Remy Ma changed her own words on stage at Angie Martinez’s Summer BBQ and put Papoose’s name in the record. Performing “W.Y.F.L.” Sunday at Paradise Coney Island in Brooklyn, the Bronx rapper took a line that already had teeth and gave it a target. The recorded version goes at somebody for acting like they built her career. On stage she reworked it to say Pap by name, and the crowd caught it immediately.
The original line comes after Remy addresses people claiming they wrote her hits when they never ghostwrote anything for anybody, including her. That was already pointed when the song came out. Nobody needed a diagram. But there is a difference between a bar everybody assumes is about your ex and a bar where you say his name into a microphone in front of a Brooklyn crowd, and Remy knows exactly what that difference is.She was not done either. Elsewhere in the same song, Remy appears to take aim at Claressa Shields, the boxer who is currently dating Papoose. The lines are about somebody competing with herself, doing the most over average men, and wanting to be a baddie without the range for it. Remy does not say Shields by name. She does not really have to.
The timing on that is the part worth sitting with. Days before the BBQ, Shields sat down on “The Ariel Helwani Show” and was asked to name her favorite women in hip hop. She went through Foxy Brown and Lil Kim on the veteran side, then Latto and GloRilla for the newer class. Remy’s name never came up. When Helwani brought it up himself, Shields said she does not know many of her songs, so no.
For anyone who has been keeping up, this is the latest stop in a long unraveling. Remy and Papoose spent years as one of the more visible couples in rap, a marriage people pointed to as proof it could work in the industry. That reputation did not survive the split. Infidelity allegations moved through the timeline, the two separated, and the public version of their household flipped inside out. The tension clearly did not go anywhere.
The BBQ itself was stacked. Angie Martinez took over Paradise Coney Island for her annual Brooklyn cookout on Sunday, August 2, with French Montana, Zeddy Will, and Buju Banton all taking the stage. French ran through his catalog including his verse on the “Hot N***a” remix. Mike Tyson turned up as a surprise. DaniLeigh, Nems, and Maiya The Don were spotted in VIP. Remy still walked away with the moment everybody is talking about the next morning.Neither Papoose nor Shields has responded publicly. Given how the last few weeks have gone, nobody should get comfortable.
