There’s nothing we love more than a scandal. Throw in a celebrity feud here and there and we’ll be all over it like Velcro. 2019 has proven to be the year that celebrity beefs kicked into higher gear.
Take a look at our list below:
Taylor Swift and Scooter Braun
It all started with a Tumbr post from Taylor Swift: “Now Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy. Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.” Swift was retaliating after Braun acquired her old record label and her master recordings.
Things went from bad to worse. In a lengthy Instagram post, Braun said that his family had received “numerous death threats” in the wake of the dispute with Swift, including a phone call to his wife threatening the safety of their children.
The two seemed to have reached an amicable agreement after Big Machine announced that Swift was cleared to perform her old music at the 2019 AMAs.
AKA and Burna Boy
The battle lines are drawn and there seems to be no end to AKA and Burna Boy’s Twitter war. A string of public exchanges started with a series of tweets in September when Burna Boy urged black foreigner nationals living in South Africa to defend and protect themselves against xenophobic attacks.
Things got personal when Burna Boy told AKA to beef up his security in a now-deleted tweet.
Not taking things lying down, AKA told his nemesis to apologise. “Ek se … Burna Boy. All we want is an apology. We know SA is not perfect, but we took you in as our own before you reached these levels. You say you are an AFRICAN GIANT, prove it,” he wrote.
Eminem and Nick Cannon
Yes, you guessed right, the two reignited their feud due to their shared history of dating the same woman – Mariah Carey. Well, actually Cannon was married to Carey and they have two children together.
Call it sour grapes, but Eminem still deems it important to keep the feud alive which has given him lost of material for diss tracks lately. 2009’s “Bagpipes from Baghdad” dragged both Carey and Nick Cannon shortly after their wedding. Cannon responded on Tumblr, calling him a racist and promising “I’m taking full action on you Eminem.” Carey then followed with her own diss masterpiece “Obsessed”.
Thing calmed down for a while, until this year. Eminem used a verse on Fat Joe’s “Lord Above” to dig up old wounds, Paper reported. Cannon then retaliated with: “You’re old” and “Wanna fight?”
Chances are things are far from over between these two. Watch this space, come 2020.
Pearl Thusi and Mzansi Twitter
In June this year, things got ugly between Thusi and other local celebs, including Bonnie Mbuli, Gigi Lamayne, Boity, and DJ Zinhle, after they were involved in a heated exchange on colourism.
Things kicked off when a Twitter user wrote Sho Madjozi would not have been so successful if she was not a light-skinned black woman after Madjozi won the ‘Best New International Act’ award at the 2019 BET Awards.
One user responded with: replied: “This is true. If she were dark. No one wd entertain her talent which is not really there to begin with if u think about it. Js like my home girl Pearl Thusi = no talent.”
Thusi was less than impressed and hit back: “15 years of hard work I’ve put in means Jack s**t here. It’s incredible how your entire being can all come down to your skin colour. I dare them to say this about the likes of… Beyonce, Diana Ross, Angela Davis. As if there wasn’t an Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba.”
