Season two of the pandemic brainchild series Verzuz, produced by Swizz Beatz and Timbaland, “kicked off” with a pairing nobody thought would happen. Young Jeezy and Gucci Mane. Both southern rappers who came up in the mid to late 00’s. Any of the peak 1.7 million viewers on Instagram who tuned in felt the tension between the two as the shared a stage at Atlanta’s fame strip club Magic City which was the chosen locale for the battle.
Why the disbelief that the battle was happening and the tension between the two?
It stems from a 15-year-old beef between the rappers. Time for a brief history lesson:
It begins with the classic “So Icy” which was a song that featured both rappers and was could also be called the debut for both. If you look the song up it is credited to Gucci Mane with a feature from Young Jeezy.
Supposedly Jeezy also wanted to feature the song on his album as well but Gucci wouldn’t let him.
Supposedly Jeezy put a 10k bid out for someone to go snatch Gucci’s chain (more on this later)
Supposedly when someone (who is rumoured to be a friend of Jeezys) took up this offer and showed up to Gucci’s house to obtain said chain Gucci show and killed the intruder (more on this later)
Since then relations have been pretty tense between the two with the usual diss songs being produced and threats (more on this later).
All of this set the scene for what was going to be an epic Verzuz. For those unfamiliar Verzuz was started during the first half of 2020 as the world was dealing with Covid-19 and people were looking for sources of entertainment. Hip Hop staples Swizz Beatz and Timbaland started the series which puts two artists together in a battle format. Each artist in an alternating fashion plays their hits for 20 rounds and each round is scored a winner. Previous battles have included, DMX/Snoop Dogg, French Montana/Tory Lanez, Teddy Riley/Babyface, Nelly/Ludacris and the highly anticipated Brandy/Monica.
With a start time of 8pm eastern standard time, the event didn’t kick of till 8:50 pm. 1.1 million were tuned in on IG Live before either artist appeared. Gucci led the rounds off and started round one with a diss song towards Jeezy. Diss songs aren’t uncommon in hip hop but never had we seen one artist perform their diss song towards another artist in front of their face. No reaction from Jeezy.
The Verzuz continued for the next 17 rounds, as the peak audience hit 1.8 million with no one really keeping score, in a tense fashion as references were made to details in their beef. Gucci brought up he had on a $10,000 outfit (the amount Jeezy put on the acquisition of his chain). Kicking off round 17 Gucci performed another diss song entitled “Truth”. This song features Gucci detailing the encounter of someone showing up to his house and him putting that person in the ground. It was at this moment that the tension hit a high as Jeezy expressed his dislike of what Gucci did and how he had extended the peace offer to Gucci to do the Verzuz. Jeezy also gave some respect to some rappers who recently lost their lives to violence including King Von, Pop Smoke & Nipsey Hussle. Jeezy smoothly transitioned into his hit “Put On”.
With the final song selection in a bonus 24th round the two rappers came together to perform their hit “Icy”. It was clear in this moment that the two rappers had come together to work out their beef in order to do the Verzuz. It’s unclear whether the whole Verzuz was theatrics or if some of it was just some last shots being fired off.
In an IG Live that followed the battle Swizz and Timbaland reflected on the events and discussed the impact of rapper/street beefs. They acknowledge that both artists had made some “big boy decisions” in ending their 15-year dispute and hoped that other artists could follow example and we would see less violence in the future.
Make sure you check out and follow our Verzuz playlist. Tweet us some of your favourites that they played and let us know if there was one they missed!
