As Jay-Z got older and more powerful, the marginal benefits of such battles declined and the costs increased even as the number of would-be rivals escalated.  Just as the U.S. attracts resentment and rhetorical anti-Americanism simply by virtue of being on top, so did Jay-Z attract a disproportionate number of attackers.

Yes, you read that right. Here's Marc Lynch of Foreign Policy analyzing battles between rappers as an analogy for U.S. foreign policy.

It's a great and very entertaining post (I whish any of my international relations professors would have had such a deep knowledge about hip hop music). It's also a post that probably could only have been published on a blog.