During BattleRap.com’s interview with Beasley from early 2015, the URL representative spoke on a variety of battle rap-related topics, including the league's impressive growth over the past year.
Beasley starts off by addressing where he believes SMACK/URL stands in today’s battle rap landscape. With the ever-increasing amount of leagues popping up, many fans and spectators have questioned the hierarchy in the space, thanks in part to both of last year’s mammoth events: “Total Slaughter” and “Ether.”
“I feel like [other leagues] are still following our lead,” Beasley said. “They can have the resources, they can have the money and everything else that comes with it, but I don’t think any of them have been able to successfully emulate a URL event to date.”
“I think people will get close,” Beasley added when asked whether other leagues could emulate the SMACK style. “But I think [that] people have been watching battles for so long and being that the one thing that we have is authenticity. I’m not saying that we invented a cappella battling, but we were the first people to actually bring it to the masses and showcase it to the world. It was like the passing of the guard once we started releasing them on the DVDs. So because we have that stamp of authenticity, people revere and look at it a different way. They look at it as the original and I think that’s why you get Loaded Lux, Murda Mook, T-Rex a lot of guys they get a certain level of credit — even though they get criticism online — because they were the first people that were shown doing that. Even though it already existed up in Harlem on the street and guys were doing it prior to people having access to cameras — we were the first people to actually document it and show it.”
Later in the conversation, Beasley touched upon URL’s growth in 2014, citing the league’s rapid increase in YouTube subscribers as an example of how they’ve progressed over the last 12 months.
“If I had to go off of subscribers, [off] our YouTube fan base, I’d say [we’ve increased by] at least 100,000,” Beasley says. “We’re at about 400,000 subscribers, [413,562 as of publishing]. That just shows that we’re moving at a rapid rate. When I look at our analytics I see our growth and we’re getting more subscribers than we’re actually losing which is always positive."
"I think that URL really has an audience that you can’t really quantify because a lot of the audience is from the street," Beasley adds. "A lot of them, while they do use the Internet, they’re not subscribers and they’re not always the most Internet-savvy … There is an audience that you can’t measure. We also have a built-in audience from our history doing SMACK DVD which was a whole other medium and outlet to watch street-based content. In terms of growth, you always have to go by numbers and analytics. I think we’re doing great in terms of online audience but in terms of a street presence and a feel, [there’s] no other.”
Check out more of our interviews with league reps, including in-depth talks with Lush One and Eurgh.
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