Recently, Jim Jones sat down for a Roc Nation roundtable interview on Wednesday (June 28) and revealed how the legendary Tupac Shakur inspired Dipset. Moreover, Capo stated that the West Coast icon was instrumental in synthesizing rap beef as an effective promotional strategy for MCs. Still, it's an unfortunate thing to commend, as rap beef is supposedly why Tupac met the early fate he did. Regardless, when the Diplomats were blowing up on the East Coast and beyond, they took cues from his biggest points of success. Jones is by no means the first to remark this, but it just goes to show how influential Tupac's legacy is, for better or worse.
"The beef inside of hip-hop is not a mixtape thing,” Jim Jones remarked. “It’s a hip-hop thing. It’s a lot of n***as that got a lot of ego, puttin’ them in the same room, and s**t is bound to happen. But the mixtapes heightened a lot of situations, because now, it could be totally unfiltered. At that time in hip-hop, we was watching Tupac and all of them, and watching how successful they was gettin’ goin’ cr*zy on everybody. It was a whole era right there where this was a marketing tool that was working for major labels and artists at the time that had the upper hand."
Read More: Jim Jones Says Pusha T Diss Was “Cute”
Jim Jones' Remarks On Mixtapes & Beef
Of course, this rings especially true these days because the New York rapper started some beef of his own. For those unaware, he just launched a diss track against Pusha T, who had some subliminal bars for Jim Jones on an unreleased Clipse track previewed at Pharrell's Louis Vuitton show at Paris Fashion Week. The whole beef started when Jones dismissed Push's placement on Billboard's list of the 50 best rappers of all time. We're still in the early stages of that beef, as the Virginia native has yet to make an official diss record.
Meanwhile, for as many subliminals and sneaks disses Push could throw, it's impossible to determine a "winner" until we have two released tracks to compare. Not only that, but Jones also called it more of a rap battle of skill than it was actual beef. Either way, there's more conversation around him than there's been in a while, so clearly it worked. For more news and the latest updates on Jim Jones, stay logged into HNHH.