Dame Dash tried to fire back at JAY-Z and Cam’ron with a diss song, and it blew up in his face almost immediately. On June 15, the Roc-A-Fella cofounder hopped on Instagram to preview a track called “Cheap Teeth,” and instead of landing a blow, he handed the internet its newest punchline.
The “Cheap Teeth” preview featured Dash rapping from the back of a Sprinter van alongside his artist Nicky Licky, the singer he has said reminds him of Aaliyah, and the whole thing leaned into bodily insults rather than bars. Nicky Licky opened with a shot at JAY-Z, rapping, “I’m sorry this is elder abuse, but somebody needs a spanking, and I’m thinking it’s you,” before turning to Cam’ron with, “Who the f*** disrespects their OG, the motherf***er helped you, and he helped me.” Dash handled the hook, gleefully singing about his former partners’ breath and describing it as “cinnamon doo-doo.” He captioned the clip a “sneak peek” and called it “too basic, too easy.”The song did not come out of nowhere. “Cheap Teeth” is Dash’s rebuttal to JAY-Z’s freestyle at the 2026 Roots Picnic, where Hov rapped an a cappella verse widely read as aimed at Dame, calling him a “chatty patty down on his luck again” and joking about his teeth falling out of his mouth. That teeth reference traces back to a well documented 2024 moment when Dash’s teeth literally fell out during an Instagram Live. Dash responded to the Roots Picnic shots by saying he thought JAY-Z’s “rap was bad,” then turned the very insult into the title of his own record.
The reactions to “Cheap Teeth” were brutal, and the most memorable one came from Cam’ron. The Harlem rapper and It Is What It Is host slid into the comments and wrote, “All jokes aside, I really have second hand embarrassment. This is sad. I’m sorry everyone that he turned out like this. We’re gonna do a case study to see what happened to him.” The line spread across timelines within hours and quickly became the defining response, with most of the conversation centering on the ridicule rather than the music itself.
Cam’ron and Dash have been jabbing at each other for a while now. Recently Cam called their back and forth “fun” and reminded Dash that his “teeth fell out on TV,” which Dash did not take lightly. In a Ghetto Runways interview, Dash leaned all the way in, saying that now that he has his teeth back after what he called a laborious operation, he can finally curse with confidence. “Since I’ve got my teeth back, I can really clearly say f*** you,” he said, before challenging Cam to a teeth battle and repeatedly calling him “Fredo,” a Godfather reference meant to paint Cam as weak and disloyal. Dash has also mocked Cam’s teeth as too big and joked that he dresses like old school Steve Harvey.
To understand why all of this cuts so deep, you have to go back to the beginning. Dash cofounded Roc-A-Fella Records in 1996 alongside JAY-Z and Kareem “Biggs” Burke, building one of the most important labels in hip-hop and helping launch JAY-Z into superstardom. The empire fractured over money, control, and direction, and the label was sold to Def Jam in 2004, leaving behind resentments that Dash has aired publicly for years. Cam’ron, who rose to fame with Dipset under the Roc-A-Fella umbrella, has since carved his own lane as a sports and culture commentator, which is part of why his “Cheap Teeth” dismissal stung coming from inside the family tree.
For now, the scoreboard is not in Dash’s favor. “Cheap Teeth” succeeded at one thing, which was getting attention, but nearly all of that attention landed as mockery. The simple beat, the van setting, and the focus on breath and dental insults gave the track an almost comedic feel that critics said worked against him. Whether JAY-Z or Cam’ron ever bothers with a real response remains to be seen, and given how the rollout went, they may not feel the need to. In a beef built on teeth, Dame Dash swung hard with “Cheap Teeth” and mostly chipped his own.
