P. Diddy and Snoop Dogg at Wembley: A Preview

RATHER LIKE the Iran-Iraq war, or the Schleswig-Holstein Question, no one can quite remember the origins of the 1990s "rap wars". It was a rivalry between "The West Coast" (basically an L.A.-based label called Death Row, who made jazz-funk records with lots of violent swearing over the top) and "The East Coast" (basically Puff Daddy's New York-based label called Bad Boy, who sampled 1980s pop songs and put lots of violent swearing over the top) and it resulted in dozens of American rappers shooting each other, calling each names and dangling each other out of high-rise blocks.