The 10 Biggest Feuds In Hip-Hop History

The battle between two of the biggest mouths in the south kicked off in 2004, when Houston's Lil Flip started taking shots at Atlanta's T.I. while the latter was incarcerated. Tensions escalated for nearly a year (T.I. dissing Flip onstage; Flip threatening to shoot T.I.'s son) before finally boiling over in March 2005, when the pair and their crews brawled in the parking lot of Houston fast-food joint Cloverburger.

High Point: T.I.'s wickedly funny deployment of old publicity photos featuring Flip dressed as a leprechaun and eating a bowl of Lucky Charms.

Winner? T.I.

When Jay-Z was announced as headliner for this year's Glastonbury festival in England, Gallagher, Oasis's guitarist and loudmouth-in-chief, called the choice "wrong" and blamed the rapper for slow ticket sales. Jay fired back that Gallagher's comments were made "out of ignorance" and, on his new track "Jockin' Jay-Z," got the last laugh: "That bloke from Oasis said I couldn't play guitar/Somebody shoulda told him I'm a fucking rock star."

High point: Jay's first 90 seconds on the Glastonbury stage, where he fake-strummed a guitar and warbled a gleefully off-key version of Oasis's "Wonderwall."

Winner? The Jigga Man

Sometimes best friends make the worst enemies. When Ice Cube left pioneering gangsta rap group N.W.A. in 1989 over disputes about royalties and tensions with manager Jerry Heller, he sparked an all-out war with ex-homeys Dr. Dre and Eazy-E, who accused him of being a coward and dubbed him “Benedict Arnold.” The animosity continued until Eazy-E's death of AIDS six years later.

High point: Cube's 1991 single "No Vaseline": "Hey yo, Dre, stick to producin'/Callin' me Arnold, but you been a dick/Eazy-E saw your ass and went in it quick."

Winner? The West Coast

Right-wing pundit O'Reilly has declared a virtual one-man war on rap, using his Fox News pulpit to take to task everyone from Jay-Z ("corrosive") to Nas ("vile" and "an abomination") to 50 Cent ("a pinhead"). In 2002, when Pepsi hired Ludacris as a spokesman, O'Reilly branded the rapper a "thug" and called for a boycott of the company; Luda was fired the next day. But rappers have struck back, too: Nas called him a racist and organized a protest outside Fox HQ earlier this year.

High point: The open letter from Ludacris's mom blasting O'Reilly's hypocrisy: "Let's keep it real ... Fox produces shows, movies, video games and air commercials that depict violence and sex, and offend and degrade women." Oh snap!

Winner? Rupert Murdoch

Curtis Jackson is rap's version of the drunk in the corner who picks a fight with every schmo who walks in the bar. His relatively short career has included face-offs with just about everybody, including Ja Rule, the Game, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Nas, Kelis, Shyne, Cam'ron, the Game again, Scarface, Kanye West, Young Buck, and even Oprah Winfrey. 50 wins more than he loses, but he's also a savvy enough businessman to know that no buzz is bad buzz.

High point: "How to Rob," the unreleased 1999 track that got him signed to his record deal, in which a young and hungry 50 takes shots at everyone from Mike Tyson to Mase. Can you believe it? Dude took on Mase!

Winner? 50 Cent's accountant

The Hatfields & McCoys of rap squabbles. In the mid-'80s "Bridge Wars," Marley Marl's Juice Crew, out of Queens' Queensbridge Projects, and KRS's Boogie Down Productions, representing the South Bronx, tussled over which borough could rightfully lay claim to being the birthplace of hip-hop. Their O.G. back-and-forths and geopolitical battle rhymes set the blueprint for years of rap beef to come.

High point: "The Bridge Is Over," BDP's 1987 classic and one of rap's first classic dis songs.

Winner? The South Bronx, the South South Bronx

These two gangsta molls --- Kim was a Biggie hanger-on, Foxy ran with Nas and Jay-Z --- traded insults for years on tracks like "Bang Bang" and "Play Around." Then, on February 25th, 2001, things got real, when a confrontation between the two ladies and their entourages outside NYC hip-hop station Hot 97 turned into a gunfight, and one unfortunate participant walked away with a bullet in his buttocks.

High point: After the shootout, when Foxy offered Kim a truce, Kim gave her rival the cold shoulder, saying, "We'll never be friends." Meow!

Winner? Kim went to jail, but Foxy went deaf -- we'll call it a draw

This old-school feud, one of rap's longest, started when former Treacherous 3 member Kool Moe Dee accused the young upstart LL Cool J of copying his style. LL responded with the seminal "Mama Said Knock You Out," and Moe Dee shot back with "Let's Go," where he rewrote two famous initials to stand for "Lower Level/Lackluster/Last Least/Limp Lover."

High point: The cover of Kool Moe Dee's 1987 album How Ya Like Me Now, which pictured LL's trademark red Kangol hat being crushed under the wheels of a Jeep.

Winner? Limp Lover, if only for the "Mama Said..." video

This battle between NYC's two heaviest heavyweights wasn't just for the keys to the city --- it was to see who would inherit Biggie's crown as King of New York and, by extension, the best rapper alive. Before the pair finally made peace in 2005, their showdown gave us half a decade of violent threats, adultery accusations and burned effigies, not to mention two of the greatest dis tracks in history (Jay-Z's "Takeover" and Nas's "Ether").

High point: The 2001 Summer Jam, Hot 97's annual hip-hop blowout, where Jay debuted "Takeover" and flashed a Jumbotron photo of Nas associate Prodigy as a teenage ballerina.

Winner? Hip-hop

Rap's most infamous, outsized beef is also its most tragic, with neither combatant making it out alive. Onetime friends turned bitter foes, the two titans in the East Coast-West Coast wars of the mid-'90s sparred about who shot who and who slept with whose wife until gunplay silenced them forever. Perhaps unfairly, Diddy and Suge Knight emerged unscathed.

High point: Tupac's great, scathing Biggie dis track "Hit 'Em Up," which feature possibly the most direct opening line in beef history: "First off, fuck your bitch and the clique you claim."

Winner? Nobody