(AllHipHop News) Harlem and the South Bronx are different kinds of places.
Chop cheese is a staple in the diet in those two boroughs. 125th and 1520 Sedgwick are like their Hollywood Walks of Fame.
And real street guys find lost boys and train them up like Peter Pan did … until one day they wake up as grown men.
It is then that they abandon the childish street lore, rules, and rhetoric that might have kept them in an urban Neverland. Never feeling safe. Never getting real money. And most importantly, never seeing the bigger picture.
Never squashing beef.
What’s beef?
Well, Biggie poetically encapsulated everything one needs to know:
“What’s beef? Beef is when you need two gats to go to sleep. Beef is when your moms ain’t safe up in the streets. Beef is when I see you guaranteed to be in ICU…Beef is when you make your enemies start your Jeep. Beef is when you roll no less than 30 deep. Beef is when I see you guaranteed to be in ICU.”
Grown men leave Neverland and walk in the lane of grand possibility.
But two of Hip-Hop’s greatest influencers, bosses produced by those streets and honor codes, have evolved over the last 15 years in front of our eyes — and have seen the bigger picture.
Continuing a decade-long feud is no longer of interest. Jim Jones and French Montana have called it a truce publicly.
Letting the cooling of flames happen on social media was a great example to their disciple-like fans that you can be about conflict resolution and not lose near one stripe.
In fact, after listening to them talk, they might even get a few bags. Check them out on an Instagram Live session.
The particulars of the beef are truly unnecessary.
But is important is that they now join the ranks of bosses like Fat Joe and 50 Cent, who had beef and flipped it.
Now, if we can only get Ja Rule and 50 Cent to bury the hatch (be it on Swizz Beatz and Timbaland’s Verzuz series or on their own time) all would be right in the world.
