Royal Rumble
Where’s the hip-hop beef?
If there’s one common denominator among hip-hop’s stylistic and regional factions, it’s beef. Take the recent feud between 50 Cent and the Game, which began with death threats, peaked at a shooting outside New York’s Hot 97 radio station, and ended with a truce and charitable donations on both rappers’ parts. Rappers love da kids. We may scowl at the gunplay and bemoan that hip-hop has turned into the WWE, but secretly, we covet the diss tracks and argue with friends over who won. No fight is too petty and no retaliation is too strong for the hip-hop artist. But imagine how this combustible mix of short fuses, big egos and heavy artillery would play out in the world at-large. Here are a few possibilities:
SNOOP DOGG VS. PARIS HILTON
Encouraged by her recent collaboration with Snoop Dogg on the T-Mobile Sidekick commercials, Hilton text-messages the L.A. rapper looking for some weed. Unfortunately, the heiress misspells “weed” and instead asks Snoop where they could get “wed.” A confused and undoubtedly high Snoop angrily responds, “You dime bizzle best step off Snoop Dogg’s dizzle before I let off shizzles to your dome pizzle.” Not entirely sure what Snoop means, but confident that her reputation had once again been impugned, Paris dusts off her infamous video camera and threatens to “smash Snoop’s face and snort his ashes.” Her sister, Nicky, suggests that the two take it to Dr. Phil.
OPRAH VS. DR. PHIL
In the aftermath of the Hilton vs. Dogg mediation, Oprah claims in O magazine that it was in fact her idea for Dr. Phil to sit down with the pair. After the article was published, an undercover gossip columnist reports that the good doctor had remarked that “Oprah can suck my dick.” Dr. Phil initially denies making the comment. Clearly annoyed, Oprah next appears on Hot 97 and claims to regularly provide Dr. Phil with advice for his guests. His pride evidently bruised, Dr. Phil takes the stage at the annual Talk Show summit, SummerChat, with a golden goblet of Hennessy and a bloated, nude effigy of Oprah that he uses to simulate oral sex with before finally burning and discarding it. Though Oprah was not there that day, she fires back the following week during the Monday taping of her show. Intoxicated and violent, she passes out loaded Glock-9s to confused audience members and screams out, “O-life forever, my bitches!”
DICK CHENEY VS. HOWARD DEAN
Sensing that lonely housewives and the chronically unemployed had more time to pay attention to political matters following the cancellation of “Oprah” and “Dr. Phil,” DNC Chairman Howard Dean devises a strategy that would draw this new faction to his party. Dean, believing that he needed to soften his message a bit, asks R&B diva Mary J. Blige to provide a hook for his latest commercial on drilling for oil in Alaska. Feeling outmaneuvered, Vice President Dick Cheney (aka Da Beltway Blaster) and his crew (including Tom DeLay and Republican lapdog Zell Miller) appear on “Meet the Press.” Cheney provides host Tim Russert with doctored photos of Dean in a miniskirt and proclaims, “It’s my honest opinion that Democrats are nothing more than a bunch of batty boys.” Upon hearing the accusation, a livid Dean speeds to the studio with a gang of armed liberals. At that moment, Delay and Miller exit out the back entrance at the studio and Dean busts a cap in Miller’s ass.
It’s revealed years later in a lengthy exposé by New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh that the entire “beef” had been fabricated by both sides to distract people from the fact that both parties had squandered our national resources and our collective goodwill. Hersh uncovers a memo from Dr. Dre that detailed the plan and simply stated that the public “ain’t shit but ho’s and tricks.”