Playboi Carti is one of the hottest rappers in the game.
But even rap stars get into problems and for the past few years,
Carti has been beefing with another Atlanta rapper named Ola Runt.
Here is a closer look at the beef between Carti’s Black Street Homixide gang
and Ola Runt’s Front Street Henchmen.
Playboi Carti is one of the most unique artists to blow up in the 2010’s.
His unusual delivery, fashion sense and mysterious persona
has helped him build a cult following and become one of the biggest names in hip hop.
That’s what helped him stay relevant in the rap game for more than five years
and continue to drop viral hits and influence trends.
Carti was born in Atlanta, but grew up in Fairburn, Georgia.
He always went against the grain and was determined to do his own thing.
In high school, he played on the basketball team, but never went to practice
and eventually quit after getting into it with the coach.
This is when he took rap serious.
He skipped school to make music and worked at a local H&M to make money.
After he graduated, he quit H&M to focus on his rap career full time.
He first dropped music under the name Sir Carti in 2011
and changed it to Playboi Carti two years later.
In 2014, he met the producer Ethereal from Awful Records who helped him develop his sound.
Eventually he decided to move to New York City to take his career to the next level.
He was living at his plugs house, which is how he met members of A$AP,
who used to come in and out of the spot.
A$AP Bari introduced Carti to Rocky, who took him under his wing.
That same year
Carti dropped tracks like Broke Boi and Fetti featuring Da$h and Maxo Kream.
This helped him gain a buzz on SoundCloud and start to build an audience.
He was featured on the track Telephone Calls from A$AP Mob’s Cozy Tapes in 2016
and signed to their label the same year.
He dropped his debut mixtape Playboi Carti in 2017,
which featured hit singles: Magnolia and Woke up like this featuring Lil Uzi Vert.
His mixtape was a huge success and took Carti’s career to another level.
He was featured on the 2017 XXL Freshman Class list
and went on tour with Dreezy and Gucci Mane.
Carti dropped his debut album Die Lit in May 2018, which peaked at number 3 on Billboard.
The album got a good respnse by critics and fans
and featured guest appearances from Skepta, Travis Scott, Lil Uzi Vert, Chief Keef, Nicki Minaj and more.
A few months after dropping the project, Carti announced his next album Whole Lotta Red.
The album’s title was a clear reference to Carti’s affiliation with the bloods,
specifically Back Street Homixide.
Carti never portrayed himself as a real street rapper and wasn’t from any gang growing up.
But coming up in Atlanta, he was affiliated with plenty of other rappers and friends who were.
Over the next few years,
Carti would get involved in a beef between Back Street Homixide and the Front Street Henchmen,
a gang tied to another rapper named Ola Runt.
Ola Runt is a rapper from Zone 6, the same hood as Gucci Mane.
Ola had a rough upbringing and was in and out of juvie as a teen.
At 16, he got hit with 5 years for armed robberies and breaking into cars.
While locked up, he started writing raps.
When he got out in 2018 at 21 years old
he decided to take his music to the next level.
He built a buzz in 2019 with the track Brazy Story,
which was a spinoff of the King Von track Crazy Story.
The same year he dropped the track Feel Like Guwop,
which was a tribute to his fellow Zone 6 mentor Gucci Mane.
The song got Gucci’s attention and he hopped on a remix of the song the following year.
Gucci tried to sign Ola to his 1017 roster.
But Ola was already signed to Cinematic Music Group,
after being noticed by an A&R from the label in January 2020.
Gucci tried to buy him out of his contract and even put him on the new 1017 roster.
But the deal fell through and Ola decided to stay with Cinematic.
He said he aint want to sign until the paperwork made sense
and that Gucci sent him a 1017 chain before even meeting him.
So he just went his own way.
Around this time, Ola got into a beef with another Atlanta legend named Big Bank,
which eventually lead to his problems with Carti.
Big Bank is well known in the Atlanta rap scene.
He is a rapper and the CEO of a record label called Duct Tape Entertainment or DTE
and has connections to stars in the city like Future and Young Thug.
He is also from Homixide gang and is close with Playboi Carti,
which is how Carti got wrapped up in the beef.
According to rumors, the beef started after Big Bank got mad at Ola’s pops
after the rapper signed to Cinematic Music Group instead of DTE.
Ola’s dad was an OG from Front Street Henchmen and was known around the city.
He was the one who encouraged his son to rap and set up a studio for him in their basement.
Big Bank says the beef started because Ola wanted a feature from him,
and he ain't want to do it.
But however it started, Ola dissed big Bank on the track Mobfather.
On the song he raps
“P**** n**** you ain't it
Heard you got big bank turned him to a lick
How the f*** you a dope boy if you ain't sold s***
Moved to the three got ran out the six, damn
These n***** they've been faking too long”
In the chorus of the song he also raps
“Snatch up your love and make the godfather gon' call the cops”.
Ola got arrested in the parking lot of Lennox Mall.
In a video of the arrest, the rapper can be heard calling Big Bank a rat
and claims that he snitched on him.
I tell you fool n***** Big Bank a rat
all of these n****** telling on me man
all y'all n***** are rats man keep my name out your mouth man
all y'all n***** rats
Big Bank is also known as the godfather of Atlanta,
so that bar is a shot at the DTE CEO.
Big Bank went on Instagram live and dissed both Ola and his dad,
claiming they were broke and showed old pictures of them together.
He also said that Ola’s pops once asked him to borrow his clothes
to go to his son’s graduation.
I guess this little n**** had a graduation or something
his dad want to wear my clothes
but he decided he wanted to go diss a n*****
look at these n***** both of em look
Ola responded with his own live
where he went at Big Bank and his artist Problem Child 5.
He claimed that he had Walmart Money on them,
and they were just mad because he was an independent CEO
who aint need a big homie telling him what to do.
In June 2020, a Homixide affiliate named Big Sosa was murdered.
Problem Child was with him that day and posted about his death on Instagram.
He also rapped about Sosa’s death on the song A Letter to Big Sosa,
where he talks about how the murder impacted his outlook on life.
It’s not clear who killed Sosa
but theres rumors that he was chipped over a dice game gone wrong.
But members of the Front Street Henchmen, including Ola Runt and his homie 24lefteye
got on social media to mock his death.
All the dissin eventually came back around
and him and 24lefteye got shot at several times for disrespecting Sosa.
He caught a couple rounds and was sent to the hospital,
but later recovered.
A Homixide affiliate, named Lil 1DTE
later took credit for the shooting in an IG live session with Problem Child.
So, the war was heating up and blood was being spilled on both sides.
Sosa’s death also had a major impact on Carti.
They were close friends and some sources say that they were even blood cousins.
So, when he dropped his highly anticipated second studio album
Whole Lotta Red in December 2020, he decided to take shots at Ola Runt
and the rest of the Front Street Henchmen to get payback.
On the song Stop Breathin, Carti raps
“Ever since my brother died
Ever since my brother died
I've been thinkin' 'bout homicide
I've been thinkin' 'bout homicide”
This bar is a direct reference to Big Sosa and his crew.
He then raps
“Free Lil Tip Free Migo Bliff
Free all my guys free problem child
I been with lil Demon and Lil Brino and R5”,
shouting out multiple Atlanta rappers from Homixide.
He also raps
“Riding in a tank on 285
on the way to front street
who say we ain’t outside
smokin on the henchmen got a n**** fried
I’m hanging with the pirus
hangin with the fives
I got mob ties I got f**** mob ties”
The 285 is a major highway in Georgia that goes through Atlanta.
So Carti is making his ties to the bloods well known
and also confirms his beef with the Front Street Henchmen.
He finishes off the diss by rapping
“I got n****s in chain gang on my side
I got n****s in chain gang on my side
I had the n****s shank Ola for a pie
I had the n****s shank Ola for a pie”.
So, it sounds like Carti is taking credit for having his boys stab Ola while he was in prison.
That’s a pretty bold claim to make, especially for one of the biggest rappers in the game.
But then again, they were taking shots at one of Carti’s dead homies.
This is the moment that the beef between Carti and Ola first got exposed to the public.
The Henchmen responded with diss tracks of their own.
A rapper from the Front Street Henchmen named Benji Blue Bills
dropped a Stop Breathin remix called Stop Bleedin (Carti Diss).
On the song he raps
“yo homie killed yo homie I guess you ain’t know”,
suggesting that Problem Child backdoored Sosa because he was with him that day.
He also raps
“You ain’t really tapped into these streets
so just cool out lil bro”,
warning Carti that there’s a lot more going on in the streets that he ain’t know about.
He also denies that Ola got shanked and says that Carti is all cap.
24lefteye also dropped a track called Whole Lotta Red,
where he takes shots at Carti and the rest of Homixide.
But, Homixide suffer another loss
after rapper R5 homixide allegedly committed suicide while in the studio.
R5 was close with Carti and even got a shout-out on Stop Breathin.
He was also close with Sosa and dropped a project called Everything for Sosa in 2021.
At the time of his death,
R5 had been making waves in the industry after dropping a video for his track Lion Heart,
which racked up hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube.
But it seems like the pressures and losses that come with the street life
eventually caught up to him.
The Henchmen gang would use this as a way to get back at their opps.
After R5’s passing,
24lefteye and Benji Blue Bills previewed a diss song called RedDot (R5 diss)
on IG Live, mocking the dead rapper.
Since then there ain’t been much activity on either side.
Ola Runt is still locked up fighting a gun case
after being arrested for possession of a weapon by a convicted felon.
While behind bars he dropped a project called America’s Most Wanted,
which had features from 24 LeftEye, Woo Da Savage, and even Lil Xan.
Meanwhile, Carti is still at the top of the rap game
and was featured on multiple songs on Kanye’s Donda album.
Hopefully, both rappers can put the past behind them and focus on their music careers.
Carti is too big an artist to be beefing over street politics
and Ola has too many pending cases to be going at it with a superstar.
But once blood has been spilled and dead homies have been dissed,
all bets are off.
So it might be only a matter of time before the war starts up again.