Soulja Boy vs. LeBron James: Rap's next great beef?
Apr 24, 2008, 04:41 PM | by Simon Vozick-Levinson
Categories: Hip-Hop/Rap, Music, Sports
I am not a huge sports person (shocker, I know), but I
do greatly enjoy arcane disputes between rappers — and just in time for
the NBA playoffs, those two worlds have collided. As one of my less hopelessly dorky friends informed me at a convivial seder recently, Washington
Wizards shooting guard DeShawn Stevenson said last month that Cleveland Cavaliers small forward LeBron James was "overrated"; LeBron retorted that said insult was akin
to, say, Soulja Boy dissing Jay-Z; and just this past weekend, Soulja Boy himself chimed in to express his displeasure at being used as a synonym for
"wack rapper." (My NBA-savvy sources tell me that
Stevenson's the one who should really be miffed: He might not be in
shouting distance of LeBron's talent, but he is not an irritatingly
talentless nobody like Soulja Boy, whose greatest achievement to date is providing the raw material for a brilliant parody by blogger Jay Smooth.)
Point is, I see the makings of an epic musical battle shaping up. LeBron name-checked Jay-Z for a reason: He and the Jiggaman are good buddies. (Jay's even called LeBron an honorary "Roc member.") And we know that Jay's nursed his share of lyrical grudges in the past. Sure, he says he's older and wiser now — but he's been sounding more and more like his hungry old self lately. So could he defend his guy with some poisonous couplets aimed at Stevenson and/or Soulja Boy? The watch for a ruthless subliminal attack hidden inside Jay's next guest verse starts now.
Okay, maybe this is an unlikely scenario considering that neither Soulja Boy nor Stevenson have said anything at all negative about him — and since the whole point of LeBron's wisecrack was that someone as powerful as Jay would have no reason to swat back at an annoyance like Soulja Boy. Whatever! Let me have my dream! Alternately, Soulja Boy also told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he'd consider "a 2-on-2 basketball game for charity between himself and Stevenson against James and Jay-Z." Now that's a game I'd tune in for. In the meantime, have any of you been following this somewhat contrived war of words?
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