Instead of performance enhancing drugs, the focus has been on performance enhancing lyrics, namely those Arcane bought off California rapper Caustic. But we’ll get to that soon.

The title match was between Dizaster, whose aggressive bars and jaw-dropping freestyles have made him one of the most popular battler rappers on the planet, and Number 1 contender Arcane. The challenger was coming
off a bulldozer-run through KOTD’s Grand Prix tournament, winning for the
second straight time with decisive victories over some of the league’s
best and pocketing $5,000 in the process.

Ahead of the battle, fans were divided, but the consensus was that if anyone could beat Dizaster for the title, it was Arcane.

Leading up to event, the two were already trading shots over Twitter:

Blackout 3 drew the largest crowd to date for a KOTD event, selling out The Guvernment with around 1,200 people in attendance, including legitimate rap celebrities Drake and Maestro Fresh Wes.

The card was stacked with some of the best battlers in the world, hailing from Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.

The battles were inaudible on the outskirts of the crowd and clear sight lines were hard to find with a general admission ticket. Most people watched the battles on a large screen that was set up above the stage.

Dizaster rapped first, laying out a densely written round about how he could prove that Arcane had bought some of the rhymes that helped cement his spot in the title match.

At the end of his round, Diz papered the crowd with dozens of copies of what seemed to be a PayPal receipt that showed Arcane transferring money to Caustic (a California MC who’s been killing competition internationally):

Diz’s approach played to the people in the first few rows, and will likely be convincing
in the YouTube footage, but it left the other 1,000 people in the venue
confused. People in the back struggled to see/hear/understand what was going on, and the massive turnout meant that most of the crowd wasn’t
particularly well-versed in battle culture and history.

And that’s when the boo-ing started. Diz later claimed that it was
Arcane fans who set off the catcalls (his hometown of Hamilton is a short drive from the Toronto venue). From what we could tell, the
crowd was unimpressed with the champ’s weak bars, repetitive angles and
lame rebuttals.

We saw one particular rapper (with an axe to grind against Dizaster) boo early and loudly, but that’s all it took to ignite the crowd.

Arcane won
on the strength of his bars and performance. 3-0, no contest. When your
opponent is reduced to a screaming, cartoonish villain you’ve clearly
done something right.

But Dizaster’s ploy should’ve worked. I mean, he had proof that his opponent paid for lyrics, right?

**UPDATE Feb 15, 2013**

-Arcane still clearly won that battle with his performance and content. Four judges (Knamelis, Adam Bomb, Dax Flox and Yaz) went with Arcane. Shotty Horroh gave it to Diz.

THE BATTLE ENDS, THE WAR BEGINS

Dizaster was right that something fishy had gone on with Arcane and Caustic.

Late in 2012, the two rappers had used the same line in different battles.

Arcane against Chedda Cheese in the Grand Prix finals when he said:

You got dumped by a stripper, Chedda/
You ain’t never gonna live it down/
That girl’s pussy like the White House/
No Bush and there’s a black guy in it now.

Filmed Nov. 17, 2012
Released on YouTube Dec. 5, 2012

We were there for the event, and it was clearly the line of the night. It
got the biggest reaction and had us quoting it to our friends the next
day.

“He’s insecure about his dick so he constantly lives in doubt/
His girl’s pussy is like the White House/
No Bush and there’s a black guy in it now.”

Filmed Oct. 20, 2012
Released Dec. 8, 2012

Well, it’s a long story…

In the Grand Prix tournament, Caustic was supposed to face
Calgary’s Chedda Cheese in the West Coast semi-finals. With his criminal history, Caustic wasn’t able to
get past the border. This was the second time a battle was cancelled
because of Caustic’s inability to pass Canadian customs, so KOTD decided
that Caustic was disqualified and Chedda cruised through to the finals
on a bye.

This left Caustic with three rounds of prepared
material for a guy he’d never have reason to battle again. “I mean, [Arcane] didn’t really like directly ask me to write rhymes. Like, we’ve been bullshitting, he knew I had this shit,” Caustic later told URL’s Battle Rap Arena podcast. “And basically it came down to… I’ll send you my whole fuckin’ shit, but I ain’t gonna do it for free. I’ll let you see everything I had.”

According to Caustic, he previewed some of his Chedda Cheese bars for
his friend Thesaurus, another California battle legend. Caustic
never got to deliver the bars, but when Thesaurus watched the
Arcane/Chedda battle, he recognized some of the schemes and told
Diz about it. Dizaster and Caustic claim that in January, when both were hanging out at a hotel in L.A., Caustic fell asleep and Diz
went onto his computer and found the conversations with Arcane.

Caustic was in the U.S. when the battle went down, but news spread quickly about “Dizaster getting
robbed by a Canadian cheat” over Twitter and Facebook.

Marvwon summed up the thousands of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
comments nicely on RapMusic.com with three words and an ellipsis:

The evidence confirms that Arcane used more material from their
arrangement.
However, had Caustic gotten across the border, it’s possible he would have used
some of Arcane’s ideas for Chedda. Caustic is enthusiastic about Arcane’s ideas for Chedda, going so far as saying he’d steal them.

Arcane posted
a statement towards the end of a very long RapMusic.com thread:

Nobody helped me with ANY bars for Bulletz, or Skelly, Crakk, Step or Diz, etc.
for that matter. I used maybe 2 or 3 ideas from Caustic for the Chedda battle
only. and if Caustic woulda made it into Canada to battle Chedda, he woulda
used maybe 2 or 3 of mine. This whole thing has been blown way outta
proportion.

Lastly, Nobody paid anybody for any boo’s. That’s a ridiculous statement. Most
of the 1200+ ppl there were not avid battle fans, they were there to see Drake.
There was only roughly 100 ppl there from my city (Hamilton) So to blame my
City for 1200+ boo’s is ludicrous.

Good day.

-

Essentially, we’ll never
know exactly what happened. Each person has their version of events and
it’s unlikely that all sides will corroborate anything resembling an
airtight explanation.

THE CAT COMES OUT OF THE BAG

More online conversation started exposing the ghostwriting and collaboration that had been part of the scene for years.

Caustic admitted he’d sold rhymes before, telling HipHopDX: “I’ve
sold verses to a few bigger name battle rappers and trust me, they are
worth a lot more than you think. So the real tragedy here is someone
fucking with my hustle.”

NY rapper Jus Daze also addressed it in his blog:

“Ok,
so ghostwriting was finally brought to attention in the public’s
eye…which, c’mon people…it’s been being done forever and the
WELL-KNOWN battlers that rely on “nobodies”, as well as their peers
isn’t new knowledge, but the AMOUNT/Caliber of MC’s that rely on it is
CRAZY.”

KOTD founder Organik even got into it:

Somehow, Dizaster has come off as a victim in this mess and his massive fan base will view the result as nothing short of a hatchet-job against him. On the other hand, it was Dizaster’s worst performance in the league. Still, that won’t keep him from booking bigger battles in front of bigger crowds.

Caustic has two reasons to feel good: he used almost none of Arcane’s ideas, and he got paid. (But it does seem like a lot of BS for $300). It also seems like his future involvement in KOTD, at least in the short term, is a bit of a question mark: