In less than a year between 2018 and 2019, Aye Verb battled the two most revered legends in battle rap history: Murda Mook and Loaded Lux. The Mook battle came first and at the time of being announced, was viewed as very out of nowhere and the culture questioned why Verb would get a Mook return battle. For all the comments and doubt, Verb left that being able to say he beat Mook.
Due to his success in such a massive moment, targeting Loaded Lux vs Aye Verb suddenly made a lot more sense. The one name that Verb actively chased for years was finally in play and once again, the thought seemed to be to most that Aye Verb won that battle.
Verb, whose career and reputation had seen a ton of ups and downs up until that point, finally became pretty much undeniable. A conversation about the best battle rappers ever would be invalid if Verb wasn’t one of the first few names mentioned.
But that’s all gone.
In the last two months, Aye Verb’s behavior during these “beefs” with Jae Millz and Mickey Factz left so many fans bewildered and confused. For someone so lauded as one of the best pure rappers and pens we’ve had in the game, Verb almost refused to step up to the plate with Millz, opting to just continue to talk to himself in spaces every day. And when he did decide to rap, he dropped a diss that missed the mark so badly that he turned the comments off for it on YouTube and claimed it was the work of bots being sent to sabotage him.
In what was already a pitiful look for someone we revere as a legend in our culture, Mickey Factz decided to then focus his attention on Verb and released his Plague series. 7 days straight of releases aimed at Verb. This decimation at the hands of Mickey culminated with the reveal of shocking information and evidence that Danja Zone was asked and paid by Aye Verb to write material for him for his Geechi Gotti battle and that he attempted to solicit his services again for his Calicoe battle.
One of the best our culture had to offer, caught and exposed for using a ghostwriter. And there’s no way to spin out of it. Between Mickey’s evidence, Danja’s confirming of the story and Verb’s attempts to disprove it (which really only confirmed it even more), there isn’t a way to act as if this isn’t true or real. But then again, isn’t that where Verb has thrived for the last few years?
Even beyond this ghostwriting fiasco, Verb’s legacy and standing in the game he helped build was already beginning to circle the drain. Not because of his talent, but his behavior. For years now Verb has opted to turn himself into this sort of strange cult leader, who feeds misinformation and conspiracies to the sad souls who give him time out of their day. He cultivated an environment where he felt comfortable spreading lies about his peers and league owners, to the point where Verb really doesn’t have many places to battle these days because of the bridges he’s burned.
To put it bluntly; Aye Verb has been more focused doing weird shit than continuing to grow and expand his legacy positively.
This brings us back to the ghostwriting. Battle rap is not just a subculture of hip hop, it’s the essence of hip hop. It’s as foundational to hip hop as graffiti and dancing. It’s a core element of the competitiveness that hip hop bred in its inception. From Kool Moe Dee ripping Busy Bee to shreds to a young Notorious B.I.G making his name as a kid rap battling on street corners, this IS hip hop.
And in hip hop we’ve largely had one rule that sets us apart from everywhere else: you write your own material.
What other cultures and genres of music did and the level of creative collaboration existed was their business, but in hip hop/rap where we champion and crave authenticity, having someone write your rhymes for you is the LEAST authentic thing possible. It’s damn near sacrilegious.
As the music industry has forced hip hop to change and invited in people who don’t care for or respect core tenets of hip hop, we’ve seen a rise in people making excuses for ghostwriting. Most notably with Drake in the last decade where we have several different reference tracks of songs that other people created for songs we know to be his, yet when push came to shove a lot of people’s justification for not treating this as a big deal was “well…it’s not like it was his lyrical songs” or “well he’s a pop star we can’t hold him to rapper standards”. A whole bunch of nonsense to get away from the reality that a man who boasted himself constantly as “the best rapper”, couldn’t rely on his own pen.
Similar to Drake, Aye Verb has people that will defend his legacy by saying things like “well I don’t think he’s had everything ever written for him”, to make it okay in their minds to continue to rank Verb on whatever their imaginary, subjective lists of who the best battle rapper ever is. And that’s their prerogative. To me it’s very foolish to give anyone that level of benefit of the doubt when they’ve already been caught with ghostwriters. Bonnie Godiva who was caught and admitted to having ghostwriters never got that treatment, it still follows her to this day. As well as for Yoshi G. But when someone lies and peddles as much false information as Verb does, why does he deserve to be given that grace? The simple answer is that he doesn’t.
All Verb has done in recent times is make a mockery of the person this culture once respected. A pillar in battle rap’s growth, the face of a region, and we’re just supposed to look at him the same way after all the continuous antics, nonsense and inexcusable behavior from him. And I’m sure Verb isn’t the only one. There’s been rumblings and rumors of groups writing together and collaborating for the last few years. This isn’t a thing unique to Verb, but it’s his character that makes it even worse.
He’s led the charge trying to imply Hitman Holla’s fiancée being shot was fake, he implied Ave was a pedophile, he built the promo of Max Out 3 on accusing A. Ward of being racist and disrespecting his mother, and accused Swamp of having ghostwriters in the lead up to their battle. And the most wild one of the all is saying he would fuck Yoshi G “like the little girl she is”. This is the guy we aren’t drawing a line over, someone who’s done so much already to lose the respect of fans.
For every bit of good or great he has like his A. Ward battle, there’s double of the embarrassing Kevin Samuels/Hassan Campbell shtick that he thinks is getting somewhere. There’s double of the delusion and conspiracies that he uses to make excuses for his own shortcomings instead of truly looking in the mirror. Everyone is out to get him, he’s the victim, people don’t want him to be so popular and whatever other flat out bullshit he feeds his puppets. It’s beyond being a “villain”.
It’s pathetic. But what’s even more pathetic is that in the purest form of hip hop we have left, we can’t even agree that this thing is inexcusable. We continue to jump through hoops and do all sorts of mental gymnastics to avoid confronting reality, that shit like this is embarrassing and should be admonished. Not having sponsors continue to put money into people who have this type of track record. “Guardian angels” and “Big Gerald” are so important to battle rap history that part of me really does understand the reluctance to throw his whole catalog away. But if someone has been caught once with ghostwriters, why is anyone supposed to think that’s the only time they’ve done it? It’s illogical and anyone trying their hardest to not criticize Verb deep down knows that.
Verb isn’t the worst person in battle rap we’ve seen. He isn’t guilty of the worst actual human offense. This is a culture that houses alleged domestic abusers and rapists, people accused of vile, disgusting things that still get thousands of views on YouTube and maintain friendships with notable league owners. Sorry it’s true, battle rap isn’t a place where the morals and values of human beings hold any relevance. So no Verb isn’t the worst of the worst, but this shouldn’t be a situation we downplay. This culture needs to be better than that, it can be better than that. But if we can’t actually be united on something as cut and dry as ghostwriting, then maybe we truly are too far gone and the end of this is near.
