King of the Dot is still only less than halfway through releasing their battles from this Summer’s World Domination 4 event, and they’ve already dropped the first battle from the more recent Battle of the Bay 6. Many are calling BotB6 this year’s best battle rap event. Bigg K vs. Illmaculate has already been dubbed an un-disputed classic and the hype surrounding Dizaster vs. Aye Verb was so that they had to release long before anyone expected it to see the light of day.
There was an overall sense from people who attended the event that Dizaster edged out Aye Verb for the victory, but since the battle’s release, the online polls have leaned toward Aye Verb by a healthy margin. Since the release of the battle, Lupe Fiasco took to twitter giving Dizaster some whatfor and calling the battle for Aye Verb. Lately, message boards have been awash with explanations as to why Dizaster is overrated or bad or what have you.
This begs the question- Are we in the middle of a backlash against Dizaster?
Dizaster is arguably the most popular battle rapper currently on the scene. He’s not some fly-by-night success. The work he put in battling through the early days of this new era of battle rap is un-matched. During the Grind Time Era, Diz defeated the likes of legends of Nocando, Organik and Swave Sevah.
When KOTD had the opportunity to bring a hip-hop legend into the battle arena, their was no better choice than Dizaster to represent the current ferocity that existed in the battle scene. For many, it was a first look into this new incarnation of battle rap where pre-written versus mixed with freestyle and personal attacks fused into a new version of the sport. There’s no doubt that Diz’s performance in the battle accounts for many of the new battle rap fans that have gravitated to the sport in the past two years. Against Canibus, Dizaster achieved nothing short of massacre, and he did so incredibly with some degree of humility. Diz followed up that battle by winning the KOTD chain from Cannadian drunkard battler PoRich, in another impressive showing of his machine-gun style flow and delivery. Dizaster seemed to have it all, the aggression of Sticky Fingaz and the creativity of Eminem with some degree of homage to innovators like Q-Tip and Rakim, but people questioned his mastery or control over the craft. Dizaster was at the top of the battle world when he lost the chain to Arcane. The battle was the equivalent of watching a slow and confusing car crash.
Perhaps the root of the Dizaster backlash is the slew of international and smaller battles that followed. Battling the Philippine battle vs Loonie or Detour, during a time when people wanted to see a re-match against Arcane or maybe watch Diz take out another big name rapper, perhaps were poorly timed for Dizaster’s career. The down slope hit its apex when Diz faced off against T-Rex in his URL debut, a battle considered by most to have been a let down, much like the recently dropped Big T vs O-Red.
However, Dizaster’s performance against Arsonal during World Domination 4 seemed to be a return to form, the kind of Eminem level creativity mentioned early in this article surfaced once more in Dizaster’s 3rd round and in an after battle interview, Dizaster very candidly admitted to his fans that writing before his battles hinders his performance. As is the case for many creative outliers, an attempt to change what works where the creative process is concerned can often gum up the works significantly and the road back to being balanced can be rocky. For Dizaster to thrive it seemed his process needed to be as chaotic, and unpredictable as his delivery.
Dizaster’s battle against Aye Verb battle was certainty not a disappointing bout. Aye Verb’s 3rd round was well crafted and clever almost on the level of Illmaculate’s 3rd round vs. Bigg K. However, Dizaster performed throughout the battle, showing his un-matched freestyle prowess by rebuttaling entire schemes of Verb’s after they were spit. Without calling a winner in this battle, I’d say the online polls do not quite reflect true outcome of the battle and, perhaps are the product of Dizaster backlash that’s been going on for some time.
Dizaster is due to put out some music and hopefully this happens soon but he also knows how important battling is for his career and lately he seems to be focusing on battles he knows the fans want to see. Whether you think he’s sloppy or that he doesn’t prepare enough for battles, it’s hard to question his dedication to battle rap as a craft and his work ethic. It will be interesting to see what happens when Dizaster battles Pat Stay for the KOTD chain in 2014. Love him or hate him, chances are, you’ll be watching.
