Hit Parade | Here’s the Beef Edition Part 1

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4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Kendrick Lamar took the Super Bowl halftime stage in 2025 and had the stadium chanting along to “Not Like Us”, it was clear: diss tracks had gone stratospheric. The Kendrick vs. Drake beef echoes legendary rap rivalries like Biggie vs. Tupac and Jay Z vs. Nas—but diss tracks stretch back through a century of American pop, long before hip-hop, all the way to the days of Tin Pan Alley. From Eddie Cantor and James Brown, to John Lennon and Carly Simon, to Kool Moe Dee and Lauryn Hill, artists have been turning personal grudges into hits for over a century. Step this way and join Chris Molanphy as he traces the history of answer records, diss tracks and rap beefs that shaped the charts and the culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The road stretches before you, but there's trouble ahead, stationary cars. You're faced with the
0:04.7	McDonald's side mission. Do you, A, join the ever-growing queue, or B, take the next exit and treat
0:12.7	yourself to a glorious Mackey's? D-Torring to McDonald's. Start your side mission today.
0:19.7	I had the absolute pleasure of speaking to Pamela Anderson.
0:24.3	All thanks to the Dove Self-Eesteem Project.
0:27.2	We speak about the impact Y2K has had on women's body confidence and how Pamela has regained
0:32.3	control.
0:33.0	The Dove Self-Esteen project is an amazing initiative supported by science-backed methodology to help us
0:38.8	improve our relationship with our bodies. To find more body confidence building exercises,
0:43.4	go to dove.com forward slash Y2K. That's Y2K spelled WHY2K.
0:50.5	Hey there, hit parade listeners. What you're about to hear is part one of this episode.
0:56.8	Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month.
1:00.6	Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops?
1:04.6	Sign up for Slate Plus.
1:06.7	It supports not only this show but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts.
1:12.9	Just go to slate.com slash hitparade plus.
1:16.9	You'll get to hear every hit parade episode in full the day it arrives.
1:22.3	Plus, Hit Parade The Bridge, our bonus episodes, with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics,
1:30.2	and pop chart trivia.
1:32.0	Once again, to join, that's slate.com slash hit parade plus.
1:37.1	Thanks, and now, please enjoy part one of this hit parade episode.
1:53.6	Turn it up. part one of this Hit Parade episode. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from
	...

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