I guess it would take Taylor Swift to make it official: 2024 is the year of the diss track. January ended with an all-out blood bath (and, mostly, a horror show) between Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion after years of subtle shots between the two. Then Ice Spice and Latto entered the ring, and now, basically every rapper, singer, or producer who’s collaborated with Drake is teaming up to take him down (Kendrick Lamar, Future, Metro Boomin, Rick Ross, and The Weeknd being the most notable Avengers). In the middle of all of this, fans are convinced that Swift has tapped into the trend, reportedly digging up an almost decade-old grievance by sending shots at Kim Kardashian in a track that she named “thanK you aIMee.”
It’s worth noting, of course, that Swift has been known to write songs from the perspective of various fictional characters (particularly from the Folklore era onwards), but—if the Taylor Nation chatter right now is anything to go by—this is very much a question of Taylor addressing Kim directly, à la 2010’s “Better Than Revenge.” Among the track’s spicier lyrics: lines about her mother, “a saintly woman,” wishing Aimee “were dead” for “beat[ing]” her daughter’s “spirit black and blue.” Then, like the movie villain who can’t help herself from walking us through her twisted scheme, Taylor tells us, in a bridge of exposition, that she’s erased any clues of who she might actually be singing about! Only the two of them will ever know, unless, somehow, someone can piece it together… Masterful gambit, ma’am!
Whatever Taylor’s intentions, Swifties have been quick to flood the internet with theories about a drama so ancient that my Gen-Z workmate, Riann, was initially confused as to why Taylor would take issue with Kim. “I didn’t know they had beef,” she wrote on Slack. “Have I been living under a rock?” No, Riann, it’s the beef that was fossilized, and I’m not convinced it needed to be dragged up again by way of The Tortured Poets Department discourse. Diss tracks need to be good, yes, but they also need to be delivered within a calendar decade. If Swift really wants to play in this pool, she should be back in the studio as we speak, recording a response to Drake mocking Kendrick Lamar rapping “for Swifties” on his own diss track “Push Ups,” released just hours after TTPD. (Drake, in a sort of diss track mise en abyme, is of course referencing Lamar’s verse on Swift’s reported Katy Perry takedown “Bad Blood”.)
In general, while diss tracks may be back with a vengeance in 2024, most of them have left a lot to be desired. We’ve fallen so far from Nicki’s “Roman’s Revenge,” a classic that will still light up any club floor, or Pusha T’s “The Story of Adidon,” a track so powerful it was able to make its target a more active father. Now, it’s more often a question of puerile baiting about nose jobs and spray tans. It speaks volumes that the best diss track this year has got to be “Think U the Shit (Fart)” by Ice Spice, a song so addictively, intentionally stupid that it borders on genius. Maybe, since the genre has become so juvenile, North West will respond to Taylor’s alleged call-out in her upcoming debut album, Elementary School Dropout. In the meantime, I’m convinced J. Cole was right to tap out when he did.
