MI vs Vector; Did The Hip Hop Really Need This?

Ogunmefun Olanrewaju popularly known as Vector The Viper is a multilingual rapper with prowess in the art of hip-hop spitting the knuckle breaking punchlines weaved with the metaphorical play of words.

Sadly, Vector isn’t the most commercially successful rapper with only a few hits to his name, the biggest of which being “King Kong”, The Licious Crackitt produced number. Laced across his career is a handful controversies most especially about the rap game, with issues with Modenine, reminisce, Ycee and most paramount, the Mr Incredible, Jude Abaga M.i, the arguably most successful English rapper out of Nigeria commercially.

These two have been at loggerheads for the entirety of both their careers spanning over a 10 years period with subtle diss and shots at each other over the claim for the rap throne, despite this, never have we seen a 2019.

With several cyphers thrown around with direct jabs aimed at each other, tweets coming out against the other person and their camps. 2019 has been an amazing year for rap music, never has the hip-hop scene seen this much attention.

Kicking off the year was the “L.A.M.B.” Cypher in the first few weeks of the new year, the Cypher sponsored by cognac brand, “Martell” was a direct jab at Hennessy’s own Cypher that has been quite lacklustre in the last few years from chocolate city/100 crowns camp featuring Loose Kaynon, AQ, M.i and Blaqbonez with several shots taken at Vector that were left ‘unreplied’, a feat strange from the hot-headed viper. The arguably deepest shot being “…and that Other Cognac, this is how to spend your budget”, these words M.I ended the Martell Cypher with. Fast forward to August of this year, came the Hennessy Cypher that fell below par again, despite featuring former chocolate city’s act, Ice prince and throwing several subliminal messages to the chocolate city camp, the Cypher still was swept under the carpet.

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Xenophobia in South Africa was one of the downsides that came with the year 2019, the delicate issue threw the social media sphere into a frenzy especially with Aka’s somewhat insensitive tweets made after South Africa’s loss to Nigeria at the AFCON quarter-finals being dug up leading to the bashing of the South African rapper by Ycee, Burna Boy and several other Nigerian celebs. This led to M.i coming out to defend the image of the South African rapper, a move that led to the first direct jab from vector at MI; Game On.

Martell Cypher 2 tagged the purification from the same suspects from the previous one came and a lot of shots were thrown with Douglas Jekan, Payper Corleone, fresh l and most significantly vector being the butt of it all. On the release of the Cypher, vector’s name started trending instead on Twitter. Apparently the Cypher was the straw that broke the camel’s back, it was time for the viper to strike, this he did alongside Vader, a rapper affiliated to Hennessy and Payper Corleone. They titled it, “The Purge”.

With Vader choosing to address his beef with Blaqbonez and generally emphasize on how egoistic the lots at his camp appear to be. Payper threw a range of shots while Vector was personal destroying M.I, ripping every bit of the so-called chairman’s claim to the throne with jabs at his height, to his leadership and his music, vector didn’t hold back.

The biggest winner of the various beefs that have spun around the hip-hop scene this year is the hip-hop culture itself with more attention than ever before, more streams and revenue generated from rap music. Lives have been fixed up.

When two elephants are fighting, the grass suffers. The grass in this fight is the hip-hop culture, if this is what suffering looks like, may the game forever suffer. Amen?

Written by: Richard Egbeleke