Tagged: Charron

Pat Stay to step down as KOTD champion?

Pat Stay at Blackout 4. Photo by Zach MacPhoto.
Pat Stay at Blackout 4. Photo by Zach MacPhoto

In a recent interview with Body Count Radio, Charron dropped a bombshell when asked if he was going to battle Pat Stay:

“That’s what everyone wants including the staff. The staff definitely wants to set up me versus Pat Stay and I think it should happen for the Canadian scene and all the work I’ve put in for it. But the thing about Pat Stay is that when he got the title - it’s no secret that he said he wants to choose his opponents strategically - so that’s why he picked Dizaster. And at this point there’s really no one else in line for the title …

The staff knows it has to happen, Pat Stay knows it has to happen, but battling someone like me for him is lose/lose. Pat Stay is a smart dude and he knows that. His whole persona is based on his image of being a tough guy, and if he beats me it’s just like ‘It’s Charron, of course you punked him’ but if he loses it tarnishes his tough guy image …

Honestly, the title match isn’t going to go to anyone else so I predict that he’s going to relinquish the chain and I’ll probably have to battle Clips for the title or something.”

That’s one hell of a prediction.

Let’s unpack a couple of the claims Charron makes.

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Charron: The road to respect

Charron at Blackout 4. Photo by Dan Gibson.

Corey Charron became an elite MC in 2013. The 22-year-old Ottawa rapper has been battling since high school, but it was in 2013 that he began dominating veterans in KOTD and other leagues around the world. Now he’s touring Canada, playing sold-out shows opening up for Method Man and Redman. Ahead of Charron’s Blackout 4 battle with The Saurus, we had the homie Seanzo speak to him about his image, his chase for the KOTD chain and his goals for 2014.

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Battle rap by the numbers

Changing tides via Google Trends
Changing tides via Google Trends

Battle rap is a numbers game. But now that it’s rare for battles to be judged, there aren’t any official win-loss records competitors can compare. So battlers (and leagues) chase different statistics: views, followers and fans. We at T.O. Battle Blog have dug into the facts and figures to see who’s really winning.

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Everything you missed at Blackout 4: Day 1

Organik at Blackout 4. Photo by @Lemme_Kno

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.

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Top 10 battle rappers of 2013

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[UPDATE: We have a new list that reflects what’s been going on throughout the first six months of 2014. Check it here.]

Here it is, our last list of 2013.

It’s an attempt to boil down every aspect of battle rap culture, by looking at every battler in every league, to find the definitive best battlers of 2013. It is an ambitious task, and it wasn’t an easy one. Our final picks come after much debate among the writers at T.O. Battle Blog, as well as a few expert sounding boards.

The criteria we used to make our choices include: quality, consistency, impact, achievement, frequency of battle, and difficulty of opponent.

We broke it down into a ranked Top 5, a “Next 5″ for numbers 6 though 10 (in no particular order), and a few honorable mentions. The last group could’ve included a lot more people (namely J-Pro and Lotta Zay) but we had to draw the line somewhere.

But enough explanations. You’re here to read about 2013′s top battlers.

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Top 10 KOTD battles of 2013

Bigg K

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.

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