Joey Bada$$ Can't Stop Battling West Coast Rappers—And Winning

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There’s a war going on outside no B-list (or lower) rapper is safe from. Almost a year to the day from the May weekend that saw Kendrick Lamar and Drake send approximately five songs at each other, resulting in one of the most commercially successful diss tracks in the history of the sport and one of its most decisive losses (sorry, owl-in-bio readers), we are once again witnessing a spring surge of rappers from opposing coasts having words with each other. Is it in any way close to the mass cultural event that Kenny versus Drizzy was? Obviously not—the sad truth is we may never see a conflict of that magnitude again. But what initially felt like a somewhat forced attempt to stir up contact-sport raps for the love of the game has morphed into something mildly entertaining, even if the stakes are lower and the lights aren’t as bright. But isn’t the love of the game enough?

A brief recap, for the uninitiated: Brooklyn rapper Joey Bada$$ set the tone for his 2025 with a New Year’s Day music video announcing “The Ruler’s Back”; despite being a Blog Era darling for some time, Joey’s recent pop-cultural output has been on the small screen, as he built off of his solid recurring guest spot on Mr. Robot with lead roles in Hulu’s Wu-Tang: An American Saga and the hit Power spin-off Raising Kanan. “The Ruler’s Back” is a laid-back statement track, emphasizing his renewed focus on music and underscoring his seriousness with a couple of loaded lines about “too much West Coast dick lickin’.” That Jay-Z quote and some other choice lines implied Joey was calling Kendrick to the podium, throwing stones at the highest rapper on the mountain for attention and definitively punching well above his weight class in the process.

But in the months that followed, a funny thing happened. Kendrick is probably never going to respond to Joey, nor does he need to—he gains nothing from defeating Joey Bada$$, and Joey’s initial lines were more in the spirit of a “Control”-esque, I’m-on-your-head-to-be-the-best than real disrespect. But in that same spirit of sport, a bevy of LA rappers loosely associated with him did respond—most notably TDE signee Ray Vaughn, Reason, GNX scene-stealer AZ Chike, and the battle rapper Daylyt—and so far Joey has more than handled his own. In fact, in my humble opinion Joey’s actually up, firing off increasingly direct tracks over very solid beat selection at an increasingly breakneck pace.

Daylyt’s songs are loose, overlong and rambling (and at press time, his most recent release seems to be raising the white flag, via a tribute to Joey’s late ProEra comrade Capital Steez) while Ray Vaughn’s try-hard energy quickly gave way to an onslaught of random, sophomoric bars about Diddy parties, freakoffs, and calling out Joey’s partner. Reason’s three-in-one attack was solid, and I will never say no to new AZ Chike, who currently boasts one of the most mesmerizing flows in the game. But no one’s packing more punch or showing up to the moment like Joey—he’s got the sharpest bars and the sharpest strategy, up to and including his latest release “Crash Dummy,” which actually sees him hitting an LA flow over a West Coast beat, yielding the most replayable song of the whole back-and-forth so far.

It’s been something of a recurring joke that Joey’s getting jumped by all of California while no other notable New York rapper has stepped in to rep East Coast pride, a narrative that’s been ongoing since “Ruler’s Back.” But at this stage, it’s only made the effort look more impressive, and more respectable, to be honest—as some on Twitter have put it, more of an actual 20-v-1 than what a certain woe-is-me Toronto rapper faced last year. In handling all comers with aplomb—tagging in Battle Rapper Rushmore candidate Loaded Lux on “Finals” was more of a cherry-on-top flex than a desperate assist—Joey’s actually living up to the stripes he boasted about on “The Ruler’s Back.”

Was Joey looking for attention, and perhaps some promo, in calling Kendrick out? Sure, but he’s not shying away from the rappers stepping up in Kendrick’s stead either. Quiet as kept, he’s proving his point and living up to the effort, and who knows? Maybe he'll earn himself half a bar on the next verse Kendrick writes. How’s that one line in “Control” go? “This is hip-hop, and them n-ggas should know what time it is.”