A History of Trolling in Rap

Image via Complex Original

Year: 1986
Action: Wearing a VW hood ornament instead of a Mercedes one.

Hip-hop culture has always been obsessed with money: how to make it, spend it, look it. (Faking it until making it is just as important.) Throughout the 1980's, Harlem's Dapper Dan took Euro labels and gave them to the streets, remixing Gucci, Prada, Louis, Fendi into jumpsuits, car interiors, bucket hats and whatever else. At the same time, kids worldwide jacked Mercedes hood ornaments and fashioned them into makeshift jewelry. And so the Beastie Boys entered this world as outsiders; they were raised in comfort, schooled in punk.

In 1986, while promoting their debut, Licensed to Ill (originally called Don't Be a Faggot; more trolling), Mike D wore a Volkswagen logo around his neck, a flashy paean to sensible value, more Consumer Reports than Robb Reports. His sartorial spoof immediately became a fad: after the Beasties came through Detroit, it ran so wild that a VW owner had to replace his hood ornament four times in one month.

Year: 1988
Action: "I'll House You"

New York's Jungle Brothers got famous creating the first hip-house hit, which basically means that it was the first time rappers broke through while rapping over a Chicago house beat. Rappy-rap lyrics, dance beat, got it. There's nothing more to the song or genre, that's about it, stop overthinking so much!

That being said, the song is absurd: the word "house" is said 33 times in 3:46, or once every seven seconds. It's used as a verb ("house your body to the beat"), an adjective (repeating "house music all night long"), and—yes—a noun ("House is food and you need it/If I feed it, you should eat it")... but never like a structure in which one lives BECAUSE THEY USE THE WORD "HUT" INSTEAD. Unbelievable. Hilarious. Unbelievably hilarious.

Year: 1991
Action: De La Soul Is Dead

The cover to De La Soul's debut, 3 Feet High and Rising, was yellow. There were pinks and oranges, purples and greens, but that is a very yellow cover. NWA's Straight Outta Compton had come out nine months before; their cover was not so friendly in comparison. So De La was different: they were suburban guys who liked to laugh and smile and think.

Critics at the time called them hippies, which seems lazy now, but not without some merit: let's not forget the fact that people in 1988 and 1989 were re-adopting hippie culture because of the 20-year-nostalgia cycle, and—oh right—they called their movement DAISY (Da Inner Sound, Y'all). People loved it! But De La Soul didn't, and so their second cover featured a smashed flower pot under the words "De La Soul is Dead." Oh. Well. So much for peace and love!

Year: 1994
Action: Being a jerk-on-purpose on the second season of MTV's Real World. 

Puck isn't a rap artist, but he was such a troll, such a proto-troll, that he makes this list on the strength. Growing up in front of a television set in the 1990s, there was no bigger villain than Puck. He started fights over things small (hygiene; girls) and large (his housemate Pedro's HIV status), a blonde middle finger walking around the Real World house. But, almost beside themselves, the cameras couldn't get enough Puck. Every episode revolved around him: why he hated hip-hop; why his roommates didn't show up to his soap box derby...there was a 10-minute discussion of why Puck thought 90210 was wrecking America.

At the time, it was incredible that someone would so proudly flame out, an intentional asshole. Now, reality TV practically mandates that one ruins their life. But maybe nothing articulates how much Puck would do anything for a reaction than this clip from that season's reunion show. In it, Judd speaks from the heart about Pedro's death due to AIDS, and Puck—lying on the ground, the back of his head to the live-audience—responds by flipping the bird. (Puck had allegedly been in the papers, saying of Pedro, "Good riddance.") A fight ensues. Just as he'd been evicted from the house, Puck gets kicked out of the taping...but the camera stays on him until the last possible second. A lesson learned for trolls everywhere.

Year: 1997
Action: "Player Hater"

The Notorious B.I.G. could do practically anything he set his mind to: rap, make big beautiful, sit through Cole's audition on Martin. He could not, however, sing very well. In a reworking of The Delfonic's "Hey! Love," he starts off fine enough—he can hold a couple of notes, sure, and the back-up singers are so soulful, don't you agree? Don't you agree? But then it's clear that this is not being sung by a singer, and Puffy starts doing this falsetto that could get a man murdered, interesting because they're singing about murdering people.

It's so cringe-y, one can't help but laugh... even though (again) the song is about someone getting murdered. Maybe it's that these were two guys at the top of the world, who could do anything and get away with it; maybe Puffy was (is) delusional and thought they looked like Mel & Tim in the mirror. Either way, they killed it. Because it's about murder.

Year: 1999
Action: "Hate Me Now"

Nas had come out in 1994 as an updated Rakim, wind-em-back lyrics and a cold demeanor. But as hip-hop moved further into the mainstream, Nas followed suit... in his shiny suit. Underground hip-hop fans complained, saying he'd become too commercial. So Nas put out "Hate Me Now," basically a bombastic fuck-you for writing in to the editor. And of course it featured Puff Daddy, bane of the underground's existence at the time, in a heavy-handed way.

Oh, and on top of that, Nas (and Puff) compared himself to Christ in the video, dragging a cross around in the hot sun. In an interview with XXL, Nas would explain, "There's a play in New York City where a black man played Jesus, and caught a lot of flak. I think, even the mayor at the time, Giuliani, was against it. So my thing was I wanted to be crucified like Jesus in the video, to get back at all those people that don't want to see a black man doing his thing."

Year: 1999
Action: Dr. Dooom

Kool Keith has always been an outlier in hip-hop: he started off as a member of the brilliantly weird Bronx quartet The Ultramagnetic MCs, and he's only gotten weirder from there. He rhymes about extremely kinky sex fantasies, chopping up bodies and bathing in blood, washing them down with Flintstones vitamins. So, already he's sort of making fun of the whole thing.

But his most genius and playful move came with the album he released under his alter ego "Dr. Dooom." The cover for First Come, First Served. mocked the Pen & Pixel school of album artwork that had become cliche at the time. (Pen & Pixel, the Houston design firm, is mostly known for their work with Cash Money, No Limit, Three 6 Mafia and—of course—Big Bear.) On his cover—instead of gold and gold bullets and gold dogs and other .PSD files—Kool Keith has a giant Whopper, a gorilla in a Rodin pose, a giant larvae of some sort and an Eddie Munster widow's peak. In other words, 'save as.'

Year: 1999
Action: "How to Rob"

50 Cent's method of climbing a ladder is to plow straight through it. That way, everyone falls down and there's no need to climb up to anything. (Now that I write this: 50 Cent's a bit like Heath Ledger's Joker, no?) 50 Cent's very first single, "How to Rob," for Columbia, described how he would stick up every major rap personality at the time. (Biggie, for his part, had done a similar thing with "Dreams of Fuckin' an R&B Bitch" years earlier, somehow managing to leave out his future wife, Faith.)

No one was safe. (I mean, everyone was; it's just a song.) But he made fun of Big Pun's weight, Juvenile's gold teeth; he threatened to shoot up Jay-Z's car. All he wanted was a reaction, and reaction he got: Jay responded on "It's Hot," saying "I'm about a dollar/What the fuck is fifty cents?" (An interesting bit of information from The Madd Rapper, via Rap Genius: Mariah Carey was originally going to be "robbed" on the song, but she threatened to leave Columbia if that happened. So, Case and Mary J Blige were put in her spot. #Vh1Divas.)

Year: 2000
Action: Record-store skits on Aquemini. 

Store owner: "For $16.99, I'll give you that new, new OutKast. Ain't come out yet."

Guy: "No, no...Man, first they were some pimps. Then they were some aliens or some genies—some shit. Then they be talkin' 'bout that black righteous space. Man, fuck them. I ain't fuckin' with them no mo'."

And that's (pretty much) how their third album started off, pushing back against the fans who thought their previous album, ATLiens, was too weird. (The duo combat rumors that they were dating or in a cult, which maybe was an idea people had; so strange to think that this is all because Andre wore crazy pants at the time. Now everyone wears crazy pants, up is down, left is right, and OutKast doesn't record together for some reason, which is the worst thing of all.)

Year: 2002
Action: Started beef with Eminem as a publicity stunt.

Benzino's a troll, and not just because he lives under a bridge and demands passers answer questions three. No, he's a troll because he went at Eminem—you know, the most popular rapper in the world—in order to (somehow) give his rap group Made Men some publicity, which they'd only gotten in the first place because of his own shady (ha) connections to The Source.

In two songs—"I Don't Wanna" and "Pull Up Ya Skirt"—Benzino rapped, trying to make the case that Eminem had only gained fame because of race, alleging that "the machine" had prevented talented Latino and Black groups (ahem: Made Men) from making it themselves. Eminem fired back with two songs of his own, which convincingly made Benzino out to be a sad sack fame whore, desperate to live off his son. And that's when Benzino began to steer The Source straight into the iceberg, putting a poster of himself holding Eminem's head inside one issue. A bunch of things happened, The Source lost all credibility, Eminem continued on unabated, yada yada yada, Benzino's now on Love & Hip-Hop: Atlanta and "Made Men" doesn't have a proper Wiki page.

Year: 2005-present
Action: Saying "I'm not a rapper."

First, let it be known that Young Jeezy is absolutely a rapper. He is a person who raps, so he is a rapper. That's just how it goes, case closed, bing bong. That being said, Jeezy used to say he wasn't a rapper, since he was a drug dealer-slash-gangster. As his first album was coming out, Jeezy told MTV, "I keep telling them, I'm not a rapper, I'm a motivational speaker. I don't do shows, I do seminars. I get all the gangstas together—Crips, Bloods, Vice Lords—and get them to politick."

Same thing for TM102, over and over, which was weird because—even at that point—there was a ton of evidence that would suggest otherwise! Honestly, writing this up right now I'm getting annoyed at the whole thing...and he still keeps saying he's not a rapper! Last year, he had a conversation with the Baltimore Sun, and he intimated the same point...after being asked about his latest gold record. Absurd. Jeezy, go to bed. You're a rapper.

Year: 2007
Action: Performance as "King of the 'Burbz" on "The White Rapper Show."

ego trip's White Rapper Show aired on Vh1 in 2007, showcasing a reality competition not unlike America's Next Top Model or Project Runway. A bunch of fair-skinned MCs were shoved into a house, given ridiculous challenges ("rhyme about 'white power', 'white bread' or 'white trash'," for example), and paraded in front of America to laugh at.

With TV-ready catchphrases and a vacant stare, John Brown quickly became the star of the show, a Puck for a new generation. He hammered home the vague ideas of "pimpification" and "ghetto revival" (which, no idea what that means, but sure) and crowned himself the "King of the 'Burbz." He also had a dildo shoved in his face, by Persia, one of his housemates, after she grew frustrated with him. Brown argued with the host of the show, MC Serch, after giggling repeatedly. When he met Grandmaster Flash, Brown said, "You know, it's just another day in the life of the King of the Burbz."

And during a freestyle, he rapped, "I was thinking 'bout Malcolm, my last name could be X." Amazing. But honestly, his best work may have been done after the show, in 2008, when he released "Sarah Palin (I Wanna Lay Pipe)."

Year: 2010-present
Action: Life 

Little is known about the man who grew up to be RiFF RAFF. He's originally from Houston. Or, actually that's Jody Christian; that's not RiFF RAFF. At some point, RiFF RAFF was born, maybe the moment the MTV cast him on their show "From G's to Gents" in 2009. He had an MTV logo permanently tattooed on his neck; now he's got one for BET, another for WorldStarHipHop. His hair's in cornrows; his teeth are straight out of Paul Wall's refrigerator. His rhymes are absurdist, disconnected puns (is that a thing?) and pop culture references that he seems to pull out of cloudy air.

A typical verse goes, "Mothafuck county, I ain't gonna stop until my name on a mountain (Mount Rushmore)/Tell me who counting, who keeping score?/I don't want your girl cuz she look like Jay Leno (big chin)." And it's like, oh. Alright. What makes it trolling is that RiFF RAFF is dead serious about the whole thing. And maybe this is serious to him! But it's also ridiculous. And he doesn't think it's ridiculous! Do you see? DO YOU SEE?

Year: 2011
Action: "Bitch Suck Dick" 

Right off the bat, a song like "Bitch Suck Dick" is probably not going to make a lot of friends. Just... no. No way to make a Kidz Bop version, even. But that's always been Odd Future's MO: they want to shock and provoke reaction, and either you're in on the joke or you're not. 

One could see how women might not like this song! But the video is helpful, in that it pushes things very clearly over the top. There's a very Redman quality to the whole thing: there's Tyler, the Creator, pretending to be David Hasselhoff, running on the beach; there's Taco, putting his bare ass on a steak he just seasoned for a while. But that's not trolling; that's just being Tumblr-ready. What is trolling is having them all rap "swag, swag, punch a bitch" to two overweight/underdressed women. Are the women the joke? Is what they're saying the joke? Are our projected feelings the joke? Is the whole thing a joke? Is everything a joke?

Year: 2011
Action: "I'm Gay (I'm Happy)"

Where does one even start with Lil B? He's a rapper who has gone as far afield as one can go without drowning in the sea. He's worn the same pair of Vans for the past six years or so; most of his songs follow the exact same recipe, just with different ingredients. After putting out hundreds of songs for free, in 2011 he finally prepared to put out his debut album, which already sounds sort-of crazy, even in hindsight.

This is a guy who's created more memes than any other rapper, or maybe even any other person or animal. He's less a rapper, really, than a cult figure who happens to rap. His fans called him "Based God." Then he revealed the album title: I'm Gay. Huh! "I'm Gay!" Like... Wow! This was really world-class rap trolling. Not just because hip-hop has a gay problem, as most hyper-masculine cultures do. It's that Lil B is not even gay! (At least as far as anyone knows.) This is a guy whose main claim to fame is that white kids scream "Based God, please fuck my bitch" at his concerts, and "Please fuck my mom!" Of course, a day or two later, he softened the title with a clarification: I'm Gay (I'm Happy).

Year: 2012
Action: Recording an album with V-Nasty.

What a strange time the age of Kreayshawn was. She put up a YouTube video, immediately signed a record deal for seven figures, shot a Red Hot Chili Peppers video (ultimately scrapped), and disappeared...but not before she had introduced the world to V-Nasty. V-Nasty was initially thought to be Kreay's sister...then her cousin...then it turned out they weren't related, they were just very close. She recorded amateurish songs with Kreayshawn, and sometimes acted as her hypeman (when she wasn't in jail).

All of that's fine. But then, soon after being introduced to the Internet, it was revealed that V-Nasty used a certain racial epithet casually and conversationally. A lot. Used it all the time. On record. But, when confronted with the problem with this, unlike most non-Black people in this situation, she refused to apologize or show understanding. (She just kept noting her roots in Oakland, where, she said, the nasty word was somehow less loaded than everywhere else. Local legend Mistah FAB gave her a cosign; many others didn't.) Just as she was set to disappear into the YouTube ether, Gucci Mane-consistently making interesting decisions-decided to record a full-length album with her. What would they call it? Well, she's from The Bay; he's from ATL. So... BayTL. No we're not kidding. But you get the sense that Gucci Mane was, at least a little bit.

Year: 2012-present
Action: "Round Da Rosey"

Chief Keef is a 17-year-old from Chicago. He's also a father who can't keep himself out of jail or trouble, who was initially arrested for shooting a gun in the direction of a police officer, who recorded a song called "Hate Being Sober," who Instagrammed a picture of himself getting head, who threatened Katy Perry with violence after she wrote finger-waggy things on Twitter, who tweeted "hahahahahhahahahahahahahaahhAAHAHAHAHA" after a kid was murdered for (allegedly) "trying to be him."

He also plays paintball in the house and throws water balloons, because he's a 17-year-old. (He also is in love with his daughter, Kay Kay, and it seems like he's very good to her.) He is often criticized, widely, loudly, angrily, for his blunt, simple rap lyrics. This spring, he released a single that borrows its melody and chorus from the nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosie." He is 17 years old. He's pretty great.