Lil Yachty Has Beef With Sean Paul: “F**k Sean Paul”

American rapper Lil Yachty did not hold back when the subject of Dancehall superstar Sean Paul came up during the inaugural episode of his podcast dubbed ‘A Safe Place.’

The episode, co-hosted by MitchGoneMad, was focused on artists who have seemingly “fallen off” or lost their musical allure.

“There be certain ni–as that shouldn’t even fall off. Like, uh, who’s that one ni–a…” said Mitch, before he began singing the lyrics to Sean Paul‘s 2002 hit Gimme The Light. “Why that ni–a fall off? And Shaggy.”

Lil Yachty retorted: “Nobody ever said Sean Paul fell off. They just stopped making music.”

“…By the way, f–k Sean Paul. I want to make that very clear. I don’t f–k with Sean Paul. Sean Paul once dissed me in a radio interview,” he added.

Mitch sided with Yachty, interjecting, “Man, f–k him. He did make some hot shit though.”

Yachty’s verbal attack on Paul was a response to the latter’s 2016 interview with The Breakfast Club, where Paul rebuked Yachty for his lack of respect and knowledge of old-school Hip-Hop. The interview came after Yachty confessed to Billboard that he could not name five songs by the Notorious B.I.G. or Tupac.

In the interview, Paul had said, “If it was really about talent in the Hip Hop industry, you wouldn’t have some of these younger cats talking like that…the Lil Yachty dem. The boat boy!”

He continued, “I mean, I don’t know much of the dude’s music either. I don’t like his comments. Those are artists I revere. I understand that probably kids don’t care about writing right now. I understand they don’t know where hip-hop started.”

Some Instagram users challenged Lil Yachty’s claim in the comments. They argued that the Jamaican star has retained his momentum over the years, and the statistics are there to prove it.

“Sean Paul has 34 million monthly listeners on Spotify. He will forever be relevant,” one user said.

“Ni**a Sean Paul have had international hits the last couple of years no fell off and still touring, yall capping,” another said.

“Sean Paul is 10x a better artist,” said one more user. 

In 2016, Paul collaborated with Dua Lipa on No Lie, which has since become one of the biggest songs of his career, garnering 1.1 billion views on YouTube and nearly as many on Spotify. The track is currently 2X Platinum in the UK.

Further collaborations in 2016 included Cheap Thrills with Sia (8X US Platinum/5X UK Platinum), and Rockabye with Clean Bandit and Anne-Marie (3X US Platinum/4X UK Platinum).

In 2022, Sean Paul led as the Caribbean’s largest Spotify earner, according to CertifiedStreams.com. Moreover, he was the most streamed Jamaican artist globally on YouTube that year.

And contrary to Lil Yachty’s comments, he has not “stopped making music”.

Paul’s last two albums, Live N Livin (2021) and Scorcha (2022), were nominated back-to-back for the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album.