Following last Saturday’s (July 12) Total Slaughter event at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York, VladTV spoke with SMACK/URL’s Smack White and Eric Beasley regarding the event and the headlining battles on the card.
“I think it was a success,” explains Smack White. “It was a big plus for the culture of Battle Rap and I look forward to seeing a lot more. For Shady [Records], I’d like to congratulate them on their first major event.”
On the subject of Total Slaughter’s unique “No Entourage Policy” on stage, Smack White said he didn’t like it, stating he felt it looked empty.
“It looked kinda empty out there,” he said. “I don’t really feel that, that’s not my thing. I feel like we need a little bit of peoples on the stage. That’s just my personal preference when it comes to my events but everybody got their own twists and their own styles and the way they do things. I must say that the battles ran smooth though without the people on the stage.”
Talking about the much-discussed battle between Joe Budden and Hollow Da Don, Smack White says the Slaughterhouse emcee has raised the awareness of Battle Rap culture to “another level.”
“I would like to give Joe Budden a special shout-out for even taking a chance in this [and] basically making the transition from being a mainstream artist coming into the battle culture and battling a top-tier artist like Hollow [Da Don] so shout-out to him. You gotta give Joe Budden props for doing it. By him doing that, it’s raised the awareness of the battle culture to another level.”
Smack White later discussed the rematch between Loaded Lux and Murda Mook saying Mook’s victory is not even debatable.
“Both of them is dope emcees,” he said. “They both came with it but I just think [Murda] Mook was more energetic. He had more to get off his chest. Mook didn’t battle since two summers ago… I definitely give that one to Mook, hands down. Probably 3-0… It wasn’t even debatable. Gotta give it to Mook.”
Towards the end of the interview, Eric Beasley from SMACK/URL interjected to talk about how he hopes this event will encourage corporations to take an interest in Battle Rap.
“I thought it was great,” explains Beasley. “We’ve been really trying to get some of these corporate entities to invest in Battle Rap, so I feel it’s great that a corporate entity such as Shady Records has come into our culture now because maybe it’ll encourage other entities such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Levi’s to take interest and show that Battle Rap is viable… So when these big corporate companies come into the culture and expand it and put more eyeballs on it, it’s just good for everybody, it just brings more promotion to what we’ve been doing.”
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