Battle of Los Angeles 5 preview (Day 1)
BOLA5 is less than a week away and the Day 1 GZ card has a lot of new faces debuting in the league. Here’s a quick preview so you’ll know what to expect from the battles.
Tagged: Lexx Luthor
Battles of the month: March
After a dry February that produced few quality battles, March has reaffirmed our faith in battle rap. URL ended its drought by finally dropping Cortez vs JJDD and will be back to weekly releases now that their Ultimate Freestyle Friday competition has started airing on BET. KOTD has been dropping their Blackout 4 videos weekly on the main channel and have been quick to release footage from Vancity’s Gastown event. Don’t Flop has released only U.K. vs U.K. matchups this month, and hasn’t made much noise with North American fans outside of a solid battle between Unanymous and Olde English. UW hasn’t made a peep about an official release of their High Stakes footage, but whatever, everybody already watched the PPV or a bootleg of it.
Even with all that going on, four of the five battles we’re highlighting below come from smaller leagues. Don’t sleep.
Everything you missed at Blackout 4: Day 2
Against all odds, Saturday was a great night for battling. Despite the no-shows, the chatty crowd and dead energy on Friday, Day 2 featured some outstanding battles, bringing the much-hyped Blackout 4 to a satisfying close. You can read our Day 1 recap here.
First off, a quick note on the no-shows. Six battlers did not show up in Toronto this weekend. (Organik went into specifics in this RMBVA post.) Here is the list of them, along with their opponents in brackets: RemyD (Osa), JC (Rone), Ill Will (Real Deal), Aye Verb (Shotty Horroh), Rich Dolarz (Loe Pesci) and Big T (Bender). It sounds as if King of the Dot is trying to make Shotty/Verb and T/Bender happen soon, even if that means sending Bender and Shotty to the States. Stay tuned.
Back to Saturday’s battles. Credit must be given to the MCs on the bottom half of the card. They set a good tone for the day and did a fine job of engaging the crowd. Speaking of which, the crowd for Day 2 was not only better than the previous day’s, but was arguably the most respectful KOTD audience in Toronto in some time. It’s amazing the degree to which a receptive, engaged crowd can enhance the quality of the battle.
Now, onto the battles. And remember: there will be plenty of spoilers.
You can also check the battles yourself with the KOTD pay-per-view.
[All battle photos are from Dan Gibson. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.]
Top 10 biggest bodybags of 2013
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
Battles of the week: May 12 - 18
In this edition of Battles of the Week, we give shine to some sleeper hits and break down the battles fans from around the world were talking about.
CAUSTIC VS JC
The first battle to drop from KOTD West Coast’s Alcatraz event, and the highest resolution rap battle to date. 3840x 2160? 4k resolution? 16:9 aspect ratio? Using the Red’s Scarlet camera? All I know is that Avocado is the man and we can expect this kind of quality from the rest of the videos.
Props to JC for putting in work for his first KOTD battle, and props to Caustic for being the first one to finally land a solid Bargate punch.
Continue reading