Calling into the Angry Fans Radio show last night, Organik addressed the decision to postpone KOTD's World Domination event until 2015, the league's plans for upcoming events, overcoming hurdles with bringing American rappers into Toronto, and his view of upstart leagues in the scene.
Speaking about WD5, Organik confirmed that the event has been cancelled and that the series will instead relaunch next year.
“Fuck it, I’ll make the announcement on here. World Domination itself is an event that I’ve been branding for five years now, trying to be like the Olympics of battle rap. This year, time just didn’t really work well with it. There was just a lot of events happening. A lot of the battlers I really wanted to get on the card that I had a couple match-up ideas for were locked up and everything. For me, I’m not gonna tarnish a brand reputation just to fill an event just because. I look at World Domination as something that holds a legacy in battle rap. If it ain’t gonna be pushing the limit every time then I’m not gonna do it. That’s the standard I hold for myself. If I’m gonna do something and it’s not gonna be excellent, then I’m just not gonna do it. So World Domination it was just a whole lot of shit. Toronto is going through a huge redeveloping phase. A lot of the clubs have been ripped down. It was very, very, very hard to find a club for two nights in a row on a weekend because everything is so scarce right now with everyone fishing for them. It was just in our best interest to push stuff back a little bit. It got pushed back a little further than I wanted to and then I just decided to say you know what, we’ll just do World Dom next year. November 22 we got Flatline 3 which is also my birthday event so you know it ain’t gonna be something light.
“Blackout this year is gonna be bigger than ever,” he added. “Flatline is gonna be crazy but Blackout I got some tricks up my sleeves for that shit. Last year’s was supposed to be that year. Last year’s Blackout card was supposed to be like the mega-event of battle rap. That’s how I wanted to start the year off. It’s so crazy ‘cause I swear to God man, I never worked so hard on an event in my life. We covered every detail possible. It was like two days before the event, you always think to yourself, ‘Well the worst that can happen is a couple people don’t show up.’ But then beyond what the worse could happen happened. A whole bunch of shit happened: people didn’t show up, people didn’t get their passports in time apparently, which is, I’m not gonna speak on that. It is what it is, time constraints. It’s passed. This year, Blackout is gonna be huge.”
Recalling last year’s Blackout event, Organik explained going to extra lengths to try to accommodate American battlers.
“What happened with Big T and Aye Verb is they ordered their passports too late,” he said. “They didn’t expedite them in time and then they went to expedite them when it came to short time but it was a big snowstorm so nothing was really getting through the postal services. So a lot of people don’t know the lengths that we went to even then. I went as far as trying to even get Big T a government-issued ID to travel across the border on land because you can get an enhanced ID. If you’re in any one of the bordering cities in North America you can get an enhanced ID and travel across the border on land. Unfortunately he’s from Illinois which is not a bordering city to Canada so he was not able to get that.”
Organik Addresses Small Leagues And High Stakes Celebrity Battlers
Addressing the increasing number of small leagues in battle rap, Organik said, “I have no issues with the small leagues.”
“My issue is if you’re starting a league and stuff like that, start off and develop a talent-base in your local town,” he added. “There ain’t nothing wrong with getting a couple of rappers but for a league to ... line up a huge battle that huge battle is gonna reflect so much better on the entire battle culture on one of the bigger leagues ‘cause the promotion is gonna be better for the rappers. If you really think about it and it’s something I think about a lot: what classic battles have ever came from a small league just dishing out money to two rappers to get them to battle? It doesn’t really happen. Yung Ill and T-Rex is probably one of the exceptions ... Nothing comes out the way it could’ve come out if it was done on a proper platform. It takes away future possibilities. The main thing is, us big leagues we’re doing stuff to try to push the limits. We’re not even able to build grudge matches with rappers ‘cause the second I build a little bit of a grudge there’s 30 little leagues trying to throw money at these guys to battle over there rather than letting us develop the talent, build up a good little story line, and help push this to the next level. That’s what people are intrigued by. When you have long-winded grudges and you got people providing content going back and forth at each other, it adds up to animosity. People wanna see it a little further.”
On the influx of industry rappers agreeing to battle for high stakes, Organik said “it’s the way it goes” but hinted that the money should be directed towards hard-working battlers instead.
“You do see a lot of people come in and they’re trying to take the money that a lot of the battlers have earned. I feel like it’s the battle rappers that have been pushing the culture as hard as they have the last couple of years that are deserving of this money, not the people that are just kind of, battled-way-back-in-the-day, sat back and let everyone else do the hard work, and then just pop in and cash in on it because they were a mogul back in the day. The fact of the matter is, their level of skill couldn’t make it pop back in the day the way the rappers these days made it pop. It’s the way it goes. It’s the demand factor and that’s why they’re able to get the money. It’s all about the demand. The battlers these days are oversaturating themselves so much that nothing they do is gonna surprise anybody anymore. The surprise factor is what intrigues people. That’s why Joe Budden and Hollow, a lot of people cared: what is Joe Budden gonna do? Is he gonna fail? Is he gonna succeed? Nobody knew. It was intriguing because of the surprise factor in it. A lot of the battlers these days they kill that. Again, not to drop names or anything, but there’s some of them that are battling two or three times a month. If Anderson Silva were to fight two or three times a month I would never care to watch it. But because he only fights once every six months I’m making sure I watch that shit every time.”
Listen to the full interview here:
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