Before your today’s rappers’ trigger fingers became Twitter fingers, emcees would air out their grievances in the booth. Tupac’s 1996 track “Hit’ Em Up” has reentered the music conversation, thanks to a hilarious viral reenactment video on TikTok. But rapper-turned-mogul Ice Cube wants it to be known that he recorded the best diss song of all time.
During an interview with the Earn Your Leisure podcast, the “Today Was A Good Day” rapper listed his top five hip-hop diss tracks. Atop this list was his 1991 song, “No Vaseline.”
“I mean, I would go with, you know, ‘Hit ‘Em Up’ is a good one,” he said. “‘Ether’ is dope. I would go with ‘The Bridge Is Over,’ and I don’t know, I think I gotta go with ‘Let’s Go,’” replied the entertainer paying homage to the tracks released by 2Pac, Nas, Boogie Down Productions, and Kool Moe Dee.
Cube’s track, fueled by his anger for his former N.W.A. groupmates, appeared on his sophomore album, Death Certificate.
The musician has spoken at length about the song, even telling The Breakfast Club in 2021, “[N.W.A] came with another couple of little disses. So I said, ‘Okay, man, I’m tired of this. I’m going to end this real quick. We gon’ set it all the way off.’ So that’s when I wrote ‘No Vaseline’ and recorded it. I put it on that ‘Cinderfella’ track, that Dana Dane track… we flipped it, and it became a smash.”
When reflecting on whether or not he thought the song was the cause behind the group’s final separation, he remarked, “And I didn’t know that at the time they were already fragmented, breaking up anyway. So, that just — I guess knocked them down like bowling pins.”
Watch the full interview above.