MUSIC

Joyner Lucas and Logic Leave Their Beef Behind in New Video For "Isis"

The two lyricists put their differences aside and give the world the collaboration we've been waiting for.

Joyner Lucas is officially three-for-three with singles leading up to the release of his highly anticipated forthcoming album, ADHD.

First, he got fans hyped with the release of "I Love" in October of 2018. Then, nearly seven months later, he followed it up by criticizing God on the heavy-hitting "Devil's Work." Now, he's got a couple more tricks up his sleeve with the release of his latest video, "Isis."
The song came as a shock to those who follow hip hop closely. It features Logic, and the two emcees have periodically taken shots at one another over the last couple of years. The feud appears to be fully finished, though, and Logic briefly addresses it in his verse. He borrows and builds from Biggie when he spits, "What's beef? / Beef is brother's dyin' over shit that never mattered in the first place, lyin' in the street / What's peace? / Peace is when you leave it in the past, let it heal like a cast / When enough time pass, and you blast." Here, Logic is letting us know that he and Joyner decided to take the high road, letting bygones be bygones, nodding to Biggie (and, inadvertently, Pac) to explain why.
The song itself is everything you could hope for from the pairing of these two lyrically gifted emcees. Bar for bar, they both go hard, neither clearly outshining the other. They appear to be having a good time in the video as well – donning tactical army gear, waving around automatic weapons, and rapping on top of tanks on a military base somewhere in the Middle East.
At times, the video feels uncomfortably reductive, though, in how it seems to generalize and make light of a long and bloody history of American foreign policy blunders in the Middle East, as well as cash in on the vicious current of Islamophobia in the US. However, there is a major plot twist toward the latter half of the video that might spin these concerns into political commentary. You'll have to check it out and decide for yourself.

Check it out below, and keep an eye out for ADHD, which could drop any day now.