Year Of The Katt
One particularly combative and prophetic voice has haunted us throughout 2024 – that of the actor, comedian, and street philosopher Micah “Katt” Williams. In ways large and small, the diminutive Hollywood veteran set the tone. His Club Shay Shay session with Shannon Sharpe was an unofficial run for HNIC (with trickster Charleston White being the only other contender). Katt set the year’s agenda: namely, to light this bi**h up. The nearly three-hour podcast was a perfect storm of virality: comedy, conspiracy, and searing insult, leaving the internet in tatters. Not only did he line up his opps and indict them for fraud, he also predicted the downfall of the celebrity caste writ large.
The incisiveness and precision with which he carved up his competition are unmatched. After painting various comedians as a cabal of mediocrity he started to take them down one by one. Of Rickey Smiley, he said, “I refused to work with him unless he’s in a dress. Him and Tyler Perry can’t play a man to save their lives.” Of Cedric the Entertainer, he said, “He over here looking like a walrus. He has four comedy specials that are not available on Netflix or Tubi. Of Steve Harvey: There are 30,000 scripts in Hollywood, not one of them asks for a country bumpkin that can’t talk good — ‘obekaybe’.” He dismissed all “fat Faizon liars.” He called Kevin Hart a plant. To say he caught all these folk off guard would be an understatement. Even compared to his best stand-up, this sit-down may be his best work, his piece de résistance because Katt has always been funnier when he’s being serious.
We’ve been feeling the reverberations ever since. All throughout the Melanated Matrix, the echoes of Katt-isms and Katt’s prophecies could be heard. It’s been a year of lyrical combat, truth-telling, black media ascendancy, and celebrities getting their comeupance. To paraphrase Katt on one of his first specials, “ever in the history of ni**adom” has a podcast impacted the culture so deeply. Let us count the ways.
Strategic Warfare
The first to catch the wave were the Jamaicans. A lyrical war bruk out between Jada Kingdom a.k.a. Twinkle and Stefflon Don, both former paramours of afro-fusion king Burna Boy — who was somehow the issue and not the issue. The battle captured the imagination of the dancehall crowd on both sides of the Atlantic pitting the Tight Pumpum Crew against the Stush Diaspora. After Stefflon opened the battle with accusations of prostitution, Jada returned fire by cussing Steff’s entire family out and questioning Steff’s authenticity. Not long after that battle died down, all hell broke loose among the DJs and producers on the island, with Teejay of “Drift” fame and Valiant exchanging verbal fire, as well as a number of DJs and producers like Rvssian, taking to social media in a kind of battle royale. All of it was a much-needed jolt of energy as the genre of dancehall faces the threat of afrobeats occupying more and more cultural real estate among the global massive. In a Katt-like move, veteran Buju Banton, as a guest on the Drink Champs podcast, minced no words when he challenged afrobeats artists to address political and social issues in their songs.
Hiss Fit
The next conflict to pop off was the perpetual femcee proxy war between the Barbs and Bardi. This time it centered around Cardi-adjacent hottie, Megan Thee Stallion, still taking a victory lap after emerging from the Tory Lanez trial bruised but unbothered. Taking a page outta Katt’s book, she releases “Hiss”, a spray of invectives to all who had something slick to say including her ex Pardi, DaBaby, DJ Akademiks, and Drake:
All these lil’ rap ni**as be so fraud
Xanax be they hardest bars
These ni**as hate on BBLs
And be walking around with the same scars
Cosplay gangsters, fake ass accents
Posted in another ni**a hood like a bad bi**h
These bars would come back to haunt Drake in ways few could predict. She was the first to mention Drake’s cosmetic surgery but wouldn’t be the last. When she took aim at Nicki Minaj and her husband’s and brother’s sex offender status (These hoes don’t be mad at Megan/these hoes mad at Megan’s law) she provided another reminder of a Katt Williams prophecy. It’s up for all deviants. Nicki’s convoluted response, “Big Foot”, was underwhelming for all outside the most dedicated Barbs, another prelude to a year of Cash Money Ls.
Not long after the Megan-Nicki skirmish, Ice Spice and Latto sent light-skinned missives at each other. After fans accused Latto of stealing Ice’s 2K style and Ice’s image appeared in a Latto video, Ice addressed it on her next record. In her opening bars, Ice explained to Latto that even though she may consider herself the defecation, she is not even the flatulence. (Shakespeare could never.) In a highly biracial move, Latto rolled up to the Bronx with a convoy of Sedans. Was this gangster? Not sure. Performative? Most definitely. Little did either know, this was the beginning of a downturn in the Twerk Economy.
Prelude To A Diss
Katt had cats truthtelling left and right. One example was Yasiin Bey fka Mos Def was cornered into a viral moment when the host of The Cutting Room Floor podcast asked him if Drake was Hip-Hop. “He’s Pop,” he said, then compared listening to Drake’s music to shopping in a fancy mall (“Look at all these products! Look at all these SKUs!”). Aubrey’s angels didn’t take too kindly to that. Online outrage followed. What Drake’s defenders didn’t take into account is that Yasiin came up when Hip-Hop was still an insurgency. It challenged the mainstream and resisted its own popularity until around say, Puff Daddy. Yasiin would later apologize. “Excuse my Brooklyn,” the veteran MC offered.
Is You LIke That?
Katt made confronting your opps great again. The subs in the Drake and J. Cole video for last year’s “First Person Shooter” set the Kung Fu lyricist Kendrick Lamar off. Drake and Cole claim G.O.A.T status with Drake ending the video with a virtual MJ HIStory statue of himself towering over Toronto. To say Drake was feeling himself would be an understatement. Drake also decided to call Metro Boomin’ out on a live for being a “Tweet and Deleter” after Metro complained about Drake’s Grammy nomination. Drake thanked his fans and then looked at the camera. (“You disgust me, fam.”) In response, Metro then gathered a number of Drake Haters and released We Don’t Trust You with Future. On the standout track “Like That,” Kendrick emerged to throw down the gauntlet. In a few scant lines, Dot lyrically muscled Cole and Drake off their self-made pedestal (“F**k the Big Three/It’s just Big Me”).
J Cole Ducks the Smoke
On the appropriately titled Might Delete Later, J. Cole responds to Kendrick with “7 Minute Drill”, a half-hearted critique of Kendrick’s catalog. But in a move that shook the rap world to its foundation, he mounted the stage at Dreamville Fest, and Mr. Feature Assassin himself apologized to Kendrick and bowed out of the burgeoning lyrical war. Some fans never forgive him, while others commend his maturity and his foresight. Was this his version of Quiet Quitting? He later returned to his meticulous rapping ways on “Port Antonio” after the dust settled between the other Big Three contenders – even claiming that he would have won but he would have “lost a bro.”
Drake Goes In
Drake roars a response with another opp line-up, “Push Ups.” He attacks Kendrick’s shoe size, reminds Future who helped make his hits, and saves his best line for Metro Boomin’: “Shut ya hoes a** up and make some drums, ni**a.” That one connects. Memes quickly followed, including a Spanish language version. He also paints himself as the Thanos in this battle, calling out all of the various rappers and producers attacking him all at once. What is this? A 20v1, ni**a?
Officer Ricky Draws First Blood
Never one to miss an opportunity, Rick Ross jumps into the beef with “Champagne Moments.” Although he feels like a sideshow, his attacks on Drake draw the first real blood in the Great Rap War of ’24. He calls Drake “white boy” with the cover art to match, reminds everyone Drake has ghostwriters, takes Megan’s “Hiss” bar, and turns it into a nickname: BBL Drizzy.
AI Tupac Enters The Chat
In the weeks-long wait between “Push Ups” and Kendrick’s response, Drake released “Taylor Made Freestyle,” with the intent to add to the mounting pressure on Kendrick to respond in a timely manner. Using AI voice masks to sound Kendrick’s hero, Tupac, he moans, “Kendrick we need ya/The West Coast Savior.” This stirs debate about the use of AI in Hip-Hop, with some taking it as a violation. Like Katt, Kendrick made strategic plans and kept every receipt.
R&B Tupac Enters The Chat
“Winners are not allowed to let losers rewrite history.” — Katt Williams
In an already simmering conflict over women, Chris Brown’s crash out and disrespect toward Quavo reached Tupac levels leaving more than a few fans to wonder if the best diss record during the Great Rap War was going to be by a “singing ni**a.” Breezy kept it simple and vicious in “Weakest Link,” claimed he had Saweetie while Quavo was with her, and namechecked Takeoff as the only respected Migos: “Crazy how when he died, we all wished it was you instead.” Quavo responds by putting Takeoff on the hook of “Over Hoes & Bi**hes.” Even the dead couldn’t escape this season of mess.
PowerPoint Venom
“In 30 years all I’ve collected is information, knowledge, and your secrets.” — Katt Williams
After weeks in the kitchen, Kendrick drops “Euphoria,” a meticulously constructed, quantum-level, point-by-point dissection of not just Drake, the man and the brand, but the entire phenomenon of kabuki Blackness. Opening with a Teddy Pendergrass sample and treating him like a combo of the Harvey Weinstein and the Rachel Dolezal of rap, Kendrick delineated, revoking Drake’s membership. This not just me /This is how the culture feelin’. He ends it by suggesting Drake not use the N-word. Like Katt, Kendrick kept receipts and deployed them most strategically.
Keeping it extra crispy. Kendrick drops a timestamp track, “6:16 in LA,” doubling down on the quantum Blackness with an Al Green sample. All these soul music samples taste like poison or the choking smoke from a barbecue in hell. The numerology of 6/16 became the Internet’s newest obsession with people speculating that it references everything everywhere all at once: bible quotes, Pac’s birthday, Father’s Day. Kendrick’s mastery of the algorithm can no longer be questioned.
Crushed The Van Only To Get Crushed
Drake presses the so-called “red button,” the audiovisual release entitled “Family Matters.” The video features Drake in a celebratory mood, rocking all his famous jewelry while the same model van from the cover of Kendrick’s Good Kid, Mad City gets taken to a junkyard and demolished. On two sinister beat switches and tightly packed flow, he alleges Kendrick is a wife beater and a cuck and makes witty swipes at Rick Ross and Metro. Kendrick drops “Meet The Grahams” 50 minutes later, snuffing any momentum the Drake track might have had. The demonic beat on “Meet the Grahams” and blatant disrespect of all that is holy takes up all the air in the room.
Da Bomb
“I’ll Gaza Strip it, leave it in rubble, and I’ll still be bombing.” — Katt Williams
Kendrick dropped “Not Like Us” a day later, a nuclear hit reprising all the Katt Williams themes. Dot uses Drake’s own “Back to Back” tactic from his beef with Meek and makes the entire hook about dividing the culture from the corruption. He paints Drake as a perverse sham and colonizer. Reneging Drake’s claims on L.A., he releases a diss for Crip and Blood walk to. With Mustard on the beat, Kendrick does a finishing move. He defends Serena, the ghost of Pac, Oakland, and all things West Coast. He packs the song with earworms that embed themselves deep into the grooves of our frontal cortex and reload themselves at the most unsuspecting times. What is it the braids? The song sweeps the country and the globe. Both babies and old folk love it.
Last Reel
Drake drops “The Heart Part 6” a final attempt to protect his brand against the worst of K. Dot’s assaults. It is defensive and almost acknowledges his loss. The king of hooks, timestamps, and melodious raps, minus his hitmaker aura and reference tracks, is found…lacking. No one seems more surprised than Drake himself.
BBL Drizzy
“BBL Drizzy” is the cultural reset we were not expecting. We didn’t see a crowd-sourced diss-trumental with an AI sample coming. As instructed, Metro indeed went and made some drums and it’s a bop! It inspires rappers and instrumentalists across the world, short films, and animated Drake characters with eyelashes, painted nails, and asssss. Many of the folks who cried inauthenticity and necromancy when Drake used AI to mimic Pac and Snoop on “Taylormade Freestyle” catch amnesia when it comes to the sped-up AI sample that gives “BBL Drizzy” its faux soul. It becomes the soundtrack to the epilogue memes where J. Cole happily rides his bike on a boardwalk, and Kendrick sits upon the Iron Throne.
Kendrick’s Goonteenth
Petty levels were on one thousand trillion as Kenny put the finishing touches on his absolute drubbing of the Boy from Toronto. His Pop Out with friends in the LA Forum in Inglewood was a historic display of rootsy LA banger culture coming right off of his speech at Compton College and other confirmation of his status as “West Coast Savior” – the very label Drake tried to mock him with through AI Tupac vocals. It is the crescendo in this year of the Katt-inspired warfare: taking out the opps while keeping it all the way Blackity Black. Another masterpiece that left the internet in tatters.
Rise Of The Black Podcast
Katt elevated Black media when he chose Shannon’s podcast to slay his enemies. Shannon followed up the greatest interview in podcast history with more folk who court controversy, hoping to become the home of the Black viral moment. First up was MoNique, who revisited her issues with Oprah and Tyler Perry. Then came the original Black Karen, Amanda Seales. Shay Shay even lets Gary Owens talk crazy in his face regarding Black women. Katt Williams, they are not. Even VP Kamala Harris, in an attempt to counter Trump’s Joe Rogan interview, visited Shannon right before the election. In a suspect moment, Shannon later turns his new clout into a viral moment by “accidentally” having sex on Instagram Live. He was hawking sex pills days later.
For the new wave of Black media, the post-Katt Williams moment leading to the Great Rap War became a coronation of the new aristocracy. Kai Cenat, Noreaga, DJ Akademiks, Cam and Mase, and Joe Budden. Hip-Hop’s premiere sportscasters became must-stream TV. As the diss tracks dropped, people ran to these pods and streamers to get the latest updates. Even lesser-known reaction channels saw their numbers start to pop. In a true Black Jesus gesture, Kendrick released the copyright to his records allowing the legion of content creators covering the beef to monetize. Some bags have run in the six figures.
The Death Of Celebrity
“All these big d**k deviants is all catching hell in 2024. It’s up for all of ’em. It don’t matter if you Diddy or TD Jakes.” — Katt Williams
The Cassie Blueprint
Katt told us this was a year of reckoning. Cassie Ventura’s impact on the culture — a starlet with only one hit and a popular haircut — might be bigger than your favorite icon. When the details of her civil suit were made public, Sean Combs quickly settled. He seemed to dodge a bullet, even having the audacity to celebrate publicly. But she laid the blueprint for what was to come. The floodgates opened. Over the next few months, hundreds of accusers came forward. New suits alleging everything from sexual assault, gang rape, trafficking, predatory practices, drugging and violent behavior. This led to FBI raids on his Miami and Los Angeles homes, in which two of his sons ended up in handcuffs.
The Diddy Tape
“You can be Kang the Conqueror, and they can take your Rabbit a** down in two weeks.” — Katt Williams
Two days after King Combs releases a diss record aimed at 50 Cent and the Feds, hotel footage of Diddy brutalizing Cassie leaks to CNN. The world is horrified. His difficult-to-take-seriously apology is quickly turned into a meme. Rolling Stone does a major investigation. The damage to his brand is irreparable. Months later, he is arrested in New York and refused bail as hundreds of victims file suit alleging everything from rape to trafficking. The mogul found himself in jail indefinitely, with the court refusing him bail.
The Exposers
Katt wasn’t the only one who predicted this. Gossip queen Tasha K and fire starters like Jaguar Wright, Orlando Brown, and Charleston White see their social numbers explode. Wright got so big on social media even Piers Morgan invited her to libel Jay Z and Beyonce on his platform. He would quickly apologize once he heard from their lawyer, an indication of their strategy going forward. Go after the platforms not the people talking greasy.
Fame Costs
In this new environment, nobody famous was safe. Drake got the business at The Forum. (Imagine 18,000 fans yelling “we hear you like ‘em young”). In the aftermath of the battle, Drake has been relegated to broody passive aggressive Instagram posts, mean-mugging Demar Derozan from the sidelines and searching for an actual hit. The disassembling of Drake was a harbinger of further destruction. Kim Kardashian got jeered at the Tom Brady Roast hosted by Kevin Hart – his first major sighting since Katt caught him slipping, Jennifer Lopez gets cooked in the TIktok comments and had to cancel shows from lack of interest. Her tearful appeal for Kamala’s campaign fell flat, as did all the celebrity endorsements.
The Met Gala’s theme “The Garden of Time,” based on a short story about aristocrats who try to stop time to keep an angry mob from destroying their garden, was a little to on the nose. There were literal protests outside the Gala. Instagram chick Hayley Baylee decided it would be cute to dress up as Maria Antoinette, TikTok “ let them eat cake” and she immediately loses millions of followers. DJ Khaled and other stars silent on Palestine became the target of block parties, losing followers by the millions.
Post-slap Will Smith is an outlier, proving he still has the box office touch. Bad Boys 4: Ride or Die with a palpably slower, thicker Martin Lawrence (*collective squint) nears $300 million globally.
The New Age
After more than a year of courtroom shenanigans, the YSL trial finally ends. Young Thug pleads out and is given 15 years probation and exiled from Atlanta. Lil’ Durk is arrested on murder-for-hire charges. After a parole violation, 6ix9ine ends up in the same Brooklyn Detention Center as Diddy, Sam Bankman Fried, and El Chapo. They are calling it Arkham Asylum.
Kendrick released more hyperblack meta-text on GNX. Drake sues Universal Music Group and Spotify.
The Prophet Returns
At GQ’s “Man of the Year” event, Katt was asked to prophesize 2025. “I believe we are entering the golden age. It is what it is,” he said. “Right after the age of Truth, the revealing is the scab being pulled off and the healing can begin.”
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Rob Marriott is the Chief Creative Officer at the XR Group and has covered the culture from multiple platforms and media, including Complex, Rolling Stone, Okay Africa, New York Mag, and at his substack, XR presents The Doomberg Report.
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