll, whom Tadoe was dating in 2018. 6ix9ine recorded the shopping trip with the woman connected to Keef for good measure.
As if that weren't enough, Tekashi showed up in bed with Aylek$, his other enemy Trippie Redd's ex-girlfriend, in November of 2018. In a subsequent interview with paparazzi, 6ix9ine claimed that he "fucked the shit out of" Trippie's ex.
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Trippie Redd
Trippie Redd Puts a Rainbow-Fur Rat in Music Video
Months after 6ix9ine appeared in bed with Trippie Redd's ex-girlfriend Aylek$, Trippie exacted some revenge on the rainbow-haired rapper when he unveiled the video for his song "Under Enemy Arms." Trippie, who's been signed to 10k Projects with 6ix9ine from the jump, included a rainbow-fur rat in the visual, with the rat being an obvious shot at Tekashi. In the video, the 6ix9ine rat scurries around a war-torn battlefield and eats off the ground as dead soldiers lie on their backs. Pretty gruesome stuff. It's clear Trippie's not a Tekashi fan.
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Boosie BadAzz
Boosie BadAzz Praises God for the Death of Former Friend Who Robbed Him
Boosie BadAzz is known for pushing things to the edge in his social media videos, but during one particular IG Live session, he got to the point where anyone would say he went too far. During a 2019 IG Live session, Boosie thanked God after a former friend that robbed him suddenly died.
“God ain’t let you slide…and this nigga was my homie. God ain’t let you slide,” said Boosie, who had previously rapped about the friend who allegedly robbed him on his 2010 song "Betrayed." “The boy done fucking died in his sleep. God is good.”
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Nas
Nas Creates an Effigy of Jay-Z to Hang at 2002 Summer Jam Concert
Back in 2002, near the peak of his beef with Jay-Z, Nas had plans to hang a doll version of the rapper at Hot 97's 2002 Summer Jam concert. Although the folks at Hot 97 prevented him from actually going through with the plan, the fact that he went through all the trouble to make the doll is proof of his pettiness. Someone even did a behind-the-scenes video documenting its creation.
While Nas and Jay-Z officially put their differences to the side in 2005, the effigy was proof that when it was on, their beef was flaming.
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Jay-Z
Jay-Z Posts Pictures of Prodigy Dressed as Michael Jackson at 2001 Summer Jam
Maintaining the image of a gangsta rapper was seemingly a full time job in the early aughts. Unfortunately, any evidence that a rapper was ever anything but a sneering, gun-clutching block dweller could be used against them. That's something Jay-Z used against Prodigy at Hot 97's 2001 Summer Jam concert.
At the show, Hov posted an image of the Mobb Deep rapper wearing a Michael Jackson-esque outfit while posing for a dance photo in 1988. For at least the duration of the show, the photo penetrated the gritty mythos of the Queensbridge rapper. On top of that, Jay-Z also played the first two verses of his 2001 Nas diss track, "Takeover," which calls out Prodigy for the picture Hov had projected at the show.
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Future
Future Says Ciara's Husband Russell Wilson Does Whatever She Tells Him To
Future and Ciara have had their ups and downs since breaking up with each other and calling off their engagement in 2015. One of those downs was Hendrix using a January 2019 appearance on Apple Music's Freebandz Radio to call out Ciara's husband, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson. In the interview, Hendrix said that Wilson does whatever Ciara instructs.
"He do exactly what she tell him to do," Future said. "He not being a man in that position. He not tellin' her, 'Chill out with that on the internet. Don't even talk to him. I'm your husband! You better not even bring Future's name up!' If that was me, she couldn't even bring his name up. She know that. She couldn't even bring her exes' names up. Don't give that shit no energy."
Since then—after a legal battle over their son, Future—things have been pretty quiet between Hendrix and CiCi, so it appears that everything is all good.
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50 Cent
50 Cent Buys 200 Tickets to Ja Rule Concert
Even in the pantheon of petty rappers, 50 Cent stands out. He reminded folks of his legendary petty streak back in October of 2018, when he copped 200 tickets to a Ja Rule show so that the front two rows at the concert would be empty.
50 shelled out $3,000 for the seats to the show, which Billboard reported as being for Ja's Nov. 9, 2018 concert in Arlington, Texas. Fif also made fun of the $15 ticket prices for the show.
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Lil’ Kim
Lil' Kim Includes Nicki Minaj's Severed Head on Black Friday Mixtape Cover
By 2011, Lil' Kim and Nicki Minaj were in full-fledged beef after going at each other in a series of interviews. Kim claimed Nicki needed to pay homage to her, and Nicki wasn't having it.
In February of 2011, Kim came at Nicki both on wax and on the cover art for a mixtape. For the project, a PayPal-released mixtape called Black Friday—a play on Nicki's debut album, Pink Friday—Kim featured Nicki's severed head on the ground. Needless to say, it's hard to get more brutal—and petty—than that.
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Blueface
Blueface Kicks His Mom Out of His House, Then Raps About It
In July of 2019, Blueface was a newer face to the rap game, but that didn't stop him from rising up the ranks of the most petty artists in the game. It was then that Blueface's mother documented everything that happened in an Instagram Livestream session, in which Blueface is kicking his sister out of his spot. His mother had already been kicked out.
As the video started making rounds on social media, Blueface used his Instagram story to claim that his mom was making the accusation for clout. On July 17 of that same year, Blueface previewed a song on which he references the moment he kicked his family members out of his crib.
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Kodak Black
Kodak Black Accuses YoungBoy Never Broke Again of Working With Cops
Kodak Black may be behind bars serving a 46-month sentence for federal firearms charges, but that didn't stop him from sticking his head in YoungBoy Never Broke Again's business. After it was alleged that his ex-girlfriend, Floyd Mayweather's daughter Iyanna Mayweather, stabbed the mother of one of YoungBoy's children, someone from Kodak's camp uploaded an Instagram post in which Kodak accuses NBA Youngboy of cooperating with cops to get Iyanna in trouble.
As far as the public knows, YoungBoy and Kodak hadn't had any direct issues before this incident, so it was unknown why Kodak went at YoungBoy. What is known is that YoungBoy soon responded through an Instagram Live session in which he called out Kodak for the message.
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Meek Mill
Meek Mill Accuses Drake of Having a Ghostwriter
Back in July of 2015, Meek Mill took pettiness to all-time levels when he accused Drake of having other people write his songs. The moment unfolded after a Twitter user mentioned Drake to Meek Mill. From there, Meek let loose big time.
"Stop comparing me to Drake," Mill wrote in a response tweet. "He don't write his own raps! That's why he ain't tweet my album because we found out!"
The part about Drizzy not tweeting out Meek's album might indicate some of his reasoning for calling out Drizzy, but in subsequent interviews, Meek chocked it up to a lack of control on his part.
Afer Meek's incendiary tweet made rounds on social media, he and Drizzy got into a pretty vicious back-and-forth. Drake dropped two diss songs ("Charged Up" and "Back to Back") and Meek released one of his own ("Wanna Know") all within that same month. While things got ugly, the two eventually patched things up when Drizzy had Meek come onto the stage with him during a September of 2018 show in Boston, officially deading their beef. The two have since collabed on Meek's Championships album standout, "Going Bad."
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Drake
Drake Posts Meek Mill Memes at 2015 OVO Fest
By the time his OVO Fest in August 2015 occurred, most people had already deemed Drake the winner of his beef with Meek Mill. "Back to Back" had been playing everywhere and charted at No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100, fans had been underwhelmed by Meek's responses and Meek was on the wrong side of innumerable Twitter jokes. With the W in hand, you would think the 6ix God would just move onto the next. Nope.
At the OVO fest, Drizzy posted a ton of Meek Mill memes onto a screen Jay-Z-Prodigy style. Making matters worse, video of Drizzy, Will Smith and Kanye West laughing at the memes circulated the web around this time, making it look like no one was on Meek's side. Drizzy and Meek are cool now, but man, this was a brutal beef.
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Pusha-T
Pusha-T Reveals That Drake Has a Son
In May of 2015, Pusha-T pulled off what is perhaps the pettiest move in rap history. After Pusha dissed Drake for the ghostwriting rumors on his 2018 Daytona album song "Infrared," Drake struck back with "Duppy Freestyle," a Pusha-T diss on which he mentioned King Push's fiancée.
In response, Pusha more than matched Drizzy's pettiness and dropped "The Story of Adidon," a song on which he reveals the existence of Drake's son, Adonis, and accuses Drizzy of being an absentee father. Drizzy didn't drop another diss song after that.
In a Rap Radar interview that was released on Christmas day in 2018, Drake explained that while he didn't think Pusha had outrapped him, people would deem Push the winner because of the enormity of what he'd revealed.
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Tupac Shakur
Tupac Shakur Makes Fun of Prodigy for Having Sickle Cell
If anyone knew something about pettiness it was Tupac Shakur, who took things to a whole other level with his scathing 1996 The Notorious B.I.G. diss track, "Hit Em Up." On the song, he claims to have had sex with The Notorious B.I.G. and threatens to kill members of Biggie's Junior M.A.F.I.A. clique. As petty as that was, though, ’Pac sunk even lower when he made fun of Prodigy's sickle cell anemia condition.
At the time, Tupac had problems with Mobb Deep because on their 1995 song "Survival of the Fittest," they included the lyrics, "Thug Life we still livin' it." ’Pac took offense, so that played a role in the diss. There have been a lot of petty moments in rap history, but it's hard to beat this one.
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Nicki Minaj
Nicki Minaj Calls Out Miley Cyrus at 2015 MTV Video Music Awards
Nicki Minaj has never been one to let things slide, so it wouldn't have been surprising to see her speak on some comments Miley Cyrus directed at her a few years ago. What was surprising was the platform Nicki used to call her out.
The story began when Nicki Minaj complained about her "Anaconda" video not being nominated for Video of the Year at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards on July 21, 2015. The next month, in a piece The New York Times published on Aug. 27, Miley spoke on the controversy, which Nicki and many others suggested revolved around the fact that Taylor Swift and White artists usually got the nominations, but Nicki didn't because she was Black. At the time, Miley said that Nicki was "not too kind" and implied that Nicki was simply being salty about not getting the nod.
When Miley's comments were published, it was just a matter of time before Nicki responded. It just so happened that Cyrus was hosting the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards on Aug. 30. Nicki was in attendance at the show, and when it was time for her to an accept an award, it didn't take long to let loose against Miley.
After giving a brief acceptance speech, Nicki got right to business: "Back to this bitch that had a lot to say about me in the press, Miley, what's good?"
While Miley was quick to blame the press for the way her message was received, Nicki was having none of it.