The greatest diss tracks in music history

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

KRS-One's 1987 reply to MC Shan's "The Bridge," fired into the Bronx-versus-Queens argument over where hip-hop began. He mocks Shan, Marley Marl and the Juice Crew over a beat built to be shouted back, and takes the tune of a Billy Joel hook for the last insult. Wikipedia calls it a classic diss, and it is among the most sampled songs in hip-hop.

A 14-year-old Shanté, produced by a then-unknown Marley Marl, answers UTFO's "Roxanne, Roxanne" in the voice of the girl they were singing about. It is regularly named among rap's best early diss records, and it set off the Roxanne Wars, a run of answer records that took in UTFO, Shanté and dozens of others. Worth hearing for how little the form has changed.