Earlier this week, Red Bull released the latest episode of its Spiral Freestyle series featuring Ab-Soul, Big Sean, and Joey Badass. The episode has since gone viral for Joey’s competitive verse, which picked up the threads laid down by his spicy early 2025 singles, “The Ruler’s Back” and “Sorry Not Sorry.”

The combative energy did not go unrecognized or unchallenged. When “The Ruler’s Back” dropped, Top Dawg Entertainment rapper Ray Vaughn responded a fiery follow-up to his battle rap track, “Crashout Heritage.” Once again, Vaughn responded to Joey this week with “Hoe Era,” a witty, wordplay infused diss track playing on the name of Joey’s old band Pro Era.

Vaughn recently released his own debut project on the label, The Good The Bad The Dollar Menu, so the timing couldn’t be much better for his name to be going viral — hopefully, all the attention he gets from “Hoe Era” will translate into spins for his excellent debut, because he’s certainly worked to earn them.

“Standing next to Soul ain’t gonna save you,” Ray jabs in his verse, nodding to the fact that Ab-Soul also participated in some friendly back-and-forth with Joey during their Spiral freestyle. It looks like the Long Beach native wants to compete, and even his own teammates won’t stand in the way of the fade.

You can listen to “Hoe Era” above.