What Was the First Diss Track?

Introduction
Other notable diss tracks
- “Yankee Doodle” (c. 1750s)
- Mozart: “Leck mich im Arsch” (c. 1782)
- Noel Rosa: “Rapaz folgado” (1933)
- Kitty Wells: “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” (1952)
- Muddy Waters: “Mannish Boy” (1955)
- Bob Dylan: “Positively 4th Street” (1965)
- The Beatles: “Too Many People” and “How Do You Sleep?” (1971)
- Carly Simon: “You’re So Vain” (1972)
- Lynyrd Skynyrd: “Sweet Home Alabama” (1974)
- Foo Fighters: “I’ll Stick Around” (1995)
- Tupac Shakur: “Hit ’Em Up” (1996)
- Kendrick Lamar: “Not Like Us” (2024)

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Infographic titled 2024 Rap Beef Timeline showing a sequence of major releases and diss tracks exchanged between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, with key dates and song titles mapped in chronological order between their photos.

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What Was the First Diss Track?

Written by

René Ostberg

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History

It’s often said the best revenge is living well. Unless you’re a musician, in which case the best revenge is to release a diss track, a song with lyrics that insult—or disrespect—a rival artist. When most people think of diss tracks, they probably think of rap music. The hip-hop connection isn’t wrong. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term diss originated with Spoonie Gee’s 1979 song “Spoonin’ Rap.” Honors for the first rap diss track, however, go to Roxanne Shanté and her 1984 song “Roxanne’s Revenge.”

Shanté wrote “Roxanne’s Revenge” as an “answer-back” to U.T.F.O.’s “Roxanne, Roxanne,” a rap song about a girl who is immune to the rappers’ charms and gets labeled “stuck up” for paying them no mind. The girl was fictional, but producer Marley Marl and the teenage Shanté (whose real name is Lolita Gooden) saw an opportunity for a track that told Roxanne’s side of the story. The result, “Roxanne’s Revenge,” is fiery, funny, and decidedly feminist. Not to be maligned, the “conceited, never beated, never heard of defeated” Roxanne puts sexist critics in their place. U.T.F.O. quickly volleyed back with “The Real Roxanne.” Other rappers joined the fray to record their own Roxanne answer-backs.

Other notable diss tracks

Since the “Roxanne Wars,” countless rap superstars have made diss tracks to mock their enemies, frenemies, and exes: The Notorious B.I.G. versus Tupac Shakur, JAY-Z versus Nas, Eminem versus MGK, Nicki Minaj versus Lil’ Kim and Megan Thee Stallion, Drake versus Kendrick Lamar. Many feuds became legendary, and some turned tragic.

But insult records and revenge songs go back to well before hip-hop. The following is a list of notable diss tracks (in the loosest meaning of the term) in different genres of music.

“Yankee Doodle” (c. 1750s)

This patriotic anthem of the American Revolution originated as a favorite tune of British soldiers, who enjoyed its lyrics mocking American colonists. “Yankee” refers to a native of the United States, which seems fair. But “doodle” meant a “sorry, trifling fellow.” Then the Americans started winning the war. Instead of inventing a new song to gloat, American soldiers sang “Yankee Doodle” to British redcoats after patriot victories. The ultimate sick burn came when the British surrendered after the Battles of Saratoga and the Siege of Yorktown: As the redcoats retreated, the Continental Army’s musicians played them off with “Yankee Doodle.”

Mozart: “Leck mich im Arsch” (c. 1782)

Leave it to Mozart to compose one of the earliest insult songs. The 18th-century Austrian genius loved ribald jokes and potty humor, which explains “Leck mich im Arsch,” a canon in B-flat major for six voices whose title means “Lick My Arse”—or, in the modern parlance, “Kiss My Ass.” The lyrics for the composition are essentially a repetition of the phrase “lick me,” interposed with “hurry, hurry.” A few years earlier Mozart wrote a similar piece after being rejected by the opera singer Aloysia Weber. That version goes, “Let her kiss my arse, the woman who doesn’t want me.”

Noel Rosa: “Rapaz folgado” (1933)

Rosa was a Brazilian musician popular for his sambas. His songs were populated with a romantic rogue figure known as the malandro, typically represented as a dapper man in a white suit and a Panama hat. The streetwise malandro had sprung from Afro-Brazilian culture. But Rosa was a white, middle-class former medical student. In the early 1930s Wilson Batista, a working-class Afro-Brazilian musician, made a name for himself with “Lenço no pescoço” (“Scarf Around the Neck”), which became a malandro anthem. Rosa responded with “Rapaz folgado” (“Idle Youth”), which features the stinging lines, “I propose, to the civilized people / To call you not a malandro / But rather an idle youth.” It didn’t end there. One of Batista’s answer-backs essentially accused Rosa of cultural appropriation. Yet Rosa, who died of tuberculosis in 1937 at age 26, remains a samba legend.

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Kitty Wells: “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” (1952)

“Too many times married men think they’re still single.” That line sums up the mighty shade in Wells’s country classic. She recorded the song as a rejoinder to Hank Thompson’s “The Wild Side of Life,” which blames a woman met in a bar for the breakup of a marriage and features the verses, “I didn’t know God made honky tonk angels / I might have known you’d never make a wife.” Using Thompson’s melody for her own track, Wells sings, “From the start most every heart that’s ever broken / Was because there always was a man to blame.” In 2007 “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” was added to the National Recording Registry, a list of songs deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” “The Wild Side of Life” is not on the list.

Muddy Waters: “Mannish Boy” (1955)

In 1954 Waters released what would become his best-selling single: “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man,” a Willie Dixon-penned, Chicago-style blues in which Waters boasts about his sexual potency. With its iconic stop-time rhythm, the song so impressed Bo Diddley that he responded a year later with “I’m a Man,” definitively declaring his own manhood with the verses, “I’m a man / I spell M-A-N.” It became a transformative hit, bridging the gap between R&B and rock and roll. But Waters wasn’t one to be outshone. He came back with the ferociously macho “Mannish Boy” (1955), which ups the ante of sexual bravado, appropriates Diddley’s spelling verses, and affirms: “I’m a full-grown man.”

Bob Dylan: “Positively 4th Street” (1965)

Is the back-stabbing scenester in Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” the most toxic person ever described in song? Possibly. Dylan pulls no punches in this one, castigating a nameless, two-faced phony from the get-go with the opening lines: “You’ve gotta lot of nerve / To say you are my friend.” From there, it’s a litany of the fake friend’s many petty snubs (“When I was down / You just stood there grinning”). Dylan recorded the song a few days after he was booed at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival for “going electric.” Although some fans think “Positively 4th Street” is about a certain fellow folkie (Phil Ochs is often named), most music critics believe its real target is the general Greenwich Village folk scene, which Dylan was ready to leave behind.

The Beatles: “Too Many People” and “How Do You Sleep?” (1971)

In the spring of 1970 the Beatles disbanded. The end came after years of disagreements between founding members John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Breaking up didn’t put to rest their bickering. One year later McCartney released the solo album Ram, featuring the song “Too Many People,” which seemed to lay the blame on Lennon: “You took your lucky break and broke it in two / Now what can be done for you?” Incensed, Lennon fired back with “How Do You Sleep?,” which took a swipe at Paul’s songwriting skills: “The sound you make is Muzak to my ears.” He even dragged one of McCartney’s best-loved Beatles hits into the fray: “The only thing you done was Yesterday / And since you’re gone you’re just another day.”

Carly Simon: “You’re So Vain” (1972)

Adult contemporary music is known for its mellow vibe. Yet the genre spawned one of the most devastating diss tracks of all time. “You’re So Vain” takes aim at a pretentious heartbreaker who, among other things, enjoys watching himself dance (or rather, gavotte) in a mirror and makes a play for “the wife of a close friend.” The chart-topper sparked many rumors about the identity of the apricot-scarf-wearing womanizer. Was it actor Warren Beatty or producer David Geffen? Or a fellow musician such as Kris Kristofferson or Cat Stevens? (Beatty, Kristofferson, and Stevens were all exes of Simon.) Maybe James Taylor (to whom Simon was married from 1972 to 1983) or Mick Jagger (who contributed backup vocals)? Years later Simon confirmed that Beatty, a notorious Casanova, inspired one verse. Two other mystery men, not revealed by Simon, inspired the rest.

Lynyrd Skynyrd: “Sweet Home Alabama” (1974)

In 1970 Canadian rocker Neil Young released the album After the Gold Rush, which features “Southern Man,” a searing condemnation of American racism. But Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd took issue with what they deemed to be Young’s condescension and his use of Southern stereotypes. So in 1974 the band retorted with “Sweet Home Alabama,” which takes shots at not only Young (“I hope Neil Young will remember / A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow”) but also Alabama’s segregationist governor George Wallace.

Foo Fighters: “I’ll Stick Around” (1995)

Let’s talk about the grunge era for a minute. The death of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in 1994 was a shocking blow to the 1990s music scene. He left behind his wife, Hole frontwoman Courtney Love, their young daughter, and his bandmates Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic. It wasn’t long before Love and Grohl were fighting over Cobain’s legacy. Grohl quickly formed a new project called Foo Fighters and released an angry single titled “I’ll Stick Around.” In the chorus Grohl screams, “I don’t owe you anything.” Fans guessed the lyrics were about Love. He wasn’t the only alternative rock musician who went after the controversial grunge queen. Tori Amos’s “Professional Widow” and Nine Inch Nails’ “Starf*ckers, Inc.” are also rumored to be about Love.

Tupac Shakur: “Hit ’Em Up” (1996)

Perhaps the most striking thing about this savage beatdown is its sweetly melodic backing track. All the better to catch every word of Shakur’s explosive rage against (here we go): The Notorious B.I.G. (also known as Biggie Smalls), Lil’ Kim, Junior M.A.F.I.A., Mobb Deep, Chino XL, Sean (“Puffy”) Combs, Faith Evans, and Bad Boy Records. By the time “Hit ’Em Up” was released in the summer of 1996, Shakur and Biggie had been feuding for nearly two years. In November 1994 Shakur was shot five times. He was convinced that Biggie and Puffy were involved. They denied it, but then Biggie released “Who Shot Ya,” a record that seemed to taunt Shakur, although the lyrics don’t mention him. In his answer-back Shakur raps, “Who shot me? But you punks didn’t finish / Now you ’bout to feel the wrath of a menace.” It wasn’t just a war of words. Shakur was shot and killed a few months later, in September 1996. The following year Biggie also died by gun violence.

Kendrick Lamar: “Not Like Us” (2024)

The beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar erupted in the spring of 2024 and instantly entered the annals of pop culture. The rappers’ barbs were extremely personal. Lamar called out Drake for allegedly having a secret child, and Drake claimed that Kendrick abused his fiancée. Meanwhile, their diss track drop rate might go down as the speediest in history. In one week alone they traded seven tracks. One of them, Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” yielded the biggest hit of his career so far, raking in several Grammy Awards. It also contained verses accusing Drake of being a pedophile. Drake filed a lawsuit, which was thrown out of court. Then in 2026 he retaliated with a trifecta of albums, released in a single day, that immediately claimed the top three spots on the album chart. And yes, he had more words for Lamar.

René Ostberg

What Was the First Diss Track?

Other notable diss tracks

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“Yankee Doodle” (c. 1750s)

Mozart: “Leck mich im Arsch” (c. 1782)

Noel Rosa: “Rapaz folgado” (1933)

Kitty Wells: “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” (1952)

Muddy Waters: “Mannish Boy” (1955)

Bob Dylan: “Positively 4th Street” (1965)

The Beatles: “Too Many People” and “How Do You Sleep?” (1971)

Carly Simon: “You’re So Vain” (1972)

Lynyrd Skynyrd: “Sweet Home Alabama” (1974)

Foo Fighters: “I’ll Stick Around” (1995)

Tupac Shakur: “Hit ’Em Up” (1996)

Kendrick Lamar: “Not Like Us” (2024)