"Say My Name" Subliminal Rap Disses. Clever or Coward?

Dissing in hip-hop has always been a long traditional and rite of passage. No matter who you are, your status as the top emcee or femcee, you are likely to get dissed. If you are considered to be a top emcee you are more than likely to get dissed by someone on the come up who wants to make a name for themselves. Personally I see nothing wrong with that. I mean back in the day when you freestyled on the block, if you were nice, you weren't considered the best unless you went up against the best freestyler on the block.

Now the block has become the entire country, and even the entire world. In the words of the late great NOTORIOUS B.I.G "Whoever thought hip-hop would take it this far?" So with that being said, it's not uncommon for a relatively unknown rapper to come in the game and diss an established artist. 50 cent dropped "How to Rob" and he name dropped alot people in game, hell he even went after Brian Mcknight. Now what the hell would Mr. Back at one do to 50.

Okay let me get to the point. In the histroy of hip-hop rap disses. rappers have chose sometimes to say the name of the person their spitting lyrical venom at, and some choose not to. For example, Tupac said in his classic "Hit'em Up" record, "Biggie Smalls & Jr. Mafia some mark a$$ B!%ches". You have Nas's "Ether", Jay-Z's "Takeover" and more recently Common diss to Drake on "Stay Schemin" remix.

In today's hip-hop enviornmemnt, the disses are still coming, but they require a little imgaination. For example, when Drake disses Common he doesn't really say his name, when Nicki dissed Kim she never said her name, However to be fair Kim never said Nicki name either, but when you make an entire mixtape based of an artist album, with the artist decapited we kind of get the picture.

If you notice most of these artist I mentioned who says names came up in the 90's era of hip-hop and the latter came in in the new millenium. This kind of tells me its a generational thing. But does it matter, does it make you a weaker or stronger person by saying the name of the person your dissing? Is that to easy? Or is it clever to diss someone indirectly and we have to guess who it's about? Both are fine with me, I love a good battle, as long as it stays on wax. What do you think?