Within the heat of the last week, Joey Akan, a very active and impressionable figure in the African entertainment industry decided to describe his challenged stance as an inbetweener in the ongoing feud between his “bastion of support,” ODUMODUBLVCK and Blaqbonez, who he has “known forever.” In a lengthy X (fka Twitter) post, he preached about his ties with both rappers, contributions he has made to their craft and vice versa, and then concluded his post with a rather bathetic paragraph. To quote him: Also, my stance on beef has always been clear: absolute pacifist. Whether it’s Wizkid Vs Davido VS Burna Boy, Vector Vs M.I, Abuja Vs Lagos or any other line, I don’t support beef. Beef does nothing for the industry other than excite conflict enthusiasts, fracture space and weaponize art in a struggling market. It diminishes all of us.

Now as much as I am a fan of his Afrobeats Intelligence Substack-turned-podcast, I won’t say the same about this claim. I don’t know about you Joey, but I have never felt diminished by a music beef; they are my favourite unrecognized holidays!

However, considering the revelations that have surfaced in recent days, Blaqbonez and ODUMODUBLVCK’s case is different. It is one that I have previously described as a bank overflow in a previous piece, and not only have we seen felonious threats, but situations of overt misogyny, abuse, and quite maniacal behaviors. Let’s go back to where it all started.

On the dawn of February of 2025, an excerpt from an interview the rapper had on Adesope ‘Shopsydoo’ Olajide’s podcast went viral. In the clip, ODUMODUBLVCK hails his debut album EZIOKWU as the “rap Monalisa,” claiming that a compilation of every rapper’s hit song in the industry wouldn’t still top the work he produced on EZIOKWU.

We all love confident creators, but nobody was going to let that slide. As music fans polemicized online, popular rapper, battle rapper, and singer, Blaqbonez, quoted the visualizer of his track, “Consistency” featuring British rapper, AJ Tracey, saying: “THIS IS CONSISTENCY, say it for those in the back, for the ignorant, it burnsss!”.  Many fans believed this was a sneak response to ODUMODUBLVCK, who also criticized rappers for hiding behind the idea of consistency, rather than making genuinely good and acceptable tracks.

The heat simmered down until April, when ODUMODUBLVCK flashed his middle finger at Blaqbonez and his crew while performing “LEGOLAS” at the Headies Award show. Before that, he had released a snippet of “PUSSY NIGGAZ,” which was probably the first diss track in the mix, but ODUMODUBLVCK did not directly mention any names. On his mixtape, THE MACHINE IS COMING, the rapper also had a long list of belligerent lines, but associating every bar with Blaqbonez would be a stretch, considering how combative and martial ODUMODUBLVCK delivers his verses.  

In response to all of this, Blaqbonez proceeded to land the first significant blow by releasing “Who’s Really Rapping” with A-Q. On this track, it wasn’t Blaqbonez versus ODUMODU, it was Blaqbonez vs. the rap industry’s passivity. But it is still important to mention that he took some direct shots at ODUMODUBLVCK, talking about how he’s more of an attention seeker than an artist, and should “act his age.” But again, those shots were sneaky.

This sparked a lot of discourse on social media, and ODUMODUBLVCK couldn’t keep his Twitter fingers to himself. But all of the talk remained rap-supremacy related, until Blaqbonez made a post highlighting that his life was being threatened. It became clear that whatever feud he and ODUMODUBLVCK had had transcended music. In a series of exchanged posts, ODUMODUBLVCK declined his opponents offer to get into a diss battle, further clarifying that it was more than just rap: “You want to make it about studio. Na lie. We go meet again for street. You know the level. This is not a rap beef. Na me and you for this world.”

It didn’t take time for online theorists to pop out, with an infamous rumor of a love triangle sparking all of the ruckus. However, A-Q posted, “It’s funny how one verse can fxxk up the game…” on X. Was this unsolicited damage control or oblivion of what was really at hand from the former Chocolate City signee? Well, it remains a part of the story we might never find out.

Consistency, 2025 pic.twitter.com/VSlQnMUBW3

— EVERLASTING TAKER (@BlaqBonez) January 1, 2025

By June, things escalated again. In another interview — this time with EDK of Jusmen Radio — ODUMODUBLVCK called Blaqbonez out directly. He argued that Blaqbonez could not be the best rapper in Nigeria, not only because there were other names superior to his, but that he wasn’t nominated for the Best Rap Single category at the Headies awards, which ODUMODU had won earlier (remember the middle-finger flash earlier?). 

The months that followed were about both rappers promoting their then-upcoming albums, which reconceptualized the purpose and motives of their beef. On ODUMODUBLVCK’s INDUSTRY MACHINE, he had shots spread across the tracks on, even taking a direct one at A-Q “UNAWARE” with Pa Salieu, for his close affiliations with Blaqbonez and being on the earlier “Who’s Really Rapping.” But none of them was as important as his “2:02 IN LONDON” freestyle which he released before the album. On this track, ODUMODUBLVCK is at his most intimidating, and the verse “If you like gym, ODUMO go pull up with him pin/ burst your muscle, burst your bubble/ If you try carry Coti come / I go pause their hustle” immediately went viral on social media. Now, pay attention to these lines, because only five days after INDUSTRY MACHINE’s release, Blaqbonez’s twelfth studio project; No Excuses, came with a proper diss track: “ACL.”

On “ACL,” Blaqbonez pulled the most formidable move in any contest; he came with proof. He went at ODUMODUBLVCK’s ‘Anti World Gangsters’ rap collective, calling them irrelevant bar his presence, mocked his so-called “machine” as faulty, and threw a sly reverse jab, telling him to “stick to melodies.”We could write an entire piece dissecting Blaqbonez’s lyrics on “ACL.” The internet frenzied after the diss track’s release, but when the visualizer released, the conversation turned uncomfortable.

On Blaqbonez’s second verse,  a roll of text appears,resembling the end credits of a movie, but in reality, those texts were from the flood of harassing texts Blaqbonez had received from ODUMODUBLVCK, dating back to several months.  In the texts, ODUMODU threatens violence and obsessively tracks Blaqbonez’s moves both on and off the music scene, which in my opinion is far from the point of music beefs. It’s competition, and even though the origins of their feud remain murky, seeing clips of ODUMODUBLVCK and some members of his AWG physically and verbally attacking Morin Oluwatobi, Blaqbonez’s manager, is far from what we want.

Overall, the diss tracks we have seen from both rappers have been quite entertaining, but they represent only a small fraction of the real dispute. Do I think it should go on? Absolutely not. Because, it is very apparent that either both parties are hiding personal conflict behind the curtain of the rap competition, or don’t just know where the boundaries of the rap beefs should end. Music beefs do not diminish us, it’s the inability to know when to stop that does.