Ranking Every Track in January’s Dancehall Clashes: From Stefflon Don & Jada Kingdom to Teejay & Valiant

For his sequel to “Chapter 1” — and his final entry in this clash — Teejay moves away from the “Drumline” riddim, but still gravitates toward one stacked with similar marching band-esque percussion. In all honesty, Teejay v. Valiant wasn’t nearly as entertaining as Steff vs. Jada, but at least this clash gave Teejay a chance to show off his raw skills — especially considering a whole new audience encountered him through “Drift,” an Afrobeats-tinged track that is worlds away from the more traditional dancehall of his clash tracks.

“Since a hero yuh wah fi be me a guh murda you an yuh family/ Stop call up big woman name inna song likkle bwoy, wid dat yuh wah war, Chippy,” he proclaims in the track’s opening lines. Good to address the general concept of Valiant’s last diss track at the onset, but to never truly reclaim your given name and instead choose to stay behind your nickname… that’s certainly a stumble! At the very least, “Chapter 1” smartly continues the cinematic through-line of its predecessor, thanks to Teejay’s interpolation of the “Children, gather around, no retreat, no surrender” battle cry from 300.

Best Line: “Yuh boss neva tell yuh, how Chippy dem stay, nuh diss a bad man from bay / Cyah bad me up a game yuh deh play, yuh ah big Mickey, Mac never buss a AK”

When it comes playing with concepts, Jada had the edge in her clash with Stefflon Don. Riffing on the Biblical story of Lazarus, Jada’s “Steff Lazarus” is a blistering response to an opponent she had presumed dead after the first round. “Yuh must name Steff Lazarus/ Rise from di dead ah give chat how dis possible/ Who put yuh inna di mid field/ Wen dem know seh yuh cyah tackle/ Weh yuh know bout war?/ P—y, come mek mi gather yuh,” she opens her first verse.

The instrumental commences with a sung interpolation of Steam’s eternal 1969 Hot 100-topper “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.” Jada then dives headfirst into a rapid-fire verse in which she employs a gruffer tone to complement her gobsmacking allegations of incest and borderline prostitution: “You are di only gyal weh me hear give free fuck/ Masicka & Tory Lanez cum inna yuh mouth/ Drake nevеr gi yuh di song but yuh give him a good suck,” she spits.

Where “Steff Lazarus” fails is that Jada relies too much on the shock value of her disses and not enough on the intricacy of her word play, let alone the redundancy of her flow. In fact, most of the disses rely on homophobia and the celebrity status of men not involved in the clash — which makes for a diss that actually doesn’t do that much damage to Steff at the end of the day.

Best Line: “Stop post fi di gram yuh look fool like/ Meet mi pon di battlefield you and di botch body dawg too badmind/ Mi can defend mi self, weh yuh feel like?”

For his first response to Teejay, Valiant also took on the “Drumline” riddim. He puts up a good fight, bringing up Teejay’s deceased homies, flipping several “Drift” allusions to try knocking the breakout star down a few pegs, and employs a flow reminiscent of both Vybz and Mavado. Of course, he does all this on a song with a title that’s a feminine play on Teejay’s real name: Timoy v. Timoya. Certainly good enough to warrant a second round.

Best Line: “A wah do batty bwoy Timoya, we nuh ‘fraid fi fire/ Catch yuh face pon a p—y have a picture/ Yuh coulda drift a likkle more but mi rich ah yuh”

Here, we have the track that started it all. Over Rvssian’s “Dutty Money” riddim, Stefflon comes in hot, firing eye-popping shots at Jada. “Yuh too begg-beggy, yuh no have ambition/ Yuh a sеll out yuh body, but a hype pon eh ‘gram/ And dat a just dat,” she spits. Her tone — which floats between nonchalance and cutting disgust — plays on the booming bass and horn accents that anchor the riddim.

Steff goes relatively easy on Twinkle here, but she still crafts a song that’s genuinely enjoyable outside of the context of the clash. The DJ Mustard-esque “heys” in the background threaten to render the track a throwaway, but Steff pulls through; she got some good licks in while maintaining the vibe.

Best Line: “Tight, tight p—y gyal nuh fight over man/ But you a get wrong bang if you play wid di Don/ Back road gyal a neva you me a chat, if di cap fit yuh fi wear it/ Dat a dat”

As a response, to “London Bed,” “#DeadGyalWalking” comes up a bit short, but it’s still a fine showing. Here, Steff begins to get as vulgar and shock value-minded as Jada, albeit with a better grasp on her flow and wordplay. “Unu feel seh me afraid, yuh ah run up an ah talk bout pedophile/ And yuh mek a 17 yr old breed yuh/ And yuh did ah try f—k mi batty boy cousin/ How much p—y yuh suck bout a dozen/ Yuh madda shoulda swallow that sperm,” she snarls.

It’s nice to see Steff getting her hands dirty after Jada demarcated just how low this clash could go. The real star of this response, however, is the expected-but-still-lethal interpolation of the “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” melody to taunt Ms. Twinkle herself.

Best Line: “How yuh neva inna blog fi yuh music/ Only time yuh inna ah blog is when yuh suck d—k/ Oh you send fi di Don and you no have hits/ Di man tell me say your love drink piss”

In the case of Teejay v. Valiant, the “Drift” emcee threw the first (musical) shot. Reaching back to 2007 to spit over Black Chiney’s “Drumline Riddim,” Teejay pairs the beat’s foreboding horns and militant snares with a mixture of direct jabs at Valiant and some stray shots at former sparring partner Byron Messia. “A long time me a buy gun/ Di aguh mek bygone be bygones/ Nuh bwoy gaah dis me and get weh / Afta me nuh big idiot like Byron,” he spits.

Lyrically, Teejay gave Valiant a real fight. Just take the through-line of film allusions, for example. “Tell dem chippy, dem a action movie p—y dem/ A comedy show like Jackie chan,” he raps, before later spitting, “Me will trail yuh car me g like/ Scarface, but me ago blast up everyman inna dat.” Not to mention, Teejay gets extra points for not only reviving such a pristine riddim, but also for pulling inspiration from collaborator Vybz Kartel’s take on it.

Best Line: “Me nuh use strength like Samson/ 4-4 magnum buss it like Charles’ grandson/ Raise up di f—g Tom Thompson/ Outta dis world bwoy, delete, life cancel”

For his final entry in his clash with Teejay, Valiant smartly picks up where his opponent stumbled. Just as he effectively made Teejay’s given name into an insult on “Timoya,” Valiant does the same to the emcee’s nickname by re-christening him as “Lippy.”

Over the same riddim as “Chapter 2,” Valiant delivers a blazing defense in which he employs an immediately arrestling flow accented with smartly placed growls and snarls to emphasize his most abrasive lines. “Step inna di war wid bloodclaat facts/ Di don from south gi yuh couple hard box/ Logiks f—k batty yuh no talk bout dat/ Celine tell Jaii say yuh tongue rougher than c—k,” he spits. Valiant has a real knack for flipping innocent pieces of information into some of the foulest jabs, and that’s what makes “Lippy” such a heater. Anything can be a target if you try hard enough, and Valiant effortlessly proves that across both rapid-fire verses.

Best Line: “Uptown, express yuh self Timoya / Me wah yuh fi tell whole Jamaica/ Yuh life fuck d—s it boosts yuh nature/ And di house you a post di loan nuh pay for”

Let’s be real, Jada smoked Steff here. She came in hot, slid across the track with astonishing ease, and got some wicked lashes in — and she did it all while flipping the very song that most of this clash can be traced back to. The opening notes of “Talibans” have already become a rallying cry for dancehall devotees around the world, but when Jada’s siren-esque voice uttered those opening “duh duh” vocalizations, the track morphed into a new beast.

Of course, before Jada launches into her verse, she clips Burna’s “Birkin” lyric — which you’ll remember from the third verse of his “Talibans” remix — and lets out a sinister chuckle as soon as the snippet ends. It’s that kind of personality that immediately makes Jada’s disses the most entertaining of the bunch. In the chorus, she spits, “Yuh coward like p—, yuh nuh bad from nuh way/ A likkle chump change, put a price pon yuh head/ You have a pedophile bredda and a dead dat fi dead.”

Serving as her first response to Steff, Jada definitely rose to the occasion. Her voice — which accents its honeyed quality with a healthy dose of rasp — is the vehicle through which she exquisitely delivers the most jaw-dropping barbs in a seemingly innocuous way, making for a slam dunk of a response.

Best Line: “And yuh need fi stop pimp out di likkle gyal/ Yuh too f—g careless fi a big woman/ Yuh muss a run a whorehouse up a London/ No likkle b—h cyaan press mi, dat a one”

And here it is: the track that put an end to the Jada Kingdom v. Stefflon Don clash. From Kayzee’s brooding production and Steff’s sinister delivery to the versatility of the flow and her concise takedowns of Jada’s outlandish accusations, this is a verifiably great clash track.

Simply through her intonation, Steff means business. She beefs up the bass in her voice, securing a throaty foundation for delivery that shifts from commanding bellows to catty whispers at the drop of a dime. Kayzee’s production is steady — but once those drums kick in during the last half of the track, they expertly ratchet up the song’s overall sense of urgency to complement the gruff sincerity of Steff’s voice.

Nonetheless, perhaps the funniest part of “#DeadGyalTalking” is the chat session that closes the song, with Steff and her goons mocking Jada, quipping “Oh my God! I’m so scared, Jada! I’m so scared! and “I took an extra day because, you know, some people got… things to do.”

Best Line: “How yuh fi try diss Don Madda/ 16 shots sen it up inna yuh bladdеr/ An mi bring my son, never kill my son/ My p—y bring life lifе, your p—y bring none”