A Concise History of the Scottish Happy Hardcore Diss Track

What is the angriest you've ever felt? Chances are it had a direct relationship to your own brittle ego. It's true, that we're furious about all sorts things, a lot of the time. At least we say we are. The round latest round of government iniquities, cuts and moral sleaze. The closure of much loved nightclubs or cultural spaces. Donald Trump! Big Fash Milo! Brexit! That Lithuanian DJ with the wild, cuntish homophobia! There's never a shortage of things to expend our anger on. It's great, isn't it!

As genuine, and as heartfelt as that anger might be, as much as you might care about the world external and all of its horrors, you'll never really care about anything as much as you do yourself when you realise someone's slagging you off.

It doesn't matter how refined you think you are, no matter how much you think you've matured and developed something like higher feelings, there is nothing like it for summoning real anger. Imagine, me stumbling over to you in the pub this Friday, belching and gurning, elbowing past your partner, spilling your Mini Cheddars and pint, bursting right into the middle of your conversation on the rise of the Alt-Right, getting right up in your face and calling you a nonce, just like that, as your appalled friends stared at their shoes and you stared back at me with wild, injured eyes. Tell me honestly that you care more about Brexit than you do about that sort of emasculating embarrassment.

The musical equivalent of the playground, or beer garden, insult is the diss track. It's a genre with a fairly venerable history. It started in the hyper-macho rap world as a means of generating the buzz of, occasionally manufactured, conflict between two artists as a strategy for boosting sales, cementing rivalry and airing genuine grievance. It's Biggie Vs Tupac, Kendrick Vs Drake, Nas Vs Jay Z, 50 Cent vs The Game. The clash of the triple platinum titans. It's a whole galaxy of indirects, cloaked pot-shots, allusion and lyrical dexterity.

But the history of the diss isn't a linear affair. There's another tradition, less well viewed, less well produced, less allusive and indirect. It's a tradition rooted in a very particular time and place. It's a whole shadowy world of Windows Movie Maker videos, Buckfast by moonlight, £150 Lacoste tracksuits, brazenly nicked Tiesto instrumentals, Friday nights in with Limewire, grams of bush weed and brutally direct insults. It's a tradition that at its tamest end isn't afraid to call your mum a fat ride, or claim that your sister's nose can be seen from space. This is the great Scottish diss track.

If you owned a phone with a speaker between 2005-2010 and lived somewhere in the Scottish central belt, then this one goes out to you, well done for remembering this. For anyone who didn't, a quick note. There is absolutely no way to intellectualize any of this with a straight face. There is no plotted cultural history, or gateway into understanding the mindset of mid-2000s Scottish adolescence to be found. But as monuments to man's inhumanity to man, they remain unparalleled. It's the history of DJ Cammy's "HOT WHITE GIRL DISS (FOR JAY)", of James Walton's Young Fleeto diss and innumerable acronyms competing for primacy in the war of the young teams.

But if you had to pick one example to explain this mercifully long deceased sub-genre, there's only one plausible contender. Yes, the 'Teachers' diss might have ambition and breadth on its side ("Mr Mennie, you're a wank, your mum is a dirty skank"). Yes, the YRS diss might contain the single most excoriating line ("your 'da takes ket and sleeps in a box"). Yes, the YSP diss might have more pure force ("Johnson mate… you're a woman"). But if you want to get to the dark heart of things, down to the filthy fundamentals, then there's only one stop: Gary Haich on DJ Jambo.

The origins of the beef are unclear. Who either Gary Haich or DJ Jambo are, or were, remains unclear. Frankly, it doesn't matter. What matters is that no one is safe. It's an age old convention that when it comes to a bodying, mums are off limits. Your dad might receive some furious pelters, yes. Your sister might be reduced to a puddle of tepid dishwater, that's allowed. Friends are obvious ammunition. But mums, well there's a rule in place for a reason. Does Gary Haich 2006 respect convention? Does Gary Haich respect your mum? Does he fuck.

"Your maws a fucking ugly bunt, she weigh about 50 tonnes, your dads got fucking specs, your sister looks like fucking Shrek (Shrek)".

Gary Haich just bodied a mum. He just bodied an entire family. It's not that an invisible line is being crossed, it's being slashed into ribboned fragments of nonsense. This is the partition of Coatbridge, and Jambo's stranded on the wrong side of history's tracks. But what's unique about the Scottish diss is that this is absolutely standard. The perfect marriage of pulsating, openly theived beats and blunt, hyper-primary school insult goes together like duck to water. Haich asks "is Jambo hard?" and you don't need to wait for the answer: "Is he fuck, you fucking duck". This isn't "Who Shot Ya?" This is a Sports Direct baseball-bat to reasons windpipe.

History has its winners and losers. Gary Haich, the man with the Youtube immortality and the decade old bragging rights, stands resplendent. He is, unquestionably, the victor. How many times do you think he listens to this a day, even now? How many times does he sneak off for a shit at work, headphones wrapped around his knuckle, excessively flushing to drown his hollow, malicious laughter. But that laughter contains something else. It's not regret at the devastation caused. Not exactly. He can barely remember Jambo now. No, it's the regret of having your creative peak distilled into 1.56 minutes of grainy vitriol.

But DJ Jambo, that's a different story. When I picture him I see a man no longer in the first flush of youth, constantly on the verge of getting in or out of a dusty Vauxhall Astra. I see a man who can still vividly recall what he felt the morning after it all started to get MySpace traction, head bowed on the way to the school bus, all of the mocking MSN conversations fresh in his head, knowing- just knowing- that double English wouldn't pass without someone drawing Shrek on the whiteboard. I see a man who is still quick to full-body redness at the slightest insult, who still coils up his fists every time someone mentions his mum in conversation. Who, in moments of weakness, still harbours ambitions of writing a reply, even more excoriating, even more brutal than the one that gave his dignity such a comprehensive, and public, spanking all those years ago. But cracking out all the old software is such a hassle now, and didn't he hear that Haich's dad had met a nasty end when his arse had finally collapsed? It might be diss gold, but he's not sure it's appropriate now.

But then he sees it all again before his eyes, the torments that lunch time brought, that first morning, with all of those Motorola Razrs pointed at his head, playing that same track in unison..

It'd be enough to drive you mad, wouldn't it? It'd be enough to make you furious.

Francisco is on Twitter