It's been a turbulent holiday season for battle rap, with the "Ether" aftermath continuing to light up Twitter timelines. After some highly visible beef between Lush One and Serius Jones over unpaid performance fees from the Dec. 6 FCMG/FilmOn event, Lush One spoke to BattleRap.com over the phone to clear some things up.
Lush One and Organik also called in to AngryFans Radio yesterday [Dec. 28] and separately addressed the situation. Scroll down past the interview for their comments.
BattleRap.com: Ok first of all, how do you feel right now?
Lush One: That’s a good question. I feel really, really bad right now. I feel really low. I feel disappointed. I feel that despite my greatest efforts I let down battle rap culture and, most importantly, my team and myself. And putting us in that situation, regardless of anything else it rests on my shoulders because I’m the liaison that somehow allowed this to happen. And I realize that I need to make a lot of changes in my life and self-evaluation and moving forward. And I’m making big changes in my life. On a serious level.
What kind of changes?
For the first time in 15 years I’m not gonna be on drugs or alcohol anymore. I’m stopping smoking pot and all that to clear my head. To be honest with you, I’m detoxing right now.
I was driven to the point of madness by this whole event. I really tried my best efforts to not only get myself and us put on but all of battle rap culture. I wanted us all to eat together, the way that I had the event structured and the budget structured and the whole plan. Every single league was gonna be getting paper off of this event. The budget wasn’t allocated the way it was supposed to and what we had agreed upon with [FilmOn owner and financial backer] Alki [David], he decided not to give to us.
Why is that? Why did the funding dry up at the last minute?
To be honest, I don’t really know. I can only speculate in a lot of different ways. For the month leading up to the event, everything dealing with money with [Alki] was a bit of a struggle. Even getting our agreed-upon monthly paychecks was a huge hassle. The initial deposits, everything was a huge hassle. He kept saying he was gonna pay for everything and it was understood that the undercard was one of the primary expenses as outlined in every agreement that we had. Like, why would I knowingly put myself in $100,000 debt? It doesn’t even make sense.
There was no reason why I wouldn’t think he would do it, despite my trepidations based on his track record and what I’d heard about him. I believed in Alki and I knew that he was an eccentric dude that was outside of the box similar to myself. I thought he thought that about me and we were operating on us honouring each other with our word and I believed what he said.
And I thought that he believed in me and us and what we were doing and there was no reason why, even when he would show hesitance I was like, ‘He’s gonna come around. It doesn’t benefit him for this event to be a failure.’
I was operating under those assumptions. Basically I spent every dollar I’ve had. As soon as this deal came through I started spending money at a rapid rate, on myself and I made the mistake … When I was buying nice things and posting pictures online and stuff — first of all I know how to shop on eBay hella good. Everything looked a lot more glamourous than it really was. Second of all, I wasn’t trying to stunt on other battle rappers or on battle rap culture. I was just excited, like ‘look we’re making it. We’re all coming up. This is what it’s like.’
That was my own money that I was spending. I wasn’t spending money that was allocated for the event. Every single dollar that was given to me, including what was supposed to be my personal salary, ended up being allocated to the event. And I wound up being severely in debt as a result.
When was the last time you talked to Alki David?
We corresponded by email as recently as today [Dec. 28].
And what’s he saying about all this?
We haven’t really spoken on the phone, which I would like to do. As of now, it seems like he’s trying to pin it all on me and that we didn’t agree to anything but that doesn’t even make sense when there’s been documented — there’s been pictures in his office, there’s storyboards of the entire event and there’s pictures of all these battlers.
He’s assumed the entire event, like under his responsibility. Like from saying we can’t even brand it as King Of The Dot or Fresh Coast Media Group, everything has to be FilmOn. Like it was a FilmOn event, but FilmOn wasn’t paying these artists apparently. They decided not to at the last minute. At a certain point he thought that the event wasn’t gonna be successful. He kept referring to battle rap as a ‘small community.’
A lot of people have tried to run game on him, maybe he just thought we were trying to run game on him and that this battle shit wasn’t that big. They seemed shocked that when the event went off that it was actually a sold-out event and that the pay-per-view was so successful. He profited. He made so much money off of it.
And even after that, he still wants to plan other events yet he still won’t pay the outstanding balance that’s pretty much crippled us to the point where every dollar coming in right now is going out to pay people until it’s complete. I wanna make sure people understand that. Every dollar that we agreed to pay off we are paying off.
**Related: Alki David threatens Daylyt on Twitter**
In a percentage, how much of it have you paid off?
The majority. We owe about, I would say, 30-35% more.
Are things squared up with Serius Jones now?
He’s already been taken care of in full, in numerous ways, above and beyond. And the only reason I was gonna be paying him more was because I didn’t want there to be any discrepancies. I didn’t want people to feel like they weren’t taken care of, even if their agreement was fulfilled in full. And he was just going really, really hard on me and he pushed me past the point.
I do wanna take care of everybody and I don’t want anyone to have a bad feeling so eventually I would like to take care of him too, but at this point he’s definitely the last priority because, like, once you take things to the level of threats it’s like anything that has to do with business is out the window kind of.
You mentioned earlier that you felt like you’d let battle rap down. What specifically caused that?
I allowed outside entities to infiltrate our culture who didn’t have the proper understanding and respect of it. And I tried through all of my means and I felt like I literally feel like I spent every single day of the last six months working 14-hour days; me, my wife, my entire staff, my entire family, everybody putting everything we have towards this and trying to create this understanding. It still despite that effort fell short. No matter what, they refused to understand this but still I allowed that to happen under my watch and that’s where I let battle rap down and that’s where I feel bad.
It was done with nothing but the best of intentions for all of us and I’m glad that, even though it makes me look really, really bad, I’m glad that everything came about and I really have hope that in time people will see that all I did was try to put everybody on and give everybody the biggest check that they’ve ever got and the biggest opportunity on the biggest platform.
And even for FilmOn, I wanted them to gain legitimacy from this and get respect as being the corporation that believed in battle rap and that wanted to take this to the next level. Ultimately, they had the means to fix this for themselves, for us, and for the culture and they chose to let everybody down.
How has this impacted your relationship with King Of The Dot?
I still love and support King Of The Dot, and always will.
Will you be continuing to work with them in the future?
Yes, absolutely. We already have things in the works, so it’s like … it’s dependent on a lot of factors and ultimately whatever my involvement is with battle rap culture moving forward, King Of The Dot is a part of me, like I’m a part of King Of The Dot forever no matter what happens. First and foremost, Organik and those guys are like family to me regardless of if things happen and we didn’t see eye-to-eye or we made moves that weren’t in accordance with one another. I still feel that love and fraternity with them and always will.
And will you continue in your role as the face of the Fresh Coast division of King Of The Dot?
I would say tentatively, yes. But first and foremost, I really gotta focus on myself and focus on getting myself healthy because I’m no good to anybody if I can’t take care of myself, let alone King Of The Dot. That’s my primary focus because I literally have lost a lot of myself and have gone a bit insane throughout this whole ordeal, trying so hard to make everything work and hold it together and it kind of fell apart. That’s really where I’m at with everything.
So the headline isn’t “Lush One Steps Down From King Of The Dot”?
No. No, absolutely not. It’s far from that.
You mentioned the detoxing stuff. There’s been a lot of talk about drugs and obviously that’s a big part of your persona. Would you say drugs had an impact on the way this event turned out?
I think it’s been a big impact on my life for the past decade-plus. The common denominator in every mistake I’ve made … I don’t wanna 'blame drugs' because ultimately it’s me making the decision and there’s more to it than that because it’s deeply ingrained behaviour.
I know that I was led to the level of drug use that I even embarked upon because of the stress and the press of this event. I was taking a bunch of Adderall like a fucking college kid cramming for an exam. And just going days without sleeping sometimes just literally obsessed with this event, to the point where it consumed my life. The stresses of money and everything that came along with it. Literally all the dynamics that the event brought on with the different business partners that I’ve had for years and people that I’ve been working with in battle rap culture and outside of it. And friendships that were lost and team members that have come and gone and huge ordeals and explosions like every other day. Not to mention, internal problems with my family and all kinds of shit going on. Then dealing with something on such a large scale in a city like L.A. and all the politics that come with it on a street level that admittedly I wasn’t prepared for either.
All that shit kinda created a perfect storm with the drugs. And me kind of hoping the whole time that this fucking rich guy would understand, would share my vision and would come around and agree to his word and take care of us when all we were trying to do was make him shine too. I thought it was a no brainer. There’s no way I would willingly put us in that situation, but looking back, would I do anything different? There’s definitely certain things I would do differently …
Like what?
It’s hard to say exactly. I could say I wouldn’t have booked that Serius battle but the reason I even did that to begin with is because I knew Daylyt deserved a major battle on that card and I really wanted to get Daylyt a major look. And Serius was putting it out there before I’d even spoken to him that he was on the card. Even though we already had a full card at that point, I was like ‘let’s add this.’
The work that Daylyt’s put in as arguably one of the best battlers in the world coming from a place where we don’t get that recognition. People don’t look at emcees from L.A. as amongst the world-class normally. Diz and Daylyt are the only people who have glanced at that.
Everybody’s seen what I’m able to do and what I’m capable of while greatly inhibited, while faded off my ass. Imagine what I could do sober…
What can we expect next? You’ve been working with Teddy Grizzle on the Battle Of The Bay 7 card, which has also had its own issues with the trailers coming out and kind of flopping and [longtime battle rap cameraman/editor] Avocado speaking out publicly about wanting to make sure the BOTB brand isn’t sullied by a half-assed event with all this other stuff going on. How will you be working with Teddy, and with KOTD on that event going forward?
Well, ultimately, Battle of the Bay, as an event series, as you know, predates King Of The Dot. The common denominator between every single Battle Of The Bay is Avocado and myself.
And Dirtbag Dan.
Yeah, and Dirtbag Dan as well. There are several other determining factors but those three being the primary ones. There are several others but really it’s Avocado and my vision that we put together. From the beginning we’d set up the battles together and choose the venue locations and everything. It’s been us from the jump. So this whole event was a lot different because Teddy went into the game with most of the matches and everything solidified and there was a major event going on in the Bay Area and Teddy and I had a cool relationship so it made sense to brand it as Battle Of The Bay and then I kind of helped bridge the gap between King Of The Dot and Teddy. Moving forward at this point, I’m taking a backseat on the business end, mainly due to the whole debacle from Ether.
This is least hands-on I’ve even been with Battle Of The Bay but of course it still has my full support. It’s officially Battle Of The Bay now that Avocado has co-signed it.
Do you have any worries that specific battlers might not want to work with you after what happened? The Saurus and Rum Nitty had tweeted something about how they were still waiting for money, but now they’re both on this new card in a few weeks.
Both of those guys have been taken care of in full now. But to be honest with you, it’s all based on individual relationships. And this whole game has always been based on individual relationships and I’ve been working my ass off to preserve each and every one of them because they’re invaluable. It obviously didn’t add to any credibility but I’m confident enough that all these individuals that I chose to work with on this event, almost all of them are people I want to continue to work with and already had an established rapport with and have multi-battle contracts with and things like that. There’s a level of respect and understanding of the vision that we share so I’m confident that we’ll be able to supersede that. I’m also confident that I’m a motherfuckin’ hard-ass worker for this shit and wherever I’m at, money comes.
You’re also a smooth-ass talker too.
I mean, yeah. At the end of the day I’m a smooth talker but I also deliver results that are undeniable and I’m not trying to run game on anyone. I’m being transparent. I let people know what I want out of them and the situation beforehand. Most of the rappers know what’s up. They get it. And I understand their situations and we all have different arrangements for what I can afford to pay off but everybody’s getting paid in full and I know that they’re confident in that deep down.
Anything else you want to say?
To anyone who doubted me and always thought that I was a nuisance or fucking up battle rap culture in any way, I understand why you feel that way. But hopefully in time you’ll see my grand vision and what my presence is really bringing to this entire movement and beyond. And to all the people that support me, thank you. Without y’all I wouldn’t be able to be where I’m at and just know that all this means is that I’m gonna come back ten times stronger than ever before and you’re gonna see a brand new me. My only chance for survival at this point — beyond in the realm of hip hop but in life in general — is a complete 180. And I’ve really gotta flip my script and I have the courage from all of y’all and from within myself to embark on that.
This interview has been edited (only slightly) for clarity.
Lush One & Organik Address Issues On AngryFans Radio
In an interview done minutes after he spoke with BattleRap.com, Lush was on AngryFan Radio and started by stating some of the inconsistencies in his business dealings with FilmOn and Alki David in particular. "The artists had an agreement with me, and I had an agreement with [Alki David], and perhaps I needed to make that more clear with Alki," he said "There is a lot of money in personal checks we never received ... and Fresh Coast Media Group went out of pocket."
When asked whether King of the Dot was involved in Ether, Lush One said "the only way they were really involved was because I was involved and I fuck with King of the Dot." He mentions that he wanted to pay King Of The Dot a part of his FilmOn budget as sponsorship money, and have them work together in a mutually beneficial business relationship, sharing the releases of the Ether event. Lush One said these plans never flourished because of a change of heart of Alki David and FilmOn.
West Coast battler Danny Myers, who faced Heartless at Ether, then got on the line to discuss details of his payment from the event and the delay in him receiving it. He stated there was no more confusion regarding his payment, and him and Lush cleared the air on the show.
Lush ended by thanking those who had been patient with him throughout the process and mentioned that he had recently gone "100 racks" in debt trying to pay back Ether's performers.
King Of The Dot CEO Organik called in for the last half hour of the show. He wanted to clear the air because he felt "King of the Dot's name was still being thrown around with FilmOn" and to also explain battlers' pay and revenue streams.
He explained that battlers are paid based on their demand, and he will only invest in a battler if he feels he is getting an equal return from their performance. "If I pay you $4,000, I expect $4,000 back," he said. "It's just business."
"I'm just not one to be sitting here and talking about people's personal numbers," he continued "because that's the Number 1 rule of business you don't break; you don't expose stuff."
He also explained his current relationship with Lush and his opinion on the recent FilmOn event. "I havent really had a talk with Lush yet, I'm waiting for everything to die down," he said. "I know Lush has never had bad intentions for anybody ... He is a good dude and he really wants the best for everybody." He explained that Lush's dispute with Serius Jones and his "lashing out" is a result of Lush's efforts to go above and beyond going unappreciated by battlers.
Angryfan asked about the current situation with Organik and Math Hoffa, as they have been exchanging tweets back and forth for the past few months. "Me and Math have talked," he said. "I got a lot of respect for Math... I've never had any issues with him personally. But what happened, happened and its unfortunate... We all suffered from it and I hope we can move forward."
Additional files from Stu Mitchell.
Thoughts on the situation? Let us know in the comments below.
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