Serius Jones & Lush One Beef Over "Ether" Fees

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Serius Jones & Lush One Beef Over "Ether" Fees

Lush apologizes for his outburst the following day, while FilmOn's battles disappear from YouTube.

Despite FilmOn serving up the year's biggest battle in the form of Dizaster vs. Cassidy at their recent "Ether" event earlier this month, the event has had its own fallout with battlers saying that they've yet to be fully paid for their performances. Most notably, battler Serius Jones and event coordinator Lush One have engaged in an ongoing, back-and-forth social media beef over Jones' claims that he wasn't paid his promised amount for his battle with Daylyt.

In a series of since-deleted Tweets, Lush claims that Jones refused to meet him face-to-face to resolve the issue and went on to send out an open-ended threat for Jones to leave the Los Angeles area.


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Later on, during an interview with Angryfans Radio, Lush One admitted that battlers were still awaiting payment due to his funding being cut from FilmOn but claims he went out of pocket to pay several of the event's participants.

"Sometimes things happen and they get taken to a public level," he said. "Basically, everything I'm saying is true. I didn't get to where I'm at by disrespecting anybody, by doing bad business, by making false promises. There have been different, unexpected financial issues that have come up with every single event in battle rap history. From the most classic Battle of the Bays to Summer Madness on down."

"This guy Serius Jones has already been paid more than what he owed," he later said, a claim that Jones disputed when he called into the show later. "The only reason that we were even talking to him and trying to accommodate him is just because he was so persistent and so adamant. It was almost like, 'Damn, I wanna make sure we continue business with him.' There was so many miscommunications on both ends in the business of that battle in particular. It fucked everything up. There's still other battle rappers who needed to be paid in increments and whose payments are not complete, a lot of whom I didn't want to prioritize. I don't wanna say names or put anybody in any position. The only person, from the beginning, where there was some type of debt got as disrespectful as he did and crossed the line [by disrespecting] dead homies that are icons on the West Coast. That's what changed the dynamic of the situation."

Lush levied blame for the unpaid fees on an abrupt budget shortage.

"He agreed to a certain budget, besides just the Cassidy battle, a budget for all the other rappers and everything on it and then he just kept ducking and dodging," he said of FilmOn's famously wealthy founder Alki David. "Saying, 'I'll pay you tomorrow.' Then eventually was like, 'Nah, fuck that, I'm not spending any more money' because everybody in his office was saying, 'It's not gonna be popping. These guys are a liability. The numbers aren't gonna be high.' He kept referring to battle rap as a small community, I kept pointing out statistics. We were the hottest shit to ever go through that network by far."

When Jones called in himself, he set up his own story differently than Lush and went on to go head-to-head with the event coordinator.

"When I was enlisted to perform at this event, I told them what my fees were and what I wanted it to be," Serius said. "I came way down in my number because it was last minute. I got $10,000 to battle Jin, that was 10 years ago ... There's at least five rappers that performed at this event — I don't know why he's doing this — where we all talked to each other. We're all on the same page in that Lush has fucked the money up and did not pay people. I came out of my own pocket to pay for my hotel."

Listen to the whole dialogue on Angryfans Radio here.

On Christmas Day, Lush One began to clear up the issue and went on to apologize for his behavior.









In another turn of events on Dec. 26, the official version of Serius Jones' battle with Daylyt, along with every other FilmOn-released rap battle, disappeared off of YouTube.

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It seems as though FilmOn was hit with a copyright notice by King Of The Dot, the league whose footage FilmOn had used in many of their battle intros.

Thoughts on the situation? Let us know in the comments below.

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