With news of a confirmed battle between Dizaster and Philly emcee Cassidy released over the weekend, Dizaster joined the hosts of Battle Rap Arena last night (August 25) to talk about the match-up and Cassidy’s influence on the current crop of battle rap emcees.
“I’ve seen a lot of people that are confused with the match-up,” Diz said. “What people don’t understand is you can never really predict incredible match-ups. Actually, when you try to predict them, that’s when you have let-downs and all kind of crazy shit. You can never predict what’s gonna happen in a battle, like me and Cassidy. You can only think, ‘Their styles are different so he should’ve battled someone with a more similar style or whatever.’ It’s not even about styles it’s about where two people are at in their life when they battle. That’s what creates classics. I don’t know man, me and Cassidy, we both kind of got parallel type of things. We just were black sheep type of shit. He’s like a black sheep in the industry right now, I’m the black sheep of the battle game. We’re both almost like villains but we’re really good dudes. It’s a crazy battle for us. It’s a clash of two different styles, the main styles that represent battle rap."
Dizaster goes on to describe Cassidy's influence on battle culture, saying: "If you think about it, I know why Cassidy feels the way he does. He feels like he created everybody on URL, he really does. He feels like he created Conceited, all of them. That’s how Cass feels. If you think about it he’s the first mainstream dude to start rapping like that that actually battles. He kind of did influence that battle rap style. That shit kind of comes from Cassidy. Regardless of whether that was going on before or not, he made that popular. My style of battling, people will say it’s more the Eminem style of battling or whatever. King Of The Dot, Grind Time, whatever. I feel like I’m a mix between both but I represent a different style of battling to the general public. So, our clash is gonna be crazy as fuck.”
While on the show, Dizaster also compared the match-up to his battle against Canibus years ago, admitting that the Cassidy battle is a sort of second chance to competitively battle an industry emcee.
“Canibus is more my style,” Dizaster said. “Me and Canibus is more of a good match-up because me and Canibus have a similar-ass style. We’re multisyllabic, we focus less on the metaphors—we still put metaphors. I’m not one of those dudes that only spits multis, people can’t say that about me. When I battle dudes like Arcane, who steals bars, and I say, ‘They call you an arc welder... The reason why they call you that is ‘cause you hide behind a mask and the only reason you got spark is ‘cause of the bars you steal.’ That’s quadruple metaphor with the fifth one for the actual label that I called him. I really write crazy metaphorical shit if people listen. My metaphors are nuts but I focus more on the multis. So me and Canibus was supposed to be that and it didn’t happen.”
Dizaster also detailed the behind-the-scenes process of securing Cassidy for the battle and perceptions that he doesn’t deserve the match after punching Math Hoffa months ago.
“I did this shit myself almost,” he said. “Some people are saying [after I got banned from King Of The Dot] I got rewarded with a battle. What you mean I got rewarded? I got punished out the game. SMACK and all of them banned me after I punched Math. They tried to put me away. They told me I couldn’t rap anymore. So people can’t get mad when I go and do some shit that’s gonna move battle rap forward. That’s just to show people that I am my own entity, I can exist like this."
“This dude is really taking the risk with me because he knows what the fuck I will do,” Diz added. “To me it’s more respectful because I feel more like he really wants to challenge himself. We already know he can bar mothafuckas out, but could you do the other shit? I feel like if I didn’t get this battle the only people that should have deserved this battle would be DNA and Charlie Clips. Real shit. There shouldn’t be nobody else. It shouldn't be Mook or Arsonal and that’s not hating on any of them. To me it’s whoever puts in the most work.”
Listen to the full interview below:
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