QUIT PLAYIN: Where’s the Real Beef?

By Vincent L. Hall

“Son, all the ‘BAD Negroes’ are either dead or in jail. The rest of them are just talking.” – Sophist and satirist L. L. Hall (I also called him Dad)

Lord, please let the beef and bullcaca between Kendrick Lamar, Drake, J. Cole, and whom-ever else subside. All of them are uniquely talented, and none of them are the prototype “bad boys” that each of them professes to be from time to time.

My daddy was right years ago when he told me that real “bad Negroes” came to one of two ends: incarceration or homicidal death.

As a dad who firmly believes you must listen to your teenage child’s music to get a glimpse at their mindset, rap music has been my stakeout. That’s why I was lost when the newscast hit on T.M.Z. during COVID-19 in 2020. There was “beef” in my backyard that passed me by.

“Rapper Mo3 was shot and killed in a Wednesday midday shooting on a Dallas highway. The 28-year-old rapper, whose real name was Melvin Noble, was killed in the brazen attack at approximately noon on the city’s northbound Interstate 35, according to the Dallas Police Department.

The suspect chased Mo3, firing multiple shots and striking him. The rapper was rushed to an area hospital, where he died from his injuries, according to the police report.

The aftermath of that slaying left more turmoil — friend and collaborator Boosie Badazz was shot in the leg days later while he was attending MO3’s memorial service in Dallas.

I rushed to Spotify and camped out. Mo3’s lyrics were solid, but his outstanding qualities stemmed from Melvin Noble’s days in church. The tone and tenor of his resonant, soulful baritone and his ability to spit rhymes made him special.

Tupac Shakur, undeniably a GOAT in the rap stratosphere, succumbed to a similar end.

On November 30, 1994, Two years before his eventual martyrdom, Tupac was shot five times during a robbery at Quad Studios in Times Square. In a published interview with Vibe Magazine, Tupac intimated that producer Sean (Diddy) Combs and rapper Christopher Wallace, aka the Notorious B.I.G. at the studio, were aware it was a setup.

On September 7, 1996, Tupac, in Las Vegas for a boxing match, left the event, and chaos erupted. While riding in a Black BMW sedan with the later defamed Suge Knight, a white Cadillac pulled up and took Tupac out.

On March 9, 1997, “Biggee Smalls” and his posse-turned-entourage left in two green Suburbans to attend an after-party. Biggee’s convoy was trailed by a Chevrolet Blazer manned by an off-duty Inglewood police officer named Reggie Blaylock and others working security detail.

The “Notorious BIG” met his fate, similar to his nemesis Tupac. A driver pulled up in a dark-colored Chevrolet, taking out the East Coast’s rap battalion leader. The beefing between two of rap’s most storied artists left us hungry for more than just words. We have questions that to date have not been answered.

Far be it from me to direct the affairs of any man or woman, but my dream would be for Kendrick Lamar to put his Pulitzer Prize skills to parchment and beef with the real enemy of Black folks around the world.

Pastor Freddy Haynes recently reminded me and his Friendship-West Baptist Church congregation that our biggest enemy is not one another.

“The problem is that White Supremacy never takes a day off.”

And whether it’s in Compton or the Congo, Houston or Haiti, The Gaza Strip, or the Georgia Senate, we have much bigger foes to quell than one another. Discrimination and racism neither sleep nor slumber.

Today’s rappers could bring awareness of atrocities around us and around the world. My generation knew little or nothing of Apartheid in Johannesburg until Gil Scott Heron released a single called Johannesburg. And one thing I know about Black folks, is once enlightened, we start fightin’!

Marvin Gaye woke us up to the ills of his generation with “What’s Going on.” He took a detour from his sweltering hot love ballads with an environmental warning to America titled “Mercy, Mercy, Me (The Ecology)

Before he unleashed rhetorical hell on Drake, Kendrick Lamar reminded us that we face hell and high water as a people, but we can make it through!

“Alls my life I has to fight, but if God got us then we gon’ be al-right.

Where’s the Real Beef? There’s plenty of it; pick the right one! Lord, please let this beef end, and the healing begin soon.

A long-time Texas Metro News columnist, Dallas native Vincent L. Hall is an author, writer, award-winning writer, and a lifelong Drapetomaniac.