I shamelessly love three things in this world: eating large wheels of brie cheese alone, singing Cher’s “Believe” in the shower and keeping up on every single unnecessary ego-fueled online fight between rappers. The following are highlights from real-life arguments from the last week; with any luck, someday I’ll reach a point in my life where I can be half as out of touch with reality as any of these wonderful men.
B.o.B. versus Neil deGrasse Tyson In a recent Instagram photo, once-relevant rapper B.o.B. noticed that two cities, despite being almost sixteen miles apart, were not separated by curved land, thus proving once and for all that the Earth is flat, sticking it to 15th century explorers everywhere (#ByeMagellan). After proclaiming that everyone who believes that the Earth is round has “been indoctrinated into a heliocentric belief system” and needs to “grow up,” B.o.B. was confronted by America’s favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, who cited the movement of the star Polaris by 1.5 degrees — shots fired — as evidence to the contrary. Naturally, the argument escalated into a rap battle between B.o.B. and Tyson’s nephew, with NASA scientists and astronomy professors across the country getting involved on Tyson’s behalf. In the meantime, B.o.B. has moved onto bigger conspiracies, concerning the moon landing and human cloning. The truth is out there.
Kanye versus Everyone (But this time mostly Wiz Khalifa) Kanye West’s new album Waves (an album so supposedly impressive that Kanye declared it to be not just album of the year, but rather “album of the life”) is set to drop this February, but has already caused some ripples after Kanye changed the album’s name to Waves. Rapper Wiz Khalifa felt that the album formerly known as Swish ripped off a sound branded by rapper Max B. and voiced his opinion on Twitter. After Wiz brushed off Kanye’s props to Max B., Kanye went on a 30-tweet-long verbal rampage, that accused Wiz Khalifa of stealing his entire sound from Kid Cudi and — in a series of tweets that went too far even for Mr. West — insulting Wiz’s relationship and subsequent child with Amber Rose. Despite the uglier moments, the spat contained enough classic Kanye egomania to remain entertaining, including when he tweeted an emoji of his own wife’s face as a reaction photo and when he paused his own diatribe to pay reverence to Wiz’s great taste in pants, though he admitted he lacks the body type to pull them off: “Maybe I couldn’t be skinny and tall but I’ll settle for being the greatest artist of all time as a consolation.” For those deeply concerned about Kanye’s friendships, Kim Kardashian and Amber Rose made up over the weekend. Thank Yeezus. All is well. In moments like these, it is difficult to tell whether direct avenues to celebrities like Twitter have made them more accessible or have simply shown just how the wide the gap is between celebrity and normalcy. Whether these fights are for publicity or not, they’ll continue to be my favorite guilty pleasure.
Katie Cameron, an A&E Edi tor for the Voice, can be reached for comment at kcameron16@wooster.edu