Hip-hop MC Wale.The Canadian Press
It's beef time again, and we're not talking horsemeat.
In one corner, Wale – hip-hop MC, member of Rick Ross's Maybach Music Group, avowed Seinfeld fan (he first attracted notice for his The Mixtape About Nothing, a clever album themed around the series). In the other, Toronto Raptors announcer Matt Devlin.
The basketball commentator noticed newly minted Raps star Rudy Gay making the "call me" hand gesture at the rapper, who was attending the Raptors-Washington Wizards match in his native D.C., wrongly interpreted it as a dis and talked some light-to-moderate trash about Wale, referring to him as a "local rapper," and taunting, "He's no Drake, that's for sure."
Devlin didn't know whom he was messing with. Wale's second album, 2011's Ambition, sold almost half a million copies, but to hip-hop heads he is more famous for being a fight-picker extraordinaire. Wale has skirmished with fellow MCs, model Rosa Acosta and even Osama bin Laden's alleged mistress, so Devlin shouldn't have been surprised when the rapper immediately tweeted "watch your mouth" at him, then stood next to the broadcast booth and yelled a lot.
Mercifully, the situation was defused faster than you can say Metta World Peace, and the Devlin and Wale camps pronounced it all a big misunderstanding.
This beef has been tenderized.