Guides/A Riffiter guide
The greatest diss tracks in music history
Beef, set to a beat, the shots that drew blood, and a few that ended careers.
The diss track is one of music's great traditions, especially in hip-hop: a song built to bury a rival. This guide collects the most devastating diss tracks ever recorded, from Nas's "Ether" and Ice Cube's "No Vaseline" to Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us."
A great diss track is its own art form, equal parts insult, journalism and entertainment, landed over a beat good enough to outlive the feud that spawned it.
Hip-hop turned it into a blood sport, but the diss is older and wider than rap: rock bands and pop stars have aimed plenty of poison at each other too. These are the ones that drew blood, made history, and in a couple of cases settled the argument for good.
(One name you won't find on this list, by editorial decree, is the most-dissed man of 2024. He's been through enough.)
- 1
"Hit 'Em Up" by 2Pac
★ 5.0 · 1—The most venomous diss ever committed to tape. Aimed at the Notorious B.I.G. and all of Bad Boy at the peak of the East-West feud, it's three minutes of pure, unfiltered fury, and impossible to look away from.
- 2
"Not Like Us" by Kendrick Lamar
★ 5.0 · 2—The knockout blow of 2024's biggest rap feud. Kendrick turned a diss into a chart-topping, stadium-sized anthem, a song so catchy the whole world chanted the insults back. The rare diss track that's also just a great record.
- 3
"Ether" by Nas
Be the first to rate—Nas's reply to Jay-Z's "Takeover," and so total a demolition that "ether" entered the language as a verb for destroying someone. The gold standard every comeback is measured against.
- 4
"Takeover" by Jay-Z
★ 5.0 · 1—Jay-Z opens fire on Nas and Mobb Deep over a snarling, Doors-sampling Kanye West beat. Cold, surgical and supremely confident, the shot that forced "Ether" into existence.
- 5
"No Vaseline" by Ice Cube
★ 4.5 · 3—Ice Cube versus his old group N.W.A and their manager after he walked away, quite possibly the most savage one-against-everyone diss in history. No hook, no mercy, no survivors.
- 6
"Fuck wit Dre Day" by Dr. Dre
★ 4.9 · 4—Dr. Dre and a young Snoop turn shots at Eazy-E and Luke into a G-funk party record. Proof you can bury a rival and still make people dance.
- 7
"Who Shot Ya?" by The Notorious B.I.G.
★ 5.0 · 4—Biggie always swore it wasn't aimed at 2Pac, but dropping it months after Pac was shot lit the fuse on hip-hop's deadliest feud. Menace as an art form.
- 8
"The Story of Adidon" by Pusha T
Pusha T's 2018 nuke: he exposed a hidden son over the beat from Jay-Z's "The Story of O.J." and ended the round before it really began. As clinical and ruthless as the form gets. (Never released to streaming, which is its own kind of legend.)
- 9
"Euphoria" by Kendrick Lamar
Be the first to rate—Kendrick's opening haymaker in the 2024 war, six and a half minutes of escalating contempt that made clear he wasn't trading bars, he was ending a career.
- 10
"Killshot" by Eminem
Be the first to rate—Eminem's 2018 answer to Machine Gun Kelly, delivered with the precision of a man who's done this a hundred times. It closed the exchange on the spot.
- 12
"How Do You Sleep?" by John Lennon
Be the first to rate—John Lennon's bitter broadside at his former partner Paul McCartney after the Beatles split, answering jabs he'd heard on McCartney's own records. The most famous falling-out in music, in song form.
- 13
"Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd
Be the first to rate—Lynyrd Skynyrd's reply to Neil Young's "Southern Man" and "Alabama," naming him outright. A diss so anthemic that most people sing along without realising it's a rebuttal.
- 14
"Bad Blood" by Taylor Swift
★ 3.8 · 3—Pop's biggest feud set to music, widely read as aimed at a fellow superstar. Proof the diss track was never only a rap tradition.
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