Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
The thing that annoys me most about the conversation around the battle between Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj is this: People saying hey, it’s a rap beef, so they can say anything because any diss they can imagine is fair game. Let’s accept that concept for the sake of argument. My retort would then be: You’re missing the point entirely. The point that MCs in a battle are allowed to say anything is irrelevant. The relevant question is what is the impact of the things that they say?
The reason why Meg won the battle is because she said something that everyone registered as truthful and impactful. She mentioned Megan’s Law, which clearly embarrassed Minaj to the nth degree because Megan’s Law has a very real impact on the life of her husband. One of the many reasons why Minaj lost the battle is because in “Bigfoot,” an entire song attempting to diss Meg, she never once says anything that embarrasses Meg. Sure, Minaj is allowed to say you’re lying about the Tory Lanez incident and your mother is dead and you’re “lying on your dead mama,” but few people believe that she was lying after a court of law found Lanez guilty. And what does Meg’s mother being deceased have to do with anything? How is that embarrassing to Meg? Many have said it’s inappropriate for Minaj to bring up the fact that Meg’s mother passed away, but more to the point, how does that fact embarrass Meg? For disses to land, they have to be embarrassing, and they can only be embarrassing if they’re factual or at least are perceived as factual.
For example, on “No Vaseline” when Ice Cube said the remaining members of N.W.A were getting screwed out of their money by their white manager, that diss was mortifying for them only because it was true. On “Hit Em Up” when Tupac said he’d slept with…
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