Music

King of the Dot Gets International

by AUX staff

From its humble beginnings in a random back alley located outside the Eaton Center in downtown Toronto, to the international-guest attended two-year anniversary it just celebrated this weekend at the glamourous Club XS on Richmond St., the battle rap league known as “King Of The Dot” has rapidly expanded in both real world impact and online presence to become the premier battle rap league in Canada, and arguably, on Earth. The new generation of verbal kumite that was sparked in the wake of Eminem’s movie “8 Mile”, as well as other legendary clashes of the rap titans of the new millenium, such as Nas vs. Jay-Z, and 50 Cent vs. Everybody Else, has given birth to an entire league of vicious lyrical combatants, stretching from Toronto to Montreal and Halifax, and from Calgary to Vancouver.

In the immortal words of Biggie Smalls, “it was all a dream”. Now, it’s revolutionary rap reality. The battles that have been meticulously videotaped, edited and presented are collectively reaching four million YouTube hits, and have featured the best of the best MCs from around the world of battle rap, whether the world-renoun battle champion The Saurus from the Bay Area of California, or celebrated sharp wit Soul Khan from New York City, amongst others. Yet, the King Of The Dot organization has used its commitment to Canadian culture, its army of volunteers, its diverse audience and artist membership, and its iron-clad determination to present an organized, coherent, and well-structured realm for proverbial pugilism, delivering over 200 separate rap battles to the world, ranging from one-on-one cerebral slugfests, to beatbox battles, to producer soundclashes, with new battle formats being brainstormed as the league continues to expand.

Created, hosted and organized by Bolton, Ontario. resident and battle rap champion Travis “Organik” Fleetwood, as well as Ryan “PVP” Morrow, two of the original contributors to this street-bred scrapyard rhyme cipher have given Canada its most legitimate avenue to claim the oft-chanted mantra of the KOTD audience: “Hip hop isn’t dead, it lives in the North!” A plethora of characters make up the league of nearly 150 KOTD battlers: the fiercely unpredictable Syco, the heart-stomping heel and resident president of the Montreal Division Lo Pesci, the grotesquely gifted gentle giant Knamelis, the low-key assassin-slash-legendary-lyricist Arcane, the viciously witty world-travelled champion Kid Twist, to Ottawa’s Bender, Halifax’s Hollohan and Pat Stay, the personality-pummeling poRICH, the hilariously high OZ, the bearded lyrical beast Jack Shitt, the stand-up killer comedian HFK, Nat Select, Charron and Mista Conspiracy, amongst many more. With various divisions and rivalries constantly brewing and shifting, the electric energy and audio assaults circulating in the air at any of the KOTD events is truly impactful on one’s psyche. The amount of jaw-dropping, heart-stopping, ego-crushing one-liners heard at anyone one of these events is dizzying excellence at its best, and admittedly; cringeworthy and embarrassing, if not downright obnoxious at its worst. But that’s the beauty of hip hop culture, it hides nothing from anything. On occasion, stunning streams of racist and sexist filth can be heard being projected towards a temporarily-hated opponent at KOTD when facing off in the squared circle, and stunned objections can often be heard in the offended audience. But when the smoke is clear and each of the three rounds is done (the battles are usually formatted in 60- or 90-second rounds of strictly acapella lyrics), a cadre of 4 or 5 judges selects the winner, and the bloodsport continues. Sometimes, upsets and/or “chokes” (when an artist forgets their prepared verse and can’t “freestyle” {spontaneously create} a substitute verse) will occur, which sends the crowd into a frenzy of pointed anger, outrage, and/or humiliation, as the MC tries to wipe the egg off his face and regain his reputation’s composure for the next event.

Regardless of the rare fist fight that has occurred at these events, the occasional no-show, or the sometimes nearly-unforgivable personal or racial slurs hurled at the opponent battling, King Of The Dot has become one of Canada’s most amazing phenomenons to ever exist in our multi-dimensional hip hop history and culture, growing to host events featuring hundreds of people, earning thousands of dollars, capturing millions of viewers and expanding to unprecedented levels of success, even inspiring other battle leagues around the world. America’s largest battle rap league, Grindtime Now and England’s premier battle league, Don’t Flop have often joined forces with KOTD and have shared each other’s most celebrated combatants, in a mutual recognition of talent and strength.

The unfiltered, unrefined, and often unbelievably fierce combination of acerbic wit, impeccably enunciated insults, embarrassingly enlightening personal revelations, wonderful displays of crushing wordplay, and general creative greatness in the realm of performance showmanship make King Of The Dot one of the best hip hop movements in the world.

Addi Stewart