Last fall we spoke to Brooklyn rapper Magneto Dayo, who has collaborated with V-Nasty, the controversial MC who used to be aligned with Kreayshawn in her White Girl Mob crew.

See also: V-Nasty, Having Split With Kreayshawn, Talks About Her "$750,000" Deal

Dayo said that he and V-Nasty had been involved, and that, further, she got pregnant and said that baby was his. Um, not exactly, responded V-Nasty. In fact, not at all. "Yeah, I've never met him or anything," she told us. "I just did a song with him through emails...I will kick his ass."

Dayo did not take this well, and has just released a diss track called "OJ Simpson (Tribute 2 the White Girl Mob)," which you can hear below. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like: an all-out escalation of their beef.

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Left: Tyler the Creator (Credit: Kevin Sullivan/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom) Right: A design by Cat Cult

By Ren MacDonald

Ten years ago, Inland Empire native Ian Campbell founded Cat Cult, an artist collective whose members paste pictures of screen-printed cat heads on sidewalks, traffic signal boxes and buildings throughout L.A. County. As a teen in his Pomona garage Campbell, now 33, started making likenesses of his mom's cat on stickers. While he was studying at Art Center College of Design, the images evolved into numerous different breeds -- from striped tabbies to Russian Blues -- with diamond eyes and decked out in wizard caps, cowboy hats and vampire capes.

See also: Battle on Beverly: What Happens When One L.A. Street Artist Takes Another's Painting and Puts It Into His Own Creation?

Cat Cult has a not-insubstantial fan base. Besides boasting thousands of Instagram followers, its art has been featured in gallery shows and sold on T-shirts and sweatshirts at retailers such as Fred Segal.

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Lil B has a 3-0 Twitter beef record

Twenty years ago, rap animosity was expressed via diss songs. Like, if someone pissed you off you went home, thought about it, went to a recording studio, pressed up your album, and sent it around. The object of your diss might not find out until six months later.

More recently the rise of the mixtape and the internet allowed diss tracks to reach their targets much more quickly, and today rap disses arrive mostly in 140 character bundles.
While we certainly miss classic diss tracks like "Takeover" and "No Vaseline," Twitter beef can be pretty damn entertaining. Here's a brief history, and at the end we crown a champion.

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flickr/ micheeky

So, a certain editor of this blog thinks classic rock is totally bogus, huh?

See also: *Classic Rock Is a Cancer on Our Society
*What Is Classic Rock Today?

The point of his argument is that folks from our generation need to have their own taste, not be stuck in the past. But one can't deny that the music which emerged from the '60s and '70s was critical to the development of much of the stuff we all like.

Oh, and said classic rock? Yeah, it actually required talent.

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A still from the video of the brawl.

UPDATE: The video has been taken down. Bummer!

Infest played the Echo last night. It was the legendary powerviolence band's first concert in 16 years, and this ridiculous fight outside the venue beforehand served as quite a pre-show. The video is was below; it's worthy of WorldStarHipHop, as by-standers remind everyone.

See also: Slutwave, Tumblr Rap, Rape Gaze, Powerviolence: Obscure Musical Genres Explained

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flickr/MxPxGuy220

White people and their sometimes-problematic place in hip-hop culture have been in the news recently. At The New Republic last week Dave Bry mulled Chief Keef and whether it's ok for white music critics to like violent rap, while we wrote about white entertainers who think they have a pass to say the n-word. Not entirely related but still on-point was our buddy Skinny Friedman's piece on folks who shouldn't be writing about rap music in the first place.

See also: Which White Entertainers Have a "Hood Pass" to Say the N-Word?

But what about white hip-hop fans? There aren't many rappers who don't welcome them into the fold, but most everyone would agree that there are rules for their fandom -- for the purpose of avoiding racist, douchey, or idiotic behavior. So here they are.

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V-Nasty

The late aughts saw a debate in the hip-hop community about the use of the n-word, sparked in part by Nas' plan to name his 2008 album Nigger (he ended up calling it Untitled), as well as Russell Simmons' call for industry self-censorship of the word. In 2007 the city of Detroit even hosted a "symbolic funeral" for the epithet.

In the ensuing years, however, the word's use in hip-hop has not waned. In fact, the debate seems to have shifted slightly, from whether black rappers should use it to whether any white rappers can use it. Though almost nobody will say publicly that this is a good idea, the issue keeps cropping up. Last year Oakland-bred rapper V-Nasty dropped n-bombs repeatedly on her debut mixtape Don't Bite Just Taste. Though in her interview with us she noted that the word is more commonly used by white people in the Bay Area, and that she's the mother of half-black children, she nonetheless drew widespread scorn. Still, influential Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane said he would not "judge" her, and officially co-signed her by collaborating on a mixtape.

See also: V-Nasty as She Wants to Be: Kreayshawn's Controversial Associate Tells Her Side

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Mike Campbell

Rap Genius co-founders Tom Lehman and Mahbod Moghadam

In Malibu last weekend, an ebullient crowd including rappers Mike G and Shawn Chrystopher have gathered for the birthday party of Mahbod Moghadam. Champagne is poured into red solo cups, while a volcano vaporizer circulates.

Moghadam is an eccentric character who is the face of the extremely successful -- but much maligned -- hip-hop web site Rap Genius. He's renting this house in Malibu, flush with cash after the site was recently tapped for $15 million in funding from a venture capital firm.

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From the December, 1981 issue of Billboard

The Melvins are in the midst of an ambitious tour, performing in all 50 states (plus Washington, D.C.) in only 51 days. Pretty impressive, considering the legendary band soon will be entering their fourth decade. One of the pioneers of the 1980s Seattle scene that later birthed Nirvana and Soundgarden, they're known for experimental punk, which incorporates some metal, sludge and grunge.

While much of the Melvins' pretour publicity insisted they would be the first to accomplish this feat -- a show a day in each state -- that might not actually be true. The claim has led to a war of words with the management of '80s blues-rocker George Thorogood, who assert he accomplished it in 1981.

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Merritt, on left

Stephin Merritt might be the greatest songwriter of his generation. Still, as has been reported before, interviewing him can be quite difficult.

He takes extraordinarily long pauses, then suddenly decides to interrupt just when you thought it was safe to speak. If you refer to him calling himself "introverted" in the past, he will deny that he's introverted. Black is white. Up is down. Adele fans are racist, a charge Merritt has faced himself.

So let's do this. This symbol * will denote an uncomfortably-long pause.

What's the difference between being an L.A. songwriter and a New York one?
I think that the main difference is that you can't sit in a bar for hours in L.A. drinking and drinking, or else you'd have to take a taxi home.

Everyone on the new album seems at wits' end with their partner. There's so much revenge and jealousy, topics that are usually associated with more extreme music.

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