Murda Mook had only met Snoop Dogg in passing before he got a telephone call from him. The Harlem emcee was coming off a win against the highly exalted Loaded Lux at "Total Slaughter" when Snoop reached out saying he wanted to work together.
Now the two have put together "Gladiator School," a battle rap event during the weekend of the BET Hip Hop Awards (that Snoop is hosting) in Atlanta.
BattleRap.com: How did Gladiator School come together?
Murda Mook: Snoop Dogg reached out to me, and we got to choppin' it up, and he told me he wanted me to come on to this thing and host it with him. He wanted it to be like 'Murda Mook & Snoop Dogg Present' because he has so much respect for the culture. He told me he had so much respect for me that he didn’t feel like it would be right for him to try to involve himself in anything battle oriented without reaching out to me.
So he reached out and he told me this idea that he wanted to do battles as part of the festivities to the BET Hip Hop Awards weekend. And he asked for my input on who I thought should be on the card. We got to choppin' it up back and forth and I threw names out there. This is really his idea but he respects my opinion so it’s not a dictatorship or anything like that. We in a partnership right now.
Have you known Snoop for a long time?
Nah, I haven’t. I saw him in passing a couple times, we spoke, said ‘what’s going on?’ It’s not like we didn’t know who each other was. Obviously I knew who Snoop Dogg was, but he knew me. We’d just never sat down and kicked it.
And then you got that call.
Yeah, in the last three weeks I’ve been speaking to him more than my mother. We just building that camaraderie, that relationship.
So it’s in Atlanta on September 19. Is it an open event? Is the public or the media invited?
Public is invited. It’s not free though. But you can come.
Are the battles going to be aired as part of the BET Hip Hop Awards?
No, it's part of the weekend's festivities. The amount of power and press and celebrities that are out there already is gonna be a major look though. Especially for battle rap. We’re gonna try to have the winners do a cypher.
Is it the format we’re used to? Three rounds?
For the most part, it’s gonna be the same format. Different battles are going to vary. We have one that’s one round, five minutes long. Then we may have one that’s three rounds with two minutes a round. Then we’ll have one that’s two rounds with two minutes a round. Each battle takes on its own character. The basic general rules apply: there’s no rapping on beats. There’s not gonna be none of that funny stuff. We keepin’ it how it’s supposed to be. Every battle is gonna be a different format.
Let’s talk about your rematch with Loaded Lux. You beat him, and he’s the guy who in a lot of people’s eyes was 'the God of battle rap' going into this. Once you’ve defeated someone of that stature, where do you go from there?
Well, I wanna say first and foremost, shout out to Loaded Lux. That’s a friend of mine for a long time. A lot of people fail to realize that… People ask me like ‘Are you hyped?’ and I’m just like ‘Yo this is regular shit for me.’ I’ve been doing this forever. No disrespect to Lux or anybody, but when battle rap was on SMACK DVD… I’ve been that nigga that everybody wanna beat. I’ve been the name that’s synonymous with battle rap forever. So this isn’t something where I’m like ‘Wow, I’m really on a rush, I’m really on a high.’
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I definitely appreciate all of the love and the attention the whole culture is getting. That’s the biggest part for me. That the culture is growing at a rapid pace and I’m able to contribute to that. But as far as beating Lux… I wanted to win, but it’s not like something that I’m not used to.
The next thing is I gotta sit back and assess what’s going on. Because I don’t really have desire to battle people. My motivation is to become rich. I want to own things. I want wealth. Battle rap is a platform that I’m very good at and I have a God-given gift that allows me to display this to the world. I think I’m a little past the stage of wanting to be the best battle rapper and wanting to battle everybody for it. It has to make sense for me to battle. It has to add up.
We’re at a point where there’s now a lot of crossover between industry rappers and battlers. How do you feel about it and where do you fit between the two?
It’s like a king in a castle. I feel like battle rap is my castle, and other kings of their domain, they go out and they meet and they discuss things for the kingdom. Possible partnerships, like maybe I have some things I can give to your kingdom, in return we can barter.
I don’t want war with industry people, because I make music as well. That was always the plan. When me and Smack did it 11 or 12 years ago, [battle rap] just became so big on the street and it eventually took on a life of its own. But it’s still a subsidiary of hip hop.
I think more fans of the music industry are becoming fans of battle rap because it’s a lot more intriguing and people love competition. People love massacres and they love blood. They wanna see destruction and that’s just what it is. People are attracted to it. I think people are watching this like ‘Yo, I’m getting to see entertainment.’ It’s like the people at the Coliseum. They always put their thumbs down when the other gladiator on the ground because they wanna see blood. And it fulfills a lot of needs at the same time. The need for lyrics, and the need for rawness. I think that’s why people gravitate toward it and I don’t want a war with the other side. They need us and we need them.
With your partnership with Snoop and your recent collaboration with Busta Rhymes, you’re kind of bridging both scenes together.
Yeah, but as long as they know who this belongs to. That’s it. And so far everybody has been real respectful about what they propose and how they propose it. I just wanna make sure that even though we gonna do business together, the boundaries are set. I’m not gonna come in your house and just go inside your refrigerator without your permission.
Battling has taken a lot of big steps toward the mainstream. But with each of those steps, we’ve seen a stumble, for example the crowd at Total Slaughter booing a lot of the battlers, or having a lot of guys choking on the TV show. With the spotlight on battle rap now, is it ready to make that leap towards the mainstream?
The word ‘mainstream’ is a dreaded word in the community of battle rap. I’ve been trying to preach that it has to get mainstream in order for it to go where it needs to go. A lot of fans don’t realize that this is not a hobby for people. This is an actual job. This is a profession. It’s a career. Lots of fans just want to see you battle, and then as soon as you stop battling they move on to the next one.
It’s not helping you pay your bills. It’s not helping you fix your car, or get a condo, or put your kids through college or whatever it is. For this to grow, you have to become mainstream. If it stays stagnant then people won’t get opportunities.
I wanna be the first millionaire battle rapper. I wanna be the first person to get a million dollars off of a battle. And I’ve been breaking barriers since forever. Lots of people give me thousands of dollars now ‘cause I was so adamant on my stance of ‘I’m not battling unless I get $25,000.’ And at the time, which was two years ago, people thought that I was insane.
And then I got it and all of a sudden, not everybody is getting $20,000, but $11,000 is feasible now for a battler. That’s way better than $3,000. I’m just trying to break all of the barriers, the molds, the stigmas, everything. To make our value be appreciated. For everybody, especially for people who want to come in and do battle rap. You go low, and people are gonna lowball you. If they feel like they can get you for two or three thousand dollars, that’s how they’re gonna come.
If you’re raising your prices like that and other elite battlers are following suit, do you worry about pricing out ‘the little guys’ compared to someone who has Eminem money behind them? URL and King Of The Dot aren’t able to compete with these huge multi-industry companies. Do you worry that the people who built the scene will be pushed out of the way?
Yeah. This is the world we live in, to be honest. It’s dog eat dog. And you have to figure out how to make it work for you. You have to figure out your hustle. Obviously with Smack, that’s a little bit more dear to me because me and him came up together. I would never want to see him get pushed away.
But to play Devil’s Advocate, you have to see what’s going on and figure out a way to make it work. That’s just the bottom line. You just gotta figure out a way. Whether it’s putting your pride to the side and joining forces… It could be anything like that. You don’t wanna be stubborn to the point where it affects your business. Where it affects what brand you’ve been building. You gotta learn how to move with the times and you gotta learn how to hustle. You understand what I’m saying?
Right, if you’re the little guy, figure out a way to become the big guy.
Yeah, point blank. That’s just what it is. Because you can’t expect people to feel sorry for you. That’s not happening. Nobody feels sorry because everybody’s just out here trying to make a dollar. So from the artist’s point of view, new battle rappers are gonna be like: ‘Why should I care about not battling over here. ‘Cause if I don’t battle anymore, you still gonna continue to put battles on.’
It’s not like you doing me a favor in letting me battle ‘cause people wanna see me. I’m filling seats up. People come pay to see me. We both doing each other a favor and that’s a fine line. On anything, not just battle rappers and leagues, but on everything. NBA, any league. The players are the people that people wanna see. And the players should get paid as such. If you’re the attraction, you need to be compensated. Looks at wrestlers. Wrestlers make all this goddamn money because the people come to see them. That’s who the people wanna come see and that’s how it is with battle rap. I don’t think it should be the other way around.
That’s it. Some of the battlers are becoming bigger names than the leagues now.
The league should never be bigger than the player, at least from the fan’s standpoint. Of course the league is gonna be the league, but it’s gonna have different battlers. There’s always gonna be more. This is who runs it. We run it.
Tell me about the video for “Preach.”
Despite what people are saying, it doesn’t have anything to do with Loaded Lux. I had the song for a while now. I’ve been waiting for the perfect time to release this content that I’ve been building up. The video was shot in like February, but I didn’t wanna release it yet until it was the right time. I wanted it to have a snowball effect off of the battle and everything. I have a buncha different content that I’m gonna start dropping back-to-back-to-back. It’s produced by Triple A and it’s actually the intro off my mixtape that I have coming out with DJ Absolut.
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