While Lush One may have caught some flak in recent months over his involvement with FilmOn after the issues that stemmed from last December's "Ether" event, the Fresh Coast ambassador says he's straddling a common-ground between big money and true-to-form battle rap culture.
Speaking with BattleRap.com's Chris Mitchell in Los Angeles recently, Lush opened up about his hopes for the future of battle rap and hip hop under the FilmOn umbrella and why he's the right guy for the job.
"[I want] to preserve the integrity of [battle rap] as it moves forward into this more corporate realm and generation," Lush said. "And to make sure that, like, the essence of what people find exciting and engaging about battle rap is preserved as, you know, we continue to gloss up the presentation ... If it wasn't for a cat like me in this situation, y'all might not think that I'm the most qualified, y'all might think it should be somebody else, believe you me it would be "PaRappa The Rapper." You'd have cartoon chihuahuas battling."
Breaking down his working relationship with Alki David and the corporate team at FilmOn, Lush explained how he's playing the part of a liaison between the staff and what he sees as a more organic battle rap culture.
"Everything we've been doing has been working on a schedule. A lot of this is due to corporate and the big homie Alki saying this is what he wants to do and I know what tools they have over here as far as a distribution label, as far as a television network. I know how to express myself creatively and get the battle rap movement represented within that context. I have to kind of meet in the middle of our vision — when I say 'us' I mean battle rap culture — and what he wants. Oftentimes that in itself is a struggle."
Detailing some of the projects that have come about from the collaboration specifically, Lush hinted that a new talk show produced by FilmOn isn't out to compete with already-established battle rap outlets.
"Ether Weekly is a talk show that pretty much focuses on hip hop, battle rap, and pop culture trends," he said. "It's nowhere near in the same vein as already existing awesome shows like The Dirtbag Dan Show and things like that. This is more for a more casual and trying to integrate them to understand what's going on."
Check out the latest episode of Ether Weekly and the first episode of The Road To Ether Episode below.
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