During Bar Wars’ “KingPen” event in the Motor City this past Saturday (July 18), BattleRap.com caught up with Jay Rell and $ (AKA "Dolla Sign"), owners of the Detroit-based Alpha League.
During our separate conversations with them, the pair offered an introduction to the league and also spoke on the current state of Michigan’s battle rap scene.
“Detroit has produced the most talented battle rappers,” Jay Rell says. “First of all, New York battle rappers are terrible. None of them are good. You got a couple of them [who are good], you’ve got [Charlie] Clips and those dudes [but] all the other PG's, Steams, Chess, all these dudes [are] horrible. Ain’t none of them good battle rappers. They all wanna be from Detroit.
“If you wanna be a great battle rapper, this is where you come to,” Jay Rell continues. “This is where all [of] the greats came from. This is where they’re going to continue to produce from and in my Alpha League, we’ve got like 70 fucking battle rappers.”
Elsewhere, Jay Rell spoke on his battle against Mackk Myron that went down in early March at Alpha League’s “The Invasion” event.
“Me and Mackk Myron we had a classic,” Jay Rell says. “If y’all don’t know Mackk Myron you should Google [or] YouTube him. He’s one of the top battle rappers in the world. He’s been that way for years. A lot of people are really scared to take people like that because it’s a big risk with little reward. I went in there, took the big risk [and] got a big reward because we had a classic battle.”
During the event, we also caught up with $ who gave us a brief introduction to Alpha League.
“Alpha League 313 is the primary league that’s going down right here in Detroit, man,” he says. “We’ve done a lot of shows, man.”
Elsewhere, $ dropped his picks for the Top 3 rising emcees coming out of Michigan right now.
“I would say the #1 emcee to watch out for is Gjonaj,” $ says. “To me, he’s the #1 up-and-coming emcee right now. He’s ahead of the pack. He amazes us, as he does the fans out there. Tonight he got [a battle against] Born so hopefully he’ll take it to another level. I would say Dyce Rolla from Alpha League, man. He’s got one of the classics that go down in Detroit at The Shelter with my big bro Quest Mcody, so make sure y’all go check that out, man. He just had a battle on Don’t Flop against Mark Miner who I would put at #3. Mark Miner is one of the up-and-coming emcees that y’all definitely need to check out from [Pontiac].”
Read more about Bar Wars’ “KingPen” event here.
Thoughts? Let us know in the comments section below.
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