Meanwhile, Lucious is desperate to feed Empire Xstream some new content and land new subscribers, or he loses 50 million large. He threatens to release Jamal’s Black & White album against his son's wishes. Cookie intervenes by flossing her Black Girl Magic and introduces Jamal to Mariah Carey, er, Kitty (and her two giant puppies.) Jamal offers a duet with Kitty to stream in place of his album. He overcomes his PTSD enough to kill it in the studio with Mariah, er, Kitty — who, by the way, is dressed in a leotard and stilettos. I can’t help but think that was Carey's own creative input? But I digress. The hot track was not enough to stop Lucious from pulling one of his infamous double-crosses, and he releases Jamal’s “Black” album sans anything Cookie produced, wrecking his relationship with Jamal and launching an all-out war with Cookie.

And the war doesn’t stop there. Hakeem is about to go all Drake vs. Meek Mill on another rapper named Gram (Romeo Miller) for dissing him on his ex Tiana’s track and putting the moves on her in public. In the studio, Shyne displays “bitch tendencies” by choking out Nessa when she doesn’t want to get involved. Inspired by Lucious’ hood lecture that I mentioned earlier, Hakeem spits lyrical venom in the studio all over Gram, officially launching an Empire rap beef.

This episode’s title harkens back to Shakespeare’s Othello, which deals with Iago trying to expose the Moor as a beast, but ends up exposing himself in the end. That can best be summed up with the freak that is Tariq, who is desperate to bust the beast that is Lucious. Tariq will use anything to get him, even Andre’s freedom, thus revealing who the real beast is.