Facts first.
The philosophy behind the archive.

An archive for hip-hop history.

RapRivals was created to serve as an archive for all diss tracks released in hip-hop history. It provides chronicles on rap disputes and has defined new terms in the effort to bring categorization, metrics, and a better understanding of any rivalry to anybody. RapRivals is an ongoing documentation project that will continue capturing rap disputes as they occur and add previous rap disputes to fully encapsulate them all. Its sole mission is to remain purely factual and help both those interested in history, and those wanting to keep up with any current rap beef.

The purpose of this white paper is to describe the philosophy and ideas that have led to the development of RapRivals.

A factual hub, built to work alongside the sources.

There has been a lack of centralized documentation covering diss tracks in hip-hop’s 50-year history. The idea here with RapRivals, is to hold the records of different rap rivalries, associated diss tracks, involved artists and resultant metrics.

Some theory behind RapRivals' design is to focus on the simplicity of presenting factual information, to serve as an encyclopedia of sort. Because of this, there is an apparent lack of opinion throughout the site. In fact, the only written statements are within this white paper itself. Everything else is mostly data points.

As mentioned earlier, there being a lack of a centralized platform, hints that there are individual contributors in this space, which is the case. For example, Genius is well developed in providing lyrical breakdowns, and YouTube serves as a music and video platform easily accessible to billions of people. RapRivals is intentionally built to not enter these saturated sectors, but instead to work alongside them. RapRivals will serve excellently at being the sort of "hub" of rivalries. From which one who wants to access lyrics or audio, would then be directed to its appropriate platform.

How essential ambiguity is handled.

An important question then becomes; how can nonfactual but essential information be presented in the most unbiased way?

Start dates and status

1. The start date of a beef may be unclear. Since a rivalry may start years before any official diss tracks release, consisting of many records with incorporated disses. Aiming for this perfect start date may lead to opinions and will be at risk of being incorrect as not all information is public. Because of this, we can use definitive time stamps, such as the first release of a full diss track to mark the start.

An even more arbitrary data point is the end of that beef. Although it may continue on for a period of time into the future, it would not be beneficial to mark every dispute as “active.” The status value of “active” or “completed” serves as a good way for one to get an idea of what is currently happening versus what can generally be said has concluded. A major issue presented with attributing an end date to a beef, is that fans of one artist will typically claim it to be over if they strongly believe they are well ahead. If the chosen end date (by RapRivals) aligns with this, it may give legitimacy to a final victor: an opinion. Which goes against the principal philosophy RapRivals is built off. Instead, the following formulaic approach will be taken.

If
significant anticipation of upcoming continuation = true
then
status = active
else
end date = last diss track + 3 months

Participation

2. There is technically no limit as to who is considered truly involved with a beef. What are the criteria for being considered a participant? Is simply releasing a song enough? We can run a thought experiment for this. Let us take rivalry Sample 1. In this, there are two major artists (Artist 1 and Artist 2) going back and forth. A third artist (Artist 3) with half the popularity releases a track. Then a fourth artist, with half the popularity of Artist 3, releases a track, and so on. At what point is a track just a random person jumping in? How many people need to be aware of a track for it to be included? Deciding what is part of a rivalry can get tricky in this situation. At a minimum, should a response from Artist 1 or Artist 2 address Artist 3, then Artist 3's track should be canon.

Language that describes the shape of a rivalry.

Right now, whether discussing a 1 v 1, 1 v 20, East v West, etc. we typically don't describe them in different ways other than by title. However, these are different enough in how they play out to warrant categorization.

Categories are meant to help describe the type of rivalry, to help set it apart from others. For example, we should differentiate Drake v Kendrick, with Drake v Meek Mill. For the most part, Drake v Meek Mill only involved the two artists trading directly with each other. Using “Duel” will help us quickly understand that exact 1 v 1 nature. Whereas with Drake v Kendrick, we had multiple people trading with a single artist throughout the rivalry.

Duel

1 v 1

Siege

1 v many

Group

many v many

Uncontested

no response

Theater War

regional related conflict

Any resurgence of an East v West coast beef is directly tied to the most significant rivalry in hip-hop history. A rivalry that to many traces back to day one (ish). So, although it is related, a new spawn of this beef is likely to include new artists and themes. It would not be of benefit to simply call all of them another "East v West." Again, we need a way to differentiate them, this time beyond a Theater War. This is where we will use Episodes.

Let us go back to the release of Joey Bada$$'s "The Ruler's Back" on January 1st, 2025. Both Daylyt and Ray Vaughn had their responses out within a week. The feud then ignited and was called Joey Bada$$ v Daylyt & Ray Vaughn. However, in the coming weeks of that, the coastal aspect became a dominating theme. This quickly ballooned into an extraordinary 25 tracks. This became more than Joey Bada$$ v Daylyt & Ray Vaughn due to additional TDE artists joining. It was then upgraded to Joey Bada$$ v West Coast. It was not until 15 tracks later that CJ Fly, a member of Pro Era, joined. Shortly after this, a whole heap of east coast artists entered, turning this into another iconic coastal rap beef mainly between Pro Era and TDE. This rivalry has been upgraded to East v West Episode X. X is a place holder, as RapRivals is not yet done adding in the majority of rap beefs that have existed.

Upgrades are done for version control, to show how the scope of a rivalry changed. Without this history, the initial state of the rivalry is lost. Meanwhile, episodes are meant to track how many rivalries of the same name occur.

What a track-based record cannot yet show.

1. The site is designed to provide a simple to read track-based timeline of rap beefs. A downside to this is that in the real world, there are many events outside of track releases that are significant to them. On one end you can have an essay written about a rivalry that includes every track, but also all the nuance, players, and events, and on the other end a track-based timeline like RapRivals. The issue with this is that for RapRivals, there is currently no space made to include these non-track events. For example, in Drake v Meek Mill, it can be argued that the rivalry really set off with a Meek Mill tweet, different from a traditional initial diss track inviting a response from the other. Adding a simple paragraph at the start of each rivalry could cover this, but it then risks entering the area of opinionated writing. A preferable solution would be to implement a toggle on the track timeline to enable an advanced or detailed view, which expands the timeline to show other (non-track) events, such as tweets, confrontations, etc. For the time being, the first track displayed on the timeline will not necessarily correspond to the initiating event.