In an interview with MidnightMogulTV, Beasley of SMACK/URL addressed steps the league may take in response to battlers choking at events. Distinguishing different degrees of botched performances, Beasley announced plans to add clauses to battle contracts that would bar performers from receiving a full payout in certain circumstances.
“Yeah, we started to implement them,” he said of the clauses. “It’s still a touchy subject because people can choke sometimes and we understand. See, this is where it lies with me, I don’t mind if somebody chokes. Even if they choke and they gotta take a few seconds and get their rhymes back. But if you choke like one minute into a round and you can’t forget it, it’s like I feel cheated and the fans are cheated. If I’m paying you and you’re demanding all of this money and you can’t remember your rhymes, why do I have to pay you all of your money if I’m not getting all I paid for? I don’t mind slips, mistakes, even chokes, even if you have to take 10 seconds to calm down and get yourself back together and get back into your rhyme, that’s fine. I would never penalize anyone for that. But if you’re just... 34 seconds into the round and you’re just like, ‘Oh fuck it let him go,’ and you quit, you should be docked for that 'cause you’re not prepared.”
Addressing the now infamous fight between Math Hoffa and Dizaster, Beasley explained the negative effect violence has on battle rap as a whole.
“The Math and Dizaster situation was unfortunate,” he said. “It did not happen on the URL platform, let’s make that clear. It did not happen over here. I been asked to speak on it so I will. It’s unfortunate what happened. People just have to understand, when you do stuff like that it impacts everybody. Everyone loses. The fans, URL loses, King of the Dot loses, Don’t Flop loses, all the major leagues lose. It also directly affects the consumer because it prevents us from getting to venues that we wanna get to give you guys the best possible show and to continue to advance the culture. They see what goes on online, they get the word. Once they find that they don’t want those kinds of events at their venues. Nobody will. It limits the places that we’re actually able to capture this content and then it makes us have to pay more money for security or pay more money for different venues that are gonna overcharge us. In turn, that comes back directly to the consumer because you’re forced to pay a higher ticket price on top of what these emcees charge us to perform. It’s a domino effect of negativity when something like that transpires. I would hope that in the future that emcees stop, look, and listen and realize that if you have to fight somebody and it’s that serious, let’s do it off camera... Let’s work together to please keep the violence out of battle rap. We should only have verbal violence not physical. It’s a battle of the minds not the brawn.”
Responding to a question about the possibility of battle-rap-sponsored boxing, Beasley said the notion was at odds with his own league's goals.
“The reason I wouldn’t want to do that [is] then we would be promoting fighting,” he said. “Our goal is to promote battle rap which is a battle of the minds not muscle. In theory that would be great but then you got guys losing on camera and they can’t handle it with their egos. No ego is bigger than that of an emcee. I just don’t know how good of an idea that would be for guys to box on camera. It may be entertaining ‘cause then you would see who could really scrap. But I don’t know what it would do for guys’ careers, especially the guys on the losing end.”
Check out the full interview below:
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