Image by Rehab Regime
FRESH COAST x KOTD:
WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON
When Lush One announced Fresh Coast Media Group’s collaboration with FilmOn TV, many disgruntled battle rap fans took to message boards and Facebook groups to voice their ill-advised displeasure. They created threads about Lush being a “sell out” and turning his back on King of the Dot. Maybe those opinions were rooted in the way he transitioned from Grind Time to King of the Dot, albeit under completely different circumstances. Perhaps the announcement didn’t provide the clarity that people expected. Either way, the negative reactions and accusations were misguided. Maybe I can help people understand the plan moving forward.
But first…
Battle rap fans don’t realize how much effort and money Lush has invested sacrificed to ensure that west coast battle rap remains a dominant force. I’ve worked closely alongside Lush, Avocado, Aspect One and the rest of the KOTD family since late 2012. We’ve all made sacrifices. Some events have been financially successful; others have failed. Lush has personally bankrolled some of the best battles of 2013 and 2014. At times, he’s made his money back. Other times, he hasn’t. I’ve offered Lush a disproportionate amount of our proceeds and he’s consistently insisted that we split our profits evenly. The most common response I’ve gotten from Lush is, “It’s whatever, dog. I ain’t trippin’… as long we made history.” I’m not sure what Lush’s business dealings were like before late 2012, but he’s always been straight up with me. Lush made a power move by teaming up with a well financed company. In doing so, he granted us the opportunity to work with a bigger budget, limiting our financial risk. Our goal isn’t to abandon the KOTD ship. The goal is to produce better content for KOTD without going broke in the process.
The Plan Moving Forward….
FilmOn TV is a free internet-based TV service owned by billionaire heir, Alki David. The site licenses over 600 channels, including a battle rap station that has been airing Fresh Coast classics on repeat since July. In addition to past battles, Fresh Coast Media Group, an artist development company spearheaded by Lush One, will provide behind the scenes and music-related content to the channel. The folks at FilmOn know that battle rap has tremendous outreach. Their aim is to garner the attention of battle rap fans with the hopes that they’ll become regular users of the site. We intend to promote FilmOn using the KOTD channel, which currently has over 250,000 subscribers and over 70 million channel views. Basically, they give us budget flexibility, we give them content for their PPV service and promo for their website.
Some things will stay the same; some things will change. The core KOTD West Coast staff, Lush One, Aspect One, Avocado and myself will remain in place. We’ll continue to work closely with Organik and the rest of the Canadian staff. Currently, KOTD West Coast battles are released 24 hours after a given event onto kotdtv.com in pay per view format. Within weeks the battles are uploaded on YouTube. We’ll use a similar timeline for releasing these battles. So, what’s different? Battles will be released onto FilmOn’s pay per view platform before being uploaded onto the KOTD YouTube channel.
We don’t know how this whole thing will play out, but I can assure you, we don’t intend to leave KOTD. We don’t intend to suddenly break off from a company that we’ve built with as a team. We don’t intend to replace KOTD West with Fresh Coast Media Group or FilmOn TV. Conversely, we intend to improve the KOTD product that we’ve been diligently working to perfect.
FCMG, FilmOn TV and KOTD:
· The main focus of Fresh Coast Media Group is artist development.
· FilmOn TV will host PPVs, exclusive content and behind the scenes footage.
· All west coast events will be heavily associated with KOTD, battles will continue to be uploaded onto KOTD’s YouTube page and cross promotion will occur between FilmOn TV and KOTD.
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