100 BARS MAGAZINE 004 Dec/Jan 2013-2014 | Page 80

Jon Rines: Ah! Never thought about that! Organik: The days they’d have the Grand Prix’s are the most exciting things. So when the pay-per-view was at night in Japan, I’d be up til morning over here watching Gomi fight or something like that. Because the fighting twice in a night stuff is interesting. I feel like the way mixed martial arts is set-up is so similar like, battles set up months in advance, fights are set up months in advance, you can’t do multiples in one night , you don’t battle multiples in one night so yeah, the Grand Prix was a heavy influence on the way I set things up. Jon Rines: In the UFC you can’t throw kicks to a downed figher, but you can in Pride. What are your thoughts on battle rappers that switch up their style to perform at a different event. Let’s say a rapper on URL comes to King of the Dot, but he raps different to try to suit the KOTD fans? Organik: I think you gotta appeal to the crowd you’re performing for, but people are there to see YOU. If that’s what’s selling for you then keep it. I feel like a lot of people come here and thinkg King of the Dot is a joke league and something like that and they’ll come here and try to be a comedian and shit, not realizing people come here to see YOU not you being someone else! I personally like to see people do their same style because we booked you from your style. 77 Jon Rines: You guys are getting mad praise on these trailers and production too. Who’s behind the production for your videos? Organik: Bro that’s Avocado! I don’t even know how to thank him enough. That guy changed the face of battle rap. Back in the day, Avocado brought how to film new age battles with cranes and motion graphics and interesting intros cause this is what he does for a living. He innovated and made every other league step their filming up and it promoted us and made his brand look good. We also work with Mouse Media, Nico’s really great, the Hip Hop Vancouver guys. Our whole roster is great and Avocado is the godfather of filming! Jon Rines: I got a generic question I use to help readers overcome obstacles. What was King of the Dot’s LOWEST point? Organik:Definitely the Canibus battle. We went through a lot of tough times branching our product in America, having an event that cost up to $80,000 completely flop on the revenue side of things, coming back after that and having World Domination 3 not go as planned and revenue being really low there. We hit a really low point financially, structurally and mentally. We kind of all lost hope there. I mean it even shows when you watch King of the Dot 2012 era, you watch the beginning of Blackout 2 and incredible event. Vendetta on film was an incredible event, but after that it was pretty much a sinking ship but people wrote us off until our spike again with Blackout 3. And a lot of that was thanks to Drake too! Ya know, tweeting the event and bringing out a lot of people by announcing he was gonna be at the event. It really helped us get the motivation back and brought people. It gets discouraging at times , to work so hard for something go out and see people just bootlegging and not paying for it, you’re not making no money, you owing people back after the event because you didn’t make enough. You ask yourself , “what am I doing this for?” ya know. The staff ain’t having fun. It’s more of a hassle when I could be putting in a trade and having a mortgage. I mean, you’re following your DREAM! That’s a tough thing to do. This isn’t something I grew up saying I would do. I worked at a steel mill man. I started King of the Dot cause I got fucked over at a bunch of competitions and I wanted to have a place where rappers wouldn’t get fucked over. So yeah, lowest point was definitely the lowest point. I mean even after Blackout 3, Vengeance was a failure so it’s all about your last event and you’re playing a gambling game. We just got back on our feet by persevering and working hard and fighting through it. We won’t give up. A lot of people will fall back and won’t hold events but we won’t. We will stay busy. You gotta fight through the tough times to win and that’s what we did and we are back on our feet ready to play ball.