Directly following his win against Joe Budden at Total Slaughter earlier this month, BattleRap.com caught up with Hollow Da Don to ask about his thoughts on the performance and the event as a whole.
“I wasn’t feeling it,” he said of the lead-up to the headline match. “When I got to the battle, all of that’s irrelevant. Fuck what happened, fuck what’s about to happen. You gotta focus. Time to go to work.”
Again criticizing the venue’s audio difficulties, Hollow said, “I wasn’t feeling the mics and all that situation.”
“But, how the battle went, first round: I went first,” he said. “I chose to go first which maybe I shouldn’t have did because everybody wants to hear rebuttals. I wanted to set the tempo though. I came out, kind of how I did the Surf battle, I came out with a message to talk about something, explain what’s going on. Most people probably overlook it and wanna hear the bars but I explained some real shit that’s going on. I’m cool with that if people like, ‘Aw, you wasted your first round on this.’ I’m cool with that, that’s why I did it. The message way more important than the battle with me and Joe Budden.”
Including his Jodeci / “Joe to see” wordplay in his explanation, Hollow went on to describe his opponent’s third round fumble.
“Once I started cooking him it was done,” he said. “When I got the Jodeci and all them darts, it was done. He came cool the first round, wasn’t too bad. I liked it the first round. It wasn’t really crazy, it was cool. I felt I edged the first round. Second round I came back, I think they wanted to hear more rebuttals, I think I only did one. Cool. My second round was still fuego. Fuego. Had a lot of punches in it. His second round he came with real fuego. I’d give him the little edge second round. So that’s 1-1. Third round, I was getting in my bag they started booing. So I had to get my bag, freestyle a little bit, get’em back. It was weird ‘cause when I mentioned the Tahiry shit they started booing...Third round I got it, put it like that. He just stopped, couldn’t keep going. I kept going and I showed him what battling’s about no matter what’s going on you keep going.”
Reacting to the consistently negative response from the crowd at the event, Hollow said, they’re “just hecklers now.”
“It’s not even like enjoy the show,” he added. “People used to be like, ‘Oh, it’s ‘cause of the long event.’ No, they’re just hecklers. It’s what they wanna do, that’s their choice.”
Before signing off, Hollow offered some final advice for the Total Slaughter league moving forward.
“I do have advice, they should spend more money on the audio,” he said. “Maybe book venues that have great audio rather than that look great if you want the battle to come out good.”
Following the battle, Joe Budden also reacted to the performance while admitting that both and he and Hollow "underwhelmed."
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