How T.I. and 50 Cent’s Beef Unintentionally Unveiled the Full Spectrum of the Harris Family Talent
While two rap elders revel in old smoke, Domani, King and Buddy Redd turn trolling into a generational rollout nobody saw coming.
Beef in hip-hop is a tale as old as time. As long as rappers have been rapping, other rappers have been rapping about those first rappers being trash at rapping. It’s a feature, not a bug of the genre, and every so often when the best of the lyrical sport meet at the top (think Jay-Z—excuse me—Jäy-Z versus Nas, Tupac versus Biggie, etc.), it makes for compelling storylines, news pegs and, oh yeah, even some legendary music. From Boogie Down Productions’ “The Bridge Is Over” to Nas’ “Ether” to Ice Cube’s “No Vaseline,” hip-hop is often at its finest when rappers are tested into showing and proving.
We saw the heights of beef and battle rapping over the course of 2024 and 2025 when J. Cole unintentionally lit a match between current living legends Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick Lamar and Drake showed what happens in the social media era, when two of hip-hop’s musical titans clash at the top, leading to months of dis records, albums, think pieces and arguments. As a gift, we got one of the greatest, regionally specific (but also, like Black America first?) hip-hop records ever with “Not Like Us,” which in the world we live in now, wins Grammys. Oh, what a time to be alive.
While Lamar and Drake were duking it out, two of hip-hop’s legends of the 2000s were continuing to have success in other, non-hip-hop endeavors. 50 Cent, one of hip-hop’s foremost shit-starters and a man who never saw a beef he wasn’t willing to entertain, was out making television shows, keeping the Blackest of us entertained with multiple forays into the Power universe. Clifford “Tip/T.I.” Harris was out podcasting and making the rounds as a Southern talking head, while he and his wife, Tameka “Tiny” Cottle (musical legend in her own right), were heading up their own large family of children, popping in and out of the news for various things like lawsuits over OMG Girlz, etc.
At this point in 2026, both are more known for their business ventures than their hip-hop contributions, and, in the case of 50 Cent, his Olympic gold-level trolling. Well, as it just so happens, T.I. has decided to get back into the musical world, dropping a banger of a record, “Let ‘Em Know,” produced by Pharrell that harkens back to the T.I. we all came to know and love in the 2000s and 2010s. T.I. sounds inspired and back to old form. He’s always been really, really good at this rap shit and is definitely on Atlanta’s hip-hop Mount Rushmore. Where he lands on any “best of” hip-hop lists is immaterial at this point because he has the respect of and is essential to the culture.
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