Barely a week into 2017, the year’s first celebrity feud has arrived.
A decade ago, Chris Brown and Soulja Boy were just two young rappers climbing the charts, Soulja with his breakout hit Crank Dat and Brown with With You and Kiss Kiss. Ten years later, with a handful of celebrity feuds under each of their belts, the two singer/rappers are taking aim at one another.
Starting with a string of social media insults, Chris Brown and Soulja Boy’s war of the words inspired champion boxer Floyd Mayweather to organize a pay-per-view match against the two artists, supposedly scheduled for March.
Here’s how the feud devolved.
Soulja likes Karrueche’s pic
Is anyone surprised that this started on Instagram? According to a string of NSFW tweets, Brown saw that Soulja liked a post of his ex, Karrueche Tran, and called him with some fighting words.
“The difference between me and Chris is I shot a (expletive) before. And he hit a woman before. We not the same,” he wrote in one inflammatory tweet.
Breezy picks a fight
Surprising no one, Brown was serious about that fight. His boxer friend Adrien Broner posted a string of Instagrams of Brown challenging his opponent to a celebrity boxing match, claiming Soulja is “continuously calling him on Facetime” and asking Broner to “set up the gym.”
Karrueche and Chris trade words
Naturally, things devolved between Karrueche and her rapper ex in dueling Instagram posts, also NSFW.
“I been chillen...working...eating my veggies...hitting these squats and minding my own business and that’s exactly how I want to keep it,” she wrote in the since-deleted, very relatable text post.
Brown was less forgiving in his all-caps missive against his ex, where he claimed he’s responsible for her success and the reason she has friends, some of whom he slept with. Nice.
All the while, the two rappers continued posting NSFW clips and tweets threatening each other, with Soulja bringing Brown’s daughter Royalty into the mix. "Happy New Year! Royalty is 2 and has 5 times more money than Soulja Boy already. I'd be mad too,” he wrote in one post.
Soulja gets robbed?
Well, that took a turn. Soulja offered to meet Brown in Compton for a street fight, and he made good on his word, going live on Instagram from the streets with a group of guys surrounding him, challenging him to come fight.
Things escalated when one of the group members pushed Soulja, with another one picking up his phone. Did he get robbed? Was it staged? Will this ever end?
Soulja’s mom and Brown’s lawyer get involved
Fast forward to Wednesday, when Soulja appeared to back down from his claims, posting a video apologizing for his erratic behavior and claiming he just received news his mom was in the hospital.
If that wasn’t enough of a wake-up call, Brown’s attorney, Mark Geragos, also got involved, threatening to file a lawsuit against Soulja.
"I'm not sure who you are but please confirm to the world that you will accept the defamation lawsuit I will file against you,” he wrote on Twitter.
I'm not sure who you are but please confirm to the world that you will accept the defamation lawsuit I will file against you. #teambreezy https://t.co/BzsnK9v0Lu
— Mark Geragos (@markgeragos) January 4, 2017
Floyd Mayweather enters the ring.
Not so fast. Soulja had a change of heart about his apology, calling on his friend Mayweather to train him to challenge Brown in "the biggest fight of the century."
Mayweather and Soulja both posted a flyer for the event.
Brown is seemingly on board, sharing his own graphic of his Photoshopped torso standing over his opponent in the ring.
The match may be for charity — but there's nothing charitable about this beef stretching two more months.
