BattleRap.com spoke exclusively with King Of The Dot’s Bishop Brigante who discusses behind the scenes in battle rap and the business planning that is involved in running a leading battle league.
Speaking generally about the scenes behind the cameras in the industry, Bishop Brigante states that fans are not always aware of the preparation that goes into putting events together. He then goes onto recall the early days of King Of The Dot pay-per-views and the problems they first encountered.
“There’s been a couple of misfortunate events but a lot of times I think a lot of these situations that are happening are uncontrollable,” Bishop Brigante said. “The fans don’t always get to see what happens behind the scenes with owners of clubs, with actual battlers, with agreements. Like I said man, I try to be the best right-hand man to Organik because I know how much stress is thrown on his shoulders prior to an event. I know how much weight it is because again, we strive so hard to be for the fans so when that pressure and that stress of different things that are obstacles with setting up these events, it gets really tough. So I can empathize with what Smack [White] goes through, with what URL goes through with their events not going as planned and things starting late and stuff like that and a lot of people don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes.
“I feel like battle rap as far as the events side of it, it’s always going to be a working out the kinks situation,” explains Bishop Brigante. “It’s never going to be perfect but that’s what also makes it so awesome because once you get through an event and you finally pull through with a great event it’s more dope, like, ‘Whoa, man, we went through a lot.’ There’s so many times me and Organik look at each other and we’re like, ‘That was close,’ but we made it happen. So it’s not the actual struggle it’s how you persevere through that struggle and keep on keeping on. That’s why I love my team because my squad is the hardest working battle rap league, period. And we’ve been through the wringer over and over again with cancelled battles, with working out the kinks like I said at different events. It’s tough but we persevere and we work hard so that every event it gets better.
“Back in the day when we started doing pay-per-views, shit would cut out half way through and everybody would be like, ‘Oh my God,’” recalls Bishop Brigante. “And the fans, they don’t play, I love that, but they don’t play. King Fly will be sitting on there looking at RapMusic.com or whatever sites they have and he’ll be deflecting all the people that are like, ‘Yo, what’s going on? The pay-per-view is down!’ And we’re like, ‘Don’t worry, we’re on it, we’re fixing it.’ But it’s hard, man.”
Later on in the interview, the King Of The Dot co-host spoke on the business planning that is involved in battle rap saying that good business is a matter of intense preparation.
“It’s really difficult, man,” said Bishop Brigante. “You gotta make sure that you pay attention to your overheads. You gotta make sure you don’t cross your line with your spending and you gotta have a budget. Good business is a lot of intense planning and myself, Organik, Gully, we spend a lot of time plotting and planning daily. We leave here tomorrow and we already started working on World Domination 4. We already started working on Battle Of The Bay. We work on everything immediately because it has to be planned out. My advice to anybody that’s trying to start, or that wants to do anything, you gotta plan. [With] anything you do that you wanna accomplish that’s big or you wanna make money with, you gotta plan.”
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