Joey Badass ignited a West Coast rap battle earlier this year with "The Ruler's Back," which seemed to respond to the recent success of Kendrick Lamar. As it turns out, amid his battle with Ray Vaughn and others, he might just have gotten Top Dawg on the phone to make a TDE offshoot.
As caught by Complex, the Brooklyn rapper took to Twitter on Friday (May 16) to post what appears to be an alleged trademark for a new LLC and purported record label called "TDEast." "It's too bad, n***a, you should have been signed to me / Somebody tell Top we about to start TDEast," he rapped on his recent Vaughn diss "The Finals."
What's more is that the filing receipt shows two names who filed this: Jo-Vaughn Virginie (the real name of Joey Bada$$) and Anthony Tiffith (the real name of Top Dawg, TDE's founder and CEO). The New York Department of State's Division of Corporations website does show this entity to exist as of May 16. However, it does not indicate who filed it.
As such, take all of this with a grain of salt. It might just be an elaborate troll amid Joey Badass' beef with Ray Vaughn, and we can't know for sure if Top Dawg is actually a part of it. For what it's worth, TDE's Punch seemed to respond by saying "Slow down kid… lol" on Twitter shortly after Joey posted the receipt.
Joey Badass The Finals
Taking all of that into account, we doubt this is anything beyond a social media troll. Of course, the bar hits harder than the supposedly and surprisingly easy process of trademarking an LLC.
But Joey Badass has more challengers, as an eerie series of posts from Daylyt might indicate a response coming soon. He is another West Coast MC who responded to "The Ruler's Back," and whom the Pro Era lyricist has shot at afterwards.
Will we actually see "TDEast" in New York City? We don't think so for now, but anything is possible. We will just see where this rap feud goes next and what bars these artists bring to the table. Who will drop the next diss?
