The Great Experiment has finally arrived. King of the Dot’s much-anticipated Blackout 4 kicked off last night in Toronto. The card features arguably the deepest roster of talent ever assembled for a single event, plus it also boasts a novel concept: the majority of battles are being announced live at the event, rather than weeks/months in advance.
King of the Dot spent much of 2013 trying to find a balance.
In Toronto, Blackout 3 had the biggest audience a KOTD event had ever seen, but the massive crowd meant that it was difficult to see and hear the battles in the venue. For Vengeance 2, the venue was too big for the smaller crowd and for World Domination 4 the venue was fine but the audio in the footage was hit-or-miss and the crowd was often unruly.
The California division rebuilt the West Coast battle scene to its former glory, providing a platform for both returning legends and a slew of new talent. Each event (Resurgence, Alcatraz and Takeover) showed progression, eventually culminating in the year’s best: Battle of the Bay 6.
Calgary’s Quarantine and Vancouver’s GZGP semi-finals events featured those cities’ best matchups to date and hinted at even bigger things to come.
But as for the battles, KOTD put out more classics than any other league this year. The quality of content from WD4 and BOTB6 was unrivaled and most of the big-name matchups lived up to or exceeded their expectations.
Honestly, picking the 10 best battles from KOTD’s releases this year wasn’t easy, so if your Top 10 list varies from ours, we won’t necessarily say you’re wrong.
There were a few high-profile, one-sided battles in 2013 – Pass/DNA, O-Red/T-Rex and Shuffle T/Anton Murphy all struck us as clear 3-0s (at least). But decisive wins aren’t enough to make this year’s Biggest Bodybags list. We’re not focusing on how well the winner won, but how badly the loser lost. This list is reserved for performances so dismal that the opposing battler could’ve just stood there laughing and still won. Continue reading
Most of this month’s best battles came out of KOTD’s World Domination 4. We expect it’ll be the same for next month too. Here are our picks for the battles to watch from September. If you’re a KOTD fan, you’ve likely already seen most of them, so share this with a friend who should watch more battles.
Charron has two things going for him right now:
1. He just had a(nother) breakout performance that caught the attention of URL fans. We’ve seen dozens of people calling this a contender for battle of the year.
2. BET just robbed him of his cypher appearance.
In battle rap, sometimes robberies are better than wins. Just look at Pigsty since Cody or Lex D since Cobalt45. Yes, a cypher appearance would’ve been great exposure for Charron, but all of a sudden he’s got a whole movement behind him screaming for justice and revenge. This story has potential to break nationally and internationally too.
Charron has become the perfect example of the “advantaged underdog” and should roll with it rather than hitting the gym and getting tatted up.
Continue reading