Part of my mission here at DCRB is to keep help you map the constantly changing landscape of rap music: the players, the trends, and the current state of things. Today, I'd like to bring you up to speed on feuds, which play a vital role in the ongoing saga that is hip hop. Here's a helpful recap for those of you who may not have a folder in their Google Reader dedicated to the comings and goings of rappers.

50 Cent vs. Kanye West
Wait a second, is it 2007 again? Didn't we already do this one when these two guys went head-to-head to see who would sell the most albums last September? You're right, that did happen, and there was a Rolling Stone cover with both of them facing off, and an uncomfortable face-to-face encounter at the MTV Video Music Awards—awkward because Kanye West is a good five inches shorter than 50 Cent, and 50 Cent did say he would retire if Kanye West outsold him, and they both have albums coming out this fourth quarter, so it's time to get it all going again.

The opening shots for this second round of beefing were fired by 50 Cent at a concert last week (video below) as he hyped the crowd for what he announced as his new single, before proceeding to lip synch West's new single "Love Lockdown," subjecting the track and Kaney's recent performance of it to brutal mockery. West shot back late last night on his blog by guaranteeing that, "this will be 50's favorite album of mine. This will be gangster's album of the year."

Resolution: Still ongoing. There will probably be smaller barbs fired back and forth for the next month or so, with the attacks ramping up in November in n anticipation of the albums' December release. However, with "Love Lockdown" hitting #1 on iTunes in less than a day, the story will probably be the same as last year.

T.I. vs. Shawty Lo
Who is Shawty Lo? Great question! No one's really sure. Seriously, his Wikipedia entry is two lines long and only lists the five Ozone Awards (huh?) he won this past year—so he's got that going for him. T.I., on the other hand, is a rapper whose last two records debuted at #1, the former being Atlantic Records' best selling album of the previous 15 years. You probably know him as the rapper featured on Justin Timberlake's megahit "My Love." Oh, he was also the guy who was arrested for having a lot (A LOT) of guns and placed under house arrest after posting a $3 million bond.

This particular feud started when Shawty Lo came out of nowhere to question T.I.'s legitimacy in Bankhead, the Atlanta neighborhood both rappers call home. The blogs, for some inexplicable reason, started to write about the story, and Shawty Lo called upon the internet to get him T.I.'s high school yearbook picture to prove the more talented rapper's lack of roots or credibility in Bankhead.

Resolution: The "feud" went on for almost half a year before T.I. finally addressed the issue by filming a music video for his new song "What's Up What's Haapnin'" in Bankhead. Hearing that the video was set to release, and that it featured T.I. sitting in a lawnchair waiting for Shawty Lo to come find him, Shawty Lo put out a video last week to say that the beef was no more and that he was "just kidding" or something. I still don't know who Shawty Lo is.

Funk Master Flex vs. R. Kelly
As reported earlier this week, crazy R. Kelly conducted a crazy interview on BET where, amongst other nonsense, he said that he had "some 19-year-old friends," so in that sense he didn't NOT like teenagers.

Upon hearing snippets of the interview, Hot 97 DJ and MTV personality Funk Master Flex went off on R. Kelly in a YouTube video:

Resolution: Flex doesn't look great, like he seems like he needs to rest up and not make YouTube vids shot so close to his face, but he, who actually has daughters himself, makes a very legitimate point that R. Kelly should probably stop talking, especially when it implicates him as someone who hangs out with teenage girls.

So there's some recent beefs in the hip-hop world! Congratulations on being more well versed in rap minutiae than you were just moments ago!