Lupe Fiasco And GrandeMarshall Clash Over DJ Dahi Beat And Bologna

January 06, 2015

Yesterday, Lupe Fiasco dropped a new track from his forthcoming Tetsuo + Youth LP, "Adoration of the Magi," which featured a very jazzy beat from L.A. producer DJ Dahi—a beat that, as it turns out, isn't exactly new.

Above, you'll find streams of "Adoration of the Magi" and Philly rapper GrandeMarshall's "Ellie Fox," from his 2012 mixtape 800. "Ellie Fox" was also produced by DJ Dahi, and the corresponding beats for both songs are very similar—like, close to identical. This wasn't lost on GrandeMarshall:

Lupe didn't take kindly to the fried bologna tweet, and things escalated from there:

Lupe attempted to reach out personally and squash the conflict offline(-ish), but Grande wasn't having it:

Then, Lupe revealed that what really had him heated was the bologna joke (which, in case it wasn't apparent by now, doubled as a swipe at Lupe's commitment to his Muslim faith) before snuffing out the argument for now:

Dahi's management declined to comment to FADER on the spat, but Dahi himself took to Twitter last night post-fallout and issued his stance on the matter, once and for all:

UPDATE 1/6/14 4:14 p.m.: FADER reached out to GrandeMarshall with a few questions regarding the whole snafu:

Have you spoken with Dahi on what happened here? As far as what he explained to me it was something between his and Lupe's management. I respect the privacy of the conversation so I won't really go into detail. The beat was sent to me back in 2012 to a person closely involved with my music and we used it for 800, as far as what people tell me it was a pretty good song.

Has something like this happened to you before? Do you sense it's an issue that hip-hop deals with in general? It happened with another song on 800, "GODBPM." I'm not sure how that all went down and at this point I'm not stressing over it. I don't know of too many instances where this has happened to other people but I'm not losing sleep. It's older stuff I rapped on and my sound has grown since then. If sonically I'm beyond it then mentally I am as well.

Is there a silver lining to this situation? I really wasn't looking to gain anything from the get-go. I guess the bologna comment might've touched a nerve or whatever—it is what it is. Fans, people, whatever, they're tweeting that it sounds the same or the same sample, I clarified it's the same beat and moved on...I'm not sweating somebody rapping on a beat of mine from 3 years ago when I'm preparing to release music that's grown far more than what these guys are going with.

Lead photo: Chris Weeks/Getty Images

Lupe Fiasco And GrandeMarshall Clash Over DJ Dahi Beat And Bologna