The first attempt at Dizaster vs. Cassidy could really have been the final nail in the coffin of mainstream rappers attempting to cross over into the world of battle rap. Following sound problems, crowd issues, lacklustre performances and decade-old wordplay, it looked like the unholy trinity of Canibus’ notebook, Joe Budden’s mic drop and Cassidy’s interrupting entourage could shut down any further involvement from industry emcees. Fans were left asking themselves how many times recording artists could attempt modern battling without dragging the sport down with them.
The rematch tells a different story, though not entirely.
Before either competitor even delivers a bar, the feel of the video stands out from other major clashes from this year — in a very good way. Cramming 100 people into a parking garage and bringing back the pit format out of sheer necessity gave a solid impression of a mainstream star getting dragged back down to ground level. The clash was a talked-about moment in its own right, but it was also a nostalgic nod to a rawer time.
Sometimes it felt like Diz was transposed, Forrest Gump-style, into old footage. While that element didn’t make the battle particularly good, it did make it very watchable (even at 42 minutes which, for the world’s first $250,000+ battle, is probably the minimum you should expect) though it does drag its feet at points.
Diz was up first, and reeled off an idiosyncratic stream of multi-syllabic frustration, continuing the same rhyme pattern for around two full minutes. Those among Cassidy’s fanbase who weren’t familiar with Diz’ stylistic trappings before the battle definitely were by the end of the first round. And while he wasn’t quite sweating as profusely as usual, he still barked many of his lines with trademark ferocity.
He had some crisp rhymes (“guitar player like John Mayer”) and maintained a lot of momentum, but those criticizing the simplicity of Cassidy’s material would also have to balk at his weaker-than-usual ad-libs about the previous night’s shenanigans. He had a teetering heap of nerd references, from Sega to Married With Children that catered to the likes of, well, me, but didn’t land so successfully in the room. Maybe the point was that these were dated references for a dated rap star? For most of the battle, the reaction arrived loudly, but also sporadically.
His material on Cass’ near-fatal car crash was a high point with some great punches (“You got famous for killin a Freeway then a couple of years later you got famous again when a Freeway almost killed you ”) but there was a lot of aimless verbal flailing that felt purposeless. The scenario played into Diz’s body-horror vocabulary neatly, but the ground felt well-trodden and the crowd didn’t rock with a majority of that material.
They were the kind of crowd that went into a frenzy when Cassidy pulled out a convincing but comment-free Dizaster impersonation in his opening round, something that many a rapper has wheeled out before, myself included.
But new was not first on Cassidy’s agenda. His writing was straight out of ten years ago. For someone known as the punchline king in his heyday, his writing was very much sequential rather than backwards from the punch, and this detracted massively from his haymakers - which, aptly, seemed flimsy, like they were made of hay.
If you cringed reading that last sentence, you will have some idea of the level of wordplay Cass was using. “I’ve got bars like phone reception” was one of his early gambits, and it only got more inane from that point onwards. But Cass delivered his wordplay with the conviction of a man who’d never heard these puns performed before. And, truth be told, they were a notable step up from some of his writing from the previous night. “I hold up the nine like a man who lost his fuckin’ thumb” might be in the bottom three bars ever recited. Cassidy aptly handled the cadence of battle rap, and the connect-the-dots simplicity of his bars was overruled by his impressive presentation: all wide eyes and curled upper lip.
Dizaster went the character assassination route in his second round. It echoed his strongest content against Canibus, following the themes of untrustworthiness and faded glory. It was, however, padded with a lot of filler in the first half and stayed relatively punch free. The crowd’s muted reactions reflected this, although they were busy snoozing on a lot of good concepts as well. “What good is religion when you’re a shitty person?” is a wonderful collection of words.
It was right after this that Diz went full nerd again, gaining momentum and energy with out-of-place references to Julia Roberts (“You’re nothing but a bitch with a big mouth” and X-Men's Mystique (“Claiming a body that isn’t yours.”) Interesting angles, but nothing less than we’d expect from the gentleman who rhymed “like Megaman” with “like Megaman,” “like Megaman,” “like Megaman" and “like Megaman” in his Cortez battle. The heavy narrative style did not fully connect with the audience.
The crowd was definitely working against him — he had a lot of clever content that got no reaction because of how few actual “fans” there were in the building. Dizaster’s side was less vocally supportive. Cass' side wasn’t going to react for Diz regardless of how hot the bars were. Diz lost his focus too often as a result, and as much as he bashed Cassidy for monosyllabic “nursery rhyme” rapping, he still managed to use "insane," "brain" and "membrane" in some of his worst freestyling for a hot second.
Which would normally lose you the round had you not had to compete with Cassidy’s second, at the start of which he TRIPLE DOG DARES Diz to punch him, and the crowd goes mental, because that means he ACTUALLY HAS TO DO IT. He clearly doesn’t, which, subtly, was the point all along. Cassidy’s half-cooked attempt at a gimmick (i.e. getting members of his crew to shout at Diz in an homage to Hitman Holla’s first round against Tsu Surf) fell flat too, leading the crowd to become a barely-controllable rabble of voices.
Upon recovery, Cassidy used the new found decorum to do Christmas bars. There is never a good enough reason to do Christmas bars ("My bars go over niggas' heads like a mistletoe "). Needless to say, Cassidy tailed off very rapidly in the second round.
The same happened to Diz in the third, and it’s where the battle lost a little professionalism on both sides. It’s unfortunate, because he had some surprisingly languid delivery and built momentum really nicely (also ensuring most of his material disappeared straight over the audience’s collective head with references to the 1943 naval Philadelphia Experiment) but he fell off the rails near the end, claiming yet again that his opponent/someone in the crowd had put him off.
His cadence was straight out of his Krack City cohort Daylyt’s playbook, and his penmanship was some of his best ever. I wish he’d kept it going — he looked as disappointed with himself as when he stumbled against Pat Stay. This really was a case of bridging the expansive gulf between 2014 battle rap and 2004 battle rap, and Diz’s vocabulary and writing were bang up to speed.
Cassidy was at the more primitive end of the scale, opening with a hair scheme (or a collection of punches, at least) and continuing with an entire verse about how Diz wouldn’t really shoot him and how good his guns were. It’s like he hadn’t seen a battle in about seven years, and it was all sorts of watch-through-your-fingers captivating.
He had a few Canibus-esque clangers (“Your middle-eastern ass should take a laxative then eat some glass") but also moments of endearing faux-URL inspiration ("Smoke so much the inside of my car need foglights") and his presence remained resolute throughout. In the final seconds, he derailed too, complaining about time limits, contracts and every other argument that plagued the night before.
Luckily, they’d gotten a whole battle out of the way by that point. It wasn’t groundbreaking, and it certainly wasn’t pretty, but it’s the first time a mainstream rapper has participated in battle rap without embarrassing himself. It’s a battle worth talking about and has enough drama to keep itself tumbling towards the finish line. Cassidy is the one gold-selling album artist whose style has carried into the underworld. Barely. He also fuelled a whole new wave of quotable bad bars, and I’ve listed my favourite guffs below.
I got bars like phone call reception.
Strapped like backpacks.
You got no chicken - veggie store.
You’ll die or be a para-per-legic, I’ll wheelchair you.
I just just bought a gold watch, with those rocks yellow like the bumblebee on the Cheerios box
I don’t need no damn pyjamas.
I’ve seen more snow than St Nicholas.
You couldn’t walk in my shoes, even if we wore the same size shoes.
My bars are over niggas’ heads like a mistletoe.
My bars went over some of your heads like haircream.
Pop like father figures.
Give you head shots like barber pictures.
Put money on your head like a hair appointment.
I pop and make you shit on yourself. That’s why I pop shit.
Worth the hype? Nope. Are they ever? It’s still a strange, retrospective piece of entertainment, and it has far more merit than the miscarriage that’s left of the first-night match-up. I won’t call a winner: both had clear strengths and glaring deficiencies. But as a battle, it stands up.
Who won? Let us know in the comments below.
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