- composition
- BBC News World
January 14, 2023
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In his new song with the famous producer bizarre The Colombian took advantage of her previous relationship Gerard Pique to send him and the footballer’s new partner, Clara Chía, a direct message.
In tune, the Colombian, who sealed a split agreement with the Barcelona star last December, She calls herself a wolf and him a novice. He also blurts out that he left her with his mother-in-law as a neighbor and “the Treasury debt.”
Shakira sings about Piqué’s young girlfriend “I’m worth two out of 22/You traded a Ferrari for a Twingo/They traded in a Rolex for a Casio“.
“Session 53”, as the song is called, has become the most watched Spanish song on YouTube with 50 million views within 24 hours. Given the long list of successes that has accompanied Shakira and Biza, a DJ and composer who has been described as a marketing genius, the virality was to be expected.
Some argue that the song is so direct and “ruthless” the is a beef, A concept in hip hop music that has its origins in the 1980s when rappers fought each other by releasing songs that related to each other.
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Gerard Piqué, while not a musician, has responded to Shakira in his own way. First with a tweet with circus emojis and then on the twitch channel of the 7th Kings League football tournament where he performed with a Casio and said he has an agreement with the brand.
In the midst of this controversy, we explain what a beef is and where it comes from.
In English, the literal meaning of the word is meat. But in rap it’s used if two Artist I know face in a musical and lyrical battle in which one tries to attack the other, in a genre where “attitude” is an integral part.
Being “knocked out” on one of these exchanges can forever cripple a person’s career or uplift those who meet the challenge.
To be clear, Beef is exactly the “fight” between two rappers. And in the midst of this struggle, they write songs known in English as diss tracks.
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In Latin America and Spain, the concept of beef was adopted by the urban genre and experienced a particular boom in the 2000s, when reggaeton artists like Daddy Yankee, Don Omar and Tego Calderón appeared in these musical struggles.
But both beef and diss tracks are known locally as tiraderas.
Before Shakira, Bizarrap had already brought the idea of musical battles back to the fore with the Puerto Rican’s Session 49 Living in the the east criticized the Colombian J Balvin. This musical controversy was discussed in the media and social networks for weeks, sparking a heated debate between the two artists.
The innovative bizarre rap, which was the most listened to Argentinian artist on Spotify in 2022, has come with its simple concept of composing some beats, allowing another celebrity to write lyrics on it and recording it all in a austere studio to later upload the video to YouTube got a new generation talking about Tiradera.
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The legendary Roxanne
According to Ben Westhoff, a journalist who has written books on hip-hop and writes for The Guardian, beef has its roots in a traditional African-American insult game called “dozens,” in which participants make irreverent and humorous jokes.
The journalist points out that this has morphed into formal rap battles that began in the 1980s, where rhymes are exchanged live to defeat an opponent.
In Latin America, this type of musical exchange is still popular and is regularly referred to as “cockfights”.
Curiously, the first beef on the record comes from a 14-year-old girl who wanted to be a rapper and attended these confrontations live.
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When Roxanne Shante was 14, she recorded a song in the 1980s that sparked the first recorded Beef.
It was Lolita “Roxanne” Shante Goodenwho became a hip-hop legend without really knowing what he was doing.
In 1884, the young woman, who lived in Queensbridge, New York, was invited by her neighbor, the producer Marley Mar, to record some verses in response to a song by the musical trio UTFO called Roxanne Roxanne, which was about a girl who she classified as “conceited” because they rejected them.
Shante’s song was titled “Roxanne’s Revenge” and spoke about the reasons she would never date the members of UTFO.
“He’s not really cute, and he’s not cool/He can’t even rap,” reads one of the song’s verses.
The topic became so popular that the group responded with another song called The Real Shante. This confrontation of songs was followed by other rappers and in the end dozens of singles were released.
Shante, who has a biopic on Netflix, told the New York Post in 2018 that she’s proud to be the progenitor of the beef.
“It was hip-hop,” he commented. “It was a team-to-team and district-to-district competition. People were always trying to be better than the next person. There was nothing wrong with that,” he once said.
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