Last summer, all any music lover could talk about was the ongoing beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. The two rappers traded blows over the course of a month as they highlighted one another’s insecurities, shortcomings and lauded allegations at one another. It went down as one of the greatest rap beefs in history, but it’s hardly the first time two people have been mean to one another through music.

When we think of diss tracks, our minds tend to fixate on rap music, which makes sense. Some of the greatest diss tracks in the history of music come from the genre, as it provides the perfect medium for people to hurl abuse at one another.

One of the main benefits of rap has always been the fact that you can say a lot in a short space of time, and using that, for decades, rappers have been able to use hip-hop as a means to convey a message. The first song to do this was aptly called ‘The Message’, by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. The song told the story of what it’s like to be a working-class person in New York, highlighting poetically the state of the streets, the hardships of work and the persistent problems people are pestered with.

With the power contained within rap clear, it wasn’t long before people used it as a means to express their opinions, and quite often, these opinions came at the expense of other rappers. For instance, ‘The Bridge’ was written by MC Shan and Maryl Marl and discussed the origin of hip-hop. Contesting their views, Boogie Down Productions released ‘The Bridge Is Over’, and so began the first back-and-forth between two rappers.