Nino Man Steps Into the 38 Spesh Beef With “Minks In Harlem”

• A Third Voice Enters
• How This Started
• What “Minks In Harlem” Actually Sounds Like
• Where It Goes From Here

Nino Man, the Harlem rapper long tied to the D Block camp built around Jadakiss and Styles P, released “Minks In Harlem” on July 16, a direct diss aimed at Rochester rapper 38 Spesh. The record is tightly written and rides hard, drum heavy production, the kind built for repeat plays rather than a one time news cycle moment, and it lands Nino Man squarely inside a dispute that started without him.

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The back and forth traces back to Fat Joe and Jadakiss’s connective record “The Aroma,” which carried a handful of lines aimed at 38 Spesh. Spesh did not let it sit. In a pointed response covered by HotNewHipHop, he mocked the idea of two artists a decade and a half his senior trying to test him on record, and went after Jadakiss specifically over the optics of the verse, framing Fat Joe and DJ Khaled as little more than hype men standing behind him. He also aimed a jab at Khaled’s tendency to celebrate other people’s records without adding much of his own.

That response spread fast across social media, less because of the diss itself and more because of how bluntly Spesh delivered it. Nino Man’s entry raises the number of people now on record in the dispute to four, and gives Jadakiss’s side of the argument its first musical answer rather than a purely verbal one.

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Nino Man spends the track leaning on sharp, punchline heavy writing rather than shouting, which fits his catalog. He has spent years as a steady presence around the D Block camp, including joint records with Vado and features tied to the greater Diplomats and D Block orbit, and “Minks In Harlem” sits comfortably inside that same tradition of dense, boom bap adjacent New York rap built for lyrical scrutiny.

The title itself works as a needle, pairing the extravagance of the fur with the geography Nino Man has repped throughout his career, an implicit reminder of exactly whose turf 38 Spesh is stepping into by going after Jadakiss. The bars are dense with insults directed squarely at Spesh, and the production stays out of the way enough to keep the writing the focus.

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38 Spesh has not commented publicly on “Minks In Harlem” as of this writing. Given how quickly he answered “The Aroma,” a response from him, either another verse or another round of pointed interview comments, would not be a surprise. For now, the exchange has grown from a two person dispute between Spesh and the Fat Joe and Jadakiss camp into a wider conversation involving their extended circles, with Nino Man the latest name to put a verse behind his side of it.