There are a lot of problems going on in the music industry lately. But an old, re-occurring problem plaguing the industry is the ongoing feud between rappers on the East and West coasts of the United States. This war in the rap world has left many people dead, fights to be started and talents to be laid to rest. In the early '90s, when rap was starting to become popular, the East/West war wasn't a major issue yet but it was slowly becoming more and more obvious that there was a conflict between rappers. Part of the reason that the war started was that West Coast rap dominated and nobody questioned their supremacy. Ice Cube, Ice T, Dr. Dre and Eazy E were the rappers of the moment. The war slowly worsened when East Coast rappers began to get more publicity. West Coast rappers were upset that they weren't 100% in the spotlight so they started to slam East rappers in their music proclaiming that East Coast rap was fake and couldn't top the West Coast. Then, East Coast rappers fired back obscenities at West Coast rappers and it kept up like that until someone decided that the other coast had gone too far. When Sean "Puffy" Combs started Bad Boy Entertainment in New York, for the first time ever, East Coast sales surpassed West Coast rap sales. Suddenly, as if out of nowhere came the peak of the West/East feud. Smaller gangs in cities took the example of the "big playas" and followed what they said. Before, local gangs killed for affiliation whether you were a Blood or a Crip. Now, gangs were killing for West and East. In some cities it was so bad that you could be killed for living on the wrong side of the neighborhood. .
The war went on for awhile and started getting worse. The epicenter of the war was between Death Row Records in the West and versus Bad Boy in the East. There were also some personal feuds however. West rapper Tupac Shakur had a personal problem with East rap mogul The Notorious B.