After feuding for 15 years, rappers Gucci Mane and Jeezy take their battle to Verzuz

It’s the Verzuz battle 15 years in the making: Gucci Mane and Jeezy, who have been feuding since 2005, will face off tonight.

The Season 2 kickoff of the popular online music-battle series will start at 5 p.m. Pacific, available on the Verzuz Instagram page or in HD via Verzuz Radio on Apple Music.

Fans who tune in will no doubt be entertained as the Atlanta rappers’ long-running beef continues face to face. The two have been throwing shade at each other leading up to the main event.

Gucci posted an Instagram video Wednesday affirming the plan to battle was real and that he and “Sno Cone” would be in the same room together. Then he asked, “Is fashion a part of the Verzuz?,” before launching into a slam of Jeezy’s colorful style choices.

Jeezy (born Jay Wayne Jenkins) sat for an interview with the Associated Press where he was asked whether the battle could stay cordial, given their contentious history.

“We’ve got to wait and see,” Jeezy said. “That’s fair.”

Nevertheless, he promised he’d be “bringing that thug motivation for sure.”

The feud between the two Atlanta rappers stretches back to 2005, to a misunderstanding about a collaboration track. That same year, Gucci (born Radric Davis) was arrested in the shooting death of an alleged Jeezy associate after a break-in at a home he was visiting. The charges were dropped the next year because of lack of evidence, but the bad blood continued over many years in the form of diss tracks, trash talk and public scuffles between their crews.

While Jeezy called a brief truce in 2009 — Gucci told Sway a couple of years later, “We just came to a sit-down of just respecting the fact that somebody can get hurt, and it ain’t going to be us” — the feud was going full force again by 2012. (See the details in this excellent Complex recap of the rappers’ relationship.)

Verzuz was created in April by artists Swizz Beatz and Timbaland as a way to escape pandemic-lockdown stress and boredom. Its popularity has only grown since then, with battles including John Legend versus Alicia Keys and Gladys Knight versus Patti LaBelle, among others. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris even made a brief cameo when Brandy and Monica squared off in August.