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30 for 30: The 30 Best Joey Bada$$ Verses

todayJanuary 20, 2025

30 for 30: The 30 Best Joey Bada$$ Verses
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30 for 30: The 30 Best Joey Bada$$ Verses



Toward the very end of the blog era, New York was looking for its next “rapper’s rapper” champion, and Joey Bada$$ emerged as its fiercest — and youngest — contender. Blessed with rare verbal kinesthesia and the spirit of an old Wu-Tang Clan talisman, the then-17-year-old materialized as a nearly complete product, with 1999 crystallizing his status as a young micro icon. Today, he turns 30, and things have changed, but the quality of the bars have not.

When he’s not appearing in movies or TV shows, Joey shows off the skills that helped make him a young legend. A tidy constellation of nimble flows and twitchy rhyme schemes, albums like B4.Da.$ , All-Amerikkkan Bada$$ , and 2000 being vessels for syntactic acrobatics and understated wordplay. With the ability to be as precise as he is unwieldy, Joey has remained one of the strongest technical spitters of his era. He doesn’t drop often, but he hits when he does. To celebrate his birthday, it’s time to take a look at which bars hit the hardest.

Today, Okayplayer takes a look at Joey Bada$$’s 30 best verses. Check it out for yourself below.

1. “Waves” (Verse 2)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

Accompanied by Freddie Joachim’s luscious beat (seriously, arguably one of the best rap beats of the 2010s), Joey’s raps on “Waves” are essentially his proper introduction to the rap game — and it’s an electric one. Here, he flaunts breathless flows with languid ease as he paints a tale of relentless ambition. Fittingly, “Waves” was proof that Joey would soon be making his own. —Charles Elliott

2. “Snakes” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

Like his best1999 stanzas, “Snakes” verse 1 is as agile as it is meditative, with Joey flipping through lucid thoughts with acrobatic finesse. The alliteration here only accentuates the casually profound nature of his observations: “These ain’t fair races, they just let the fear erase us/Adopted by the slums, son of guns this is how they raised us.” – Peter A. Berry

3. “Survival Tactics” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

If you like layered wordplay, “Survival Tactics” is probably one of your favorite Joey verses. This one’s an exercise in homonyms. “I’m a martian with an army of Spartans” sounds like “I’m marchin’ with an army of Spartans.” “Sparring with a knife in a missile fight” which could also be “Spawning with a knife in a missile fight.” It could be either an ancient Spartan dominating a fight with modern weapons, or a space battle with Spartans from the Halo universe, spawning into a multiplayer game with rocket launchers. Just extremely impressive stuff for anyone — let alone a 17-year-old.- Patrick Smith

4. “Killuminati Pt 2” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

Kendrick’s “Control” verse didn’t mention Joey, but that didn’t stop him from responding and refuting Kendrick’s claim to the title of “King of NY.” It’s a toss up, but we like Verse 1 the best. In it, Joey has more homonym fun as he shifts between double meanings while bouncing between different pockets of the beat. – Patrick Smith

5. “Hardknock” (Verse 3)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

For this one, Joey uses dense imagism and tightly wound rhyme schemes to interlock childhood innocence with blockboy trauma. Shifting through memories, he tightropes faded optimism and the truths he’s learned from a cold world: “Kids don’t play, they’ll erase your head in a race for the bread/Children on the corners slingin’ some regs, poppin’ some meds.” – Peter A. Berry

6. “#LongLiveSteelo” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

Saying goodbye to old friends never gets easier, especially when they’re dead. It’s a battle Joey’s fought often since the death of his friend Capital STEEZ, and he takes us to the frontline in “#LongLiveSteelo” verse 1. Here, he makes us feel the weight of the struggle with lucid reminiscences and questions he’ll never get answers to.—Peter A. Berry

7. “‘95 Til Infinity” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

“‘95 Til Infinity” verse 1 is peak Joey. It’sgot a dense rhyme schemes, wordplay, metaphors and homonyms–it’s packed. He starts with a staccato acapella to icapture your attention. He brags about his rap prowess and comfortably finds the pocket as the beat returns, and even though the sound of the track is laidback, Joey’s lyrics are aggressive. This verse is one of the many reasons Joey gets compared to the boom bap titas of yesteryear. – Patrick Smith

8. “Suspect” (Verse 10)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

For his 1999 closing track, Joey uses the last verse to lean into his NY rap roots. On a song that quotes Nas, he starts his verse with an allusion to another Illmatic track (“Life’s A Bitch”) and matches an acrobatic flow to a beat that’s as stylish as it is preternaturally calm. He caps the affair with the strongest, most emblematic line on the whole track: “See God made three Bigs, two Pacs, but he only made one error, The Era.” – Patrick Smith

9. “The Ruler’s Back” (Verse 2)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

Sometimes subtlety is overrated, and in Joey’s second verse, he makes his message very clear: The West Coast is getting way too much shine right now. For a track that references both Jay-Z and Nas’ famous diss tracks, Joey brings the aggression and word play he’s known for. The energy in this verse, and the track as a whole, is encapsulated in the line “This that black Air Force energy comin’ out your speaker.” If you’re going to send a clear shot to the rap game, you better be prepared to back it up. – Patrick Smith

10. “King to a God” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

The beat barely has enough time to build before Joey hits the track with his sprightly assault. He rapidly fires internal and end rhymes to overwhelm the listener before casually settling into the beat with shapeshifting rhyme patterns. Before his verse is done, he’s moved to more slant rhymes to continue boasting about his rap skills. This is Joey doing his best “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” He even says it himself, “I move indubitably and put these words together so beautifully.” – Patrick Smith

11. “PE Cypher” (Verse 11)

– YouTubeyoutu.be

Joey’s homage to Biggie’s “Kick in the Door” is gritty and relentless. While Biggie glided over the beat, Joey almost growls, doubling down on the aggressive nature of his verse. His lyrics range from playful metaphors to straight up boasts, and while his rhyme scheme isn’t too complicated, his pace gives the verse all the energy it needs. At only 18, he confidently raps over a classic Biggie song, welcoming the comparisons and scrutiny at a time when New York’s boom-bap spirit was severely lacking. – Patrick Smith

12. “Babylon” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

As visceral as it is skillful, “Babylon” verse 1 is a thoughtful rumination on police brutality. While he can be mournful here, his fluttering intonations feel like a call to action. It’s technically precise, but his vocal performance is the most potent element — the kind of delivery that can only come from someone who’s genuinely exasperated (or just really good at rapping). – Peter A. Berry

13. “America” (Verse 4)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

Before truly putting the world on notice, a pre-1999 Joey served up a standout guest verse on Mac Miller’s Macadelic mixtape. His diction is as crisp as his flow as smooth. His ability to pile intricate rhymes is clear from the jump. Only a phenom can generate these bars at the age of 17: “Now everybody love him and chicks offer top for fame/To the top I aim, testin’ waters, so I’ve been afloat/No deal but flow so real, he been in the scopes” in a verse that announces your upcoming solo debut. He was literally still in high school writing rhymes like this. – Patrick Smith

14. “Word is Bond” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

As the first single from Summer Knights, “Word is Bond” served as a reminder of Joey’s snappy wordplay, while signaling his ever-evolving lyricism and delivery. The verbal imagination is as impressive as his syntactical precision: “Tetrahedrons, take a dose of Patron / With knowledge juice and deuce Cubes of Metatron.” Related: “Hit him in his Charles Dickens and strip him for his Scottie Pippens” is as fire then as it is now – Charles Elliott

15. “Paper Trail$” (Verse 2)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

It’s really the second verse where “Paper Trail$” shines, with Joey rapping on the ills of money and flipping Wu-Tang Clan’s classic “C.R.E.A.M.” manifesto into a critique on being avaricious: “‘Cause cash ruined everythin’ around me.” It’s a necessary commentary, with Joey ultimately speaking to the damned if you, damned if you don’t relationship many of us are forced to have with money. – Charles Elliott

16 .“Let it Breathe” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

“I came in this at 17 and gave the game a weddin’ ring,” Joey declares toward the end of his first verse on “Let it Breathe.” The final lines he offers in that verse are a culmination of his rise and just how well of a rapper he’s grown into since then. As he states in those last rhymes before hitting the song’s break: “Go against the God, you could never win.”—Charles Elliott

17. “Survivors Guilt” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

In a tribute to his cousin, Junior B, as well as the late Capital STEEZ, Joey offers some incredibly vulnerable raps dedicated to these people who are no longer with him. The first verse for Steez is particularly gutwrenching, with Joey sharing his guilt at not being able to help him, and even claiming that some people blamed him for STEEZ’s death. “Lyrically couldn’t top him, he was the ni**a with the belt,” Joey declares of the late rapper. – Charles Elliott

18. “Christ Conscious” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think “Christ Conscious” verse 1 was an audition for the Wu-Tang Clan. If it were, Joey would’ve easily made the cut. For this one, Joey leans heavy into the exaggerated theatrics as he piles syllables atop syllables and inventive boasts, channeling the spirit of the best ’90s rhyme-slingers before him. – Peter A. Berry

19. “My Yout” (Verse 2)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

An ode to Joey’s Jamaican heritage, the beat is very light-hearted, but Joey is still packing his verses with lyrical density. In the second verse, he’s hitting on multiple levels, with multiple rhymes schemes, homonyms, slant rhymes and more. He’s in a flow state, like the star in a kung-fu movie, just surgically hitting your pressure points and then calmly walking away while you lay on the floor. – Patrick Smith

20. “Amethyst Rockstar” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

It’s the energy and hunger in Joey’s delivery here that leaves an impression. It’s equal parts funny and enthralling, as if he’s channeling the animated eccentricity of a young Busta Rhymes when he rhymes, “Suck a dick dilated, tell my old hoes / Hit my main bitch in the Poconos.” – Charles Elliott

21. “Wendy n Becky” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

This is a great example of Joey’s dexterity. He’s able to change his cadence and rhyme structure mid verse. He starts to use internal rhymes in his bars and slows his cadence to mimic a conversation, all while using his trademark homonyms. And while it’s not a verse that you’ll think of as an all-time rap classic, you risk underestimating it because Joey makes it look so easy. – Patrick Smith

22. “Distance” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

Some of the most innovative and fundamentally sharp wordsmiths can have trouble letting loose, especially when they’re featured on a song that is meant to be more playful than lyrically dense. But Joey finds his pocket on the song, embedding quippy bars with melody and flyguy grace. It all feels like he’s taking you on a joyride, even if he’s not flaunting his typically elaborate rap pyrotechnics. Joey’s known for doing a lot with a lot, but for this one, he proves he can do a lot with a little, too. – Patrick Smith

23. “Unorthodox” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

With its double-stitched rhyme schemes and some succinct reflection, Joey evokes classic rap traditions with a verse that defies the song title. It’s all as raw as it is skillful — a perfect microcosm of apex boom bap.—Peter A. Berry

24. “Zipcodes” (Verse 2)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

Joey taps into his celebratory fly guy mode as he dives in and out of pockets with the controlled ease of a Shai Gilgeous-Alexander crossover. The quotables abound here, but what impresses more than any couple bars is the precision that ties them together.—Peter A. Berry

25. “Legendary” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

It’s hard to match J. Cole on wax, but Joey did exactly that on “Legendary,” where he uses vivid couplets to paint a mosaic of hope, aspiration, and desolation. It’s all succinct and thoughtful, but again, it’s threaded by Joey’s rarefied agility, evidence of a skillset that’s legendary.—Peter A. Berry

26. “Gotham Fucking City” (Verse 2)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

Combining casual rhyme schemes with a comic book artist’s imagination and a beat that sounds exactly like the song title, this one embodies perfectly classic Joey; succinct, athletic and verbose in the best way possible.—Peter A. Berry

27. “Head High” (Verse 2)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

Joey goes full story mode in the second verse on “Head High,” recalling how he first met XXXTENTACION and developed a close bond with him. It’s as raw and personal as we’ve ever seen Joey, who keeps his personal life closely tucked. You can hear the pain as he reminisces about losing X, and how he’d reminded him of Capital Steez. Joey originally released the first verse as a loose track after the passing of Juice WRLD and Pop Smoke, and eventually finished the song on his album 2000. – Patrick Smith

28. “Sup Preme” (Verse 2)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

“Sup Preme” verse 2 proves both Joey’s writing skills and penchant for theatrics. Here, he alters his tempo to play with the beat. It’s not one of his more complicated verses, it’s mostly about how he doesn’t need to work, he can just roll up and spit some bars to make money. And yet, his piercing diction and energetic flow provide an engrossing contrast to the mellow soundscape — evidence of his prodigious control behind the mic. – Patrick Smith

29. “Daemons” (Verse 2)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

For this posthumous XXXTENTACION track, Joey delivers a verse that’s brooding, dark and guarded. It’s a rare, truly introspective verse from Joey, so it’s all even more striking than usual. It’s an exercise in bleakness — this track is meant to exorcise his demons, not make us feel any better. “I see demons, and there’s nothin’ they don’t know about me/No matter how much I try to hide, they gon’ find me,” he spits, with his dreary intonations underscoring that inevitability. – Patrick Smith

30. “Land of the Free” (Verse 1)

– YouTubewww.youtube.com

Joey has never been afraid to address politics and analyze current events in his rhymes, and his album ALL-AMERICAN BADA$$ is proof. For this one, he directs a heaping dose of distrust against America. The second single of his sophomore album, Joey didn’t hold back, calling for mass political consciousness in the wake of Barack Obama leaving office and Donald Trump becoming president. While Joey doesn’t get too elaborate here, he makes sure to speak from his heart and let his audience know exactly where he stands on an important political issue. In an age of indifference, Joey reminded us to feel. – Patrick Smith



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