Joey Bada$$ vs. Ray Vaughn Is a Rap Beef with No Winners

Rap beef is only interesting if it has both stakes and heart. You can argue about the “sport” of it all you want, but without a reason to invest, you might as well be watching people try to out-bench press each other at the gym. Most of the best diss tracks aren’t just songs, they’re events presaging some kind of sea change. Boogie Down Productions effectively brought the first wave of hip-hop to a close by coming for Marley Marl, the Juice Crew, and MC Shan on “The Bridge Is Over.” The dust-up between Jay-Z and Nas that led to “Takeover” and “Ether” altered the trajectories of both their careers and turned the Summer Jam screen into a meme before memes existed. With “The Story of Adidon,” Pusha T created the first cracks in Drake’s image and ruined the public reveal of his son Adonis (I’m still not over Drake planning on announcing the birth of his son through a partnership with Adidas). Sure, these artists moved a lot of records as a result of the grudge matches, but everyone involved had something to lose by leaving it all on the floor, which is why they live on in infamy. 

That’s only part of the reason I’ve been scratching my head while watching the saga between Joey Bada$$ and the entire West Coast unfold: There’s no sense of stakes. Outside of a handful of feature appearances, the New York rapper and Pro Era figurehead has been pretty quiet on the musical front since 2022’s 2000. That was a record where Joey, who’d long since made acting his priority, was largely spinning his wheels. While it has a handful of heartfelt songs, it also makes claims to a throne he hadn’t earned. “Who the best emcees? Kenny, Joey, and Cole/The holy trinity,” he said on opening song “The Baddest,” grossly overestimating his skills and impact. While always technically sharp, Joey was never in that class of MC, even at the peak of his fame. He never meaningfully evolved from the vintage New York vibes of his 2012 breakout mixtape 1999, trying for stadium-ready anthems and lavish Bad Boy-esque charms that didn’t resonate outside of his core fanbase. All those rhyme schemes can’t hide the fact he’s often saying little to nothing, but saying it well.

So when he began 2025 with “The Ruler’s Back,” an out-of-nowhere shot sent at Kendrick Lamar and the West Coast at large, months after K.Dot emerged victorious over Drake in their long-simmering feud, I was confused. Why is Joey doing this now? Is there a new album to promote? A movie or TV show? Nope, it seemed like he was bored and ready to throw his professed weight around for kicks. Not only was he looking to stake his claim as the King of New York—a title that feels antiquated and passé, down to the Jay-Z references peppered throughout the song—he wanted to put newly invigorated Cali rappers on notice: “Too much West Coast dick lickin’/I’m hearin’ niggas throwin’ rocks, really ain’t shit stickin’/’Cause if we talkin’ bar for bar, really, it’s slim pickings.”

Even with murals in New York, Joey has never felt like a rapper carrying the city on his back. The New York he’s trying to resurrect is long gone, replaced by a handful of much more interesting subgenres and niches moving things forward in their own way. Everything about this approach—from cribbing Hov’s playbook to recruiting the otherwise electric Missouri producer Conductor Williams, the current defacto Real Rap signifier, months after Drake had already done so, no less—felt like a hollow and desperate swipe for attention.  

But if “The Ruler’s Back” was gimmicky and bordering on pointless, then all the responses to it seem downright shameless. Battle rap legend (and noted Kendrick correspondent) Daylyt got more than a few licks in with songs like “HIYU” and “Backpack,” but didn’t make much of an impression outside of diehards. Most eyes have been on Ray Vaughn, a recent Top Dawg Entertainment signee who’s taken it upon himself to explicitly slash at Joey’s throat. Vaughn is a passable MC who clearly aspires to occupy the lyricist-of-all-trades post at TDE that Kendrick abdicated back in 2022. But while listening to his formal debut, April’s The Good the Bad the Dollar Menu, I mostly got flashes of Maryland rapper IDK, another student of Kendrick whose arms are too short to box alongside the rap god.

As bland as Dollar Menu can be, at least there’s some flashes of personality, a core for reference. Vaughn’s various diss tracks cast him as more of a Kendrick crony than anything, milking his time in the spotlight in the easiest way possible. Least convincing of these is his latest, “Hoe Era,” which takes aim at Joey’s collective and further prods at the King of New York narrative. “Baby teeth, you ain’t even got a plaque yet/Fact check, we wanna see the numbers, like a math test,” he growls, a line we’re supposed to take seriously. Not only is this factually incorrect, it’s the first of several examples of D-tier lyricism that constantly drags the track down. If the best you can do is change the name “Joey” to “Hoey,” claim Conductor makes “jazz band” music, and call yourself a “vape lord” as a way to signal you want smoke, what are we doing here? “Your last slap was in 2017,” he says. At least Joey has a few; you have zero. 

Not that Joey’s response to the response was much better. “The Finals” is full of the same type of try-hard bouts and insults, word games that yield boring prizes (“What kinda Top Dawg is you? You more Shih Tzu”) or needlessly offensive ones (“Sugar in your tank, but you ain’t no Sugar Ray, Vaughn/Gay Vaughn, keep punchin’ up with them pillow hands”). The silliest of all these moments came on Friday night, when a throwaway line (“It’s too bad, nigga, you shoulda signed to me/Somebody tell Top we ’bout to start TDEast”) became the basis for trolling when Joey posted an LLC filing for TDEast, supposedly signed by Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith himself. 

I’m sorry… what’s the point of all this? The thing these two are fighting over—primacy of their respective coasts—isn’t a conversation either is seriously involved in in 2025. Joey doesn’t even have fellow rappers from his city publicly coming to his side, making his kingly declarations that much less Teflon. As tired as I am of the Kendrick and Drake beef, its overblown nature at least makes some sense. Those two are among the biggest artists, rap or otherwise, on Earth right now. Joey vs. Vaughn is nothing more than a petty squabble started up in the bigger event’s wake, one I’m surprised is causing this much of a ruckus. I love a good bout of rap sparring, but are people really this bored? That inclined to indulge these hip-hop gladiator games? That willing and able to dissect shoehorned responses from Ab-Soul and TDE castoff Reason? 

That said, I can’t blame Joey or Ray or anyone else for cashing in these fat attention checks. Spectacle is currency now more than ever, and whatever other work they have coming is guaranteed to have a sturdier shelf life because of this. I wouldn’t be surprised if more tracks went back and forth, from them and others. I wouldn’t be surprised if more supporting characters got in on the fun to juice their own numbers. But it won’t give this scrimmage any more meaning or weight. What was true then is true now: If you’re gonna punch above your weight class, you’d better have a solid reason.