Da Hustla Scammed The Culture

Is This The Energy?

From the time Cassidy vs John John Da Don got announced on September 16th to take place on October 19th, something felt strange and kind of off about it. 

The randomness of it definitely plays a part in that. Whenever Cassidy is mentioned, to be frank John John was never one of the names really thrown into the conversation of who the next Cassidy battle should be.

Of course, it was nice to see Cassidy working with a platform that wasn’t URL or RBE. Still, when so much is made oftentimes about how much Cassidy makes and how much of a boon for business he can be, one can’t help but wonder about the financial logistics of Cassidy working with a smaller platform in terms of scale and budget.

But even with some questions, I was still open to the battle and everything being successful. Then Cassidy didn’t post the flyer for himself vs John John on social media until 10 days later.

Let me reiterate: Cassidy didn’t post the flyer for the battle until almost 2 WEEKS LATER. As a fan and analyst of battle rap, my antennas are starting to go up and something feels extremely off here.

Let’s be totally honest here. When Cassidy is booked, 80% of it is for the promo and honestly saying 80% is being generous. We don’t have to hide it. The actual on stage product we get from Cassidy isn’t what commands him making the money he makes, but he’s one of the best ever at selling the show. And that is a very important thing. I say that to say if one of THE premier promo guys has a battle booked, but he doesn’t acknowledge it to his fan base until over a week later and then doesn’t show his face for interviews for the same amount of time, red flags are being noticed. 

As media, we stay in our place, allowing things to play out. But as more and more time passes leading up to the battle, the rest of the culture starts to pick up on this weirdness, to the point where John John even acknowledges publicly how odd it is that Cassidy isn’t promoting in some of his own interviews (we’ll get back to this later).

Cassidy battles usually come with a pre-recorded face-off. His encounters with Goodz, Arsonal, and Hitman Holla all have those styles of face-offs, so even with how bizarre everything felt, we at least thought we’d get a face-off. 

And it never happened. Bullpen announces face-offs for the day before the event, but Cassidy and John John still don’t face off. But this time, no one can get in touch with Cassidy. No one knew he wasn’t coming; he just wasn’t there. 

Fuck red flags. We’re at code red now. At this point, it’s a serious concern whether or not Cassidy will even show up at the event tomorrow, something that other prominent media members expressed as well.

And then it happens. October 19th, the morning of Bullpen’s Endgame event. It’s made official: Cassidy has backed out of the battle due to illness. 

"Don't Trust Anyone." Not Even The Contract You Sign

While I don’t feel comfortable speculating on if Cassidy was genuinely sick or not, the issue is that even if he’s telling the truth, he did such a poor and out-of-character job of promoting leading into the event that it’s hard to argue against someone who feels like all of this weirdness shows someone who wasn’t going to do the battle in the first place. It painted an even more insidious picture when LTBR’s own France was told by John John directly that Cassidy wanted things in the contract changed as to where if for some reason the battle didn’t go down and it “wasn’t Cassidy’s fault”, that Cassidy would get to keep his front end money. Cassidy was also the hold on the contract being finalized, and presumptively, why did the battle announcement and event date wound up closer to each other than one might think for a Cassidy affair? If that isn’t eyebrow-raising, then I don’t know what it is.

But let’s get further into this contract. As I outlined earlier, Cassidy, for the first time isn’t working with a URL or RBE in a sense of the budget. Bullpen can be seen as a step down in terms of that, but that’s why apparently the deal was constructed in a way where the majority of Cassidy’s payout would come in the way of ticket sales, PPV sales, and a deal John John had in place with Breaking Glass Pictures to have the battle distributed on platforms such as Amazon, Peacock, and Tubi that Cassidy would have also received royalties from. This makes all of Cassidy’s behavior extremely contradictory and counterintuitive. 

If that all was negotiated upon, I have a hard time understanding the tune Cassidy was singing to bloggers during the time and what he’s saying now about “business discrepancies” or “bad business” being the source of his lack of engagement with the battle. If a large amount of what is potentially earned for himself is based on how well the PPV does, and he signed and agreed to that, I would have assumed that would mean if ANYONE wants this event to be a success, that’s not named John John Da Don, that it would be Cassidy! Working with a smaller platform that maybe can’t provide the upfront money he’s probably accustomed to but still complaining after he signed something structured to make still it something worth his while is something that is impossible to endorse or shoot bail on. 

John John Da Don Addresses Cassidy on PSA Reloaded

Cassidy’s contract also had clauses about face-offs and interviews being mandatory. And outside of speaking with HipHopIsReal twice, Cassidy doesn’t hold up his end of the deal there either. Cassidy did have a personal situation happen with the passing of his friend and producer Crooklyn Beats in the lead-up to the event. However, the onus still goes on Cassidy to either communicate about something he’s going through or to do his best to make sure these clauses are fulfilled, which again, he agreed upon.

Cassidy also has had things to say about the Endgame card itself highlighting a lack of promotion from the other battles on the card as to why he didn’t like the situation of the whole event. And this here is where I have to call total bullshit. 

Cassidy is doing this thing where he’s implying that all of the promo for the event was going to fall on him and that when he’s not getting the type of money that he usually gets, it excuses him not holding up his end of the deal. And that is a cop-out, lame-ass reason to give. For starters, Cassidy vs John John is the main event of the card, and while it was a major card, something Cassidy doesn’t seem to understand is that it was a “major card” by Bullpen standards. Meaning, yeah, there are other big names involved, like Jaz The Rapper, T-Rex, and Tay Roc, but they’re not facing other household stars, they’re facing homegrown Bullpen talents like Bad Newz and Clone. 

Cassidy vs John John is THE selling point of the event because it’s the only battle with two huge stars in it, so yes, the promotion of the event hinged on both Cassidy and John to do their parts, and it’s wild to think anyone else shares the same promotional load that they do. It would have been nice to get a T-Rex and Bad Newz face-off and if things went according to schedule, I have to imagine John John wanted to do one for them as well, but when Cassidy is being hard to get to meet his obligation, it makes it hard to justify spending the money on travel, equipment and a venue for a face off production if you can’t even get your main event guy to show up. 

No Effort, No Marketing, No Money—Shocking!

Expecting money from your backend without any promotional effort is like waiting for a text from someone you never gave your number to. 

Cassidy did zero of the work needed to make this event pop, meanwhile John John made appearances on several platforms promoting the battle. Whether it was Drect’s podcast, Battle Rap Trap, M3S3, 15Mofe, HipHopIsReal and PSA Reloaded. John John did his end. So this idea that Cassidy tries to present here is such bullshit and honestly shameful because the person you’re doing business with is actually making an effort, all while Cassidy is almost acting as if he doesn’t even have a battle happening. Point blank, Cassidy sitting there and making up this world where they were gonna use his name and promo skills to boost the event while no one else worked is a bold-faced fucking lie.

I’m not sure what Cassidy wanted. I’m not sure if it’s regret on the type of deal he agreed to. If it’s having second thoughts on if he and John John could actually be profitable enough to make it worth it for him. But speaking for myself, I believe Cassidy’s ego took a hit and kept him from doing his part because his battle announcement didn’t dominate the battle rap news cycle for the 4th quarter. With Power Moves and Winter Madness being mega cards, headlined by two long-standing grudge matches, it provided a level of outside competition that Cassidy has never had when going into his battles. But that shouldn’t matter if you’re “The Energy”, right…right?

The bottom line is if Cassidy cooperated with John John, there’s no reason why the battle and event couldn’t have been a massive success. The best content would have come from John John and Cassidy directly engaging with each other, whether it was in person, through social media trolling, or whatever else. But that didn’t happen because Cassidy didn’t want to put the work in to make it special. Because he wanted to pout about something he already signed. Because he got scared off the block by Geechi vs. Hitman (to the point where he was asking about the battle getting added to Power Moves) and Mook vs Arsonal when he didn’t have a whole quarter of battle rap to himself. 

The M3S3 Interview

Cassidy, in this same M3S3 interview, also remarks about having all these rounds he wrote. Again, I’m not here to call him a liar. But if that’s the case, after everything fell through the day of Endgame, why did he disappear again and there was no concerted effort to figure out something else to make good on the situation? Why does no public statement come from Cassidy’s side at all after things go haywire? If he had been really sick, all of this would have been an easy explanation and easy fix. But no, he disappears after backing out, never sends the money back, and never publicly addresses any of this until December in an interview he was paid to do. It’s not unreasonable to deduce that if M3S3 didn’t put whatever money down to make this interview happen, Cassidy would have continued not to address it.

A lot of people took this Cassidy situation as a time to bash John John Da Don. Claiming he “knew” Cassidy was never showing up and that he ran this scam using Cassidy’s name and likeness to generate buzz and make a buck. Addressing this is frustrating because it’s such a nonsensical take on things that giving it any attention feels goofy, but there is context that makes people feel like this line of thinking is valid. Bullpen Battle League had a lot of problems in 2023 with highly anticipated battles not happening, and the communication for these battles not happening wasn’t the greatest. So even in a situation where John John might be entirely in the right, there’s almost a Boy Who Cried Wolf effect because of the mistrust people have with the John John and the Bullpen brand already.

Going back to the M3S3 interview, Knowledge The God is right there during this M3S3 interview, and there are a couple of reasons why this is relevant. Knowledge hosted the Endgame face-offs, which were already covered, Cassidy didn’t show up. The next day, after Bullpen announces Cassidy won’t be battling, HipHopIsReal very conveniently had a video loaded up and ready to go on this topic, in this video, Knowledge slips up several times with his present/past tense and he’s wearing the same outfit from the face-offs, in the exact same venue. This indicates that this was shot before Cassidy was officially ruled out of battling publicly. 

This isn’t to say that Knowledge was in on some scheme, but the fact that Knowledge knew well enough in advance to record and edit a video about this while the Bullpen side wasn’t told anything until about 11:00 AM the day of reportedly shows a clear and inexcusable lack of professional and respect that Cassidy had for John John and the platform. And that if Cassidy really cared about battle rap and the culture, if he’s so close with and cool with Knowledge, how on earth did it take two months for any sort of acknowledgment of the situation from Cassidy. 

All Cassidy has done is make no sense and contradict himself every time he speaks. None of the reasoning makes the slightest bit of sense to anyone with any sort of basic listening comprehension skills. It’s easy to see through bullshit. I can’t say Cassidy always planned on not showing up. But I can say that Cassidy made up every reason possible not to put his best foot forward with promotion and complained about everything while offering no solutions. 

To add insult to Injury

The tenor of Cassidy’s disrespect for John John as a businessman and league owner is especially insane when he has all this critique to levy against John’s business acumen and the money being presented to him, but the weekend before Endgame, he was performing at A birthday party in Cincinnati. I’m not knocking how anyone makes their money, but being Cassidy and talking all this shit about how much more money you make than everyone in battle rap, but when you’re not battling rapping, you’re traveling to Cincinnati, not for a tour, but to perform at a birthday party of a small crowd of people gives off a strange optic.

It must’ve been hard work catering to those 15 attendees who deserved more of his attention than the hundreds of fans who paid to see him on battle night.

This isn't The First Time

Cassidy’s refusal to admit any wrongdoing or send the money back to John shows a clear lack of respect for John John, the fans, his own fans, and the culture. It shows a lack of respect for the battlers as well because what Cassidy decided to do has apparently tied up the rest of the content from Endgame. As of this article, no battle from that event has been released and John John did give confirmation that this does have to do with the Cassidy situation. So inadvertently, at best, Cassidy also put the release of the rest of the battles in jeopardy, and who knows what else he possibly affected by what he did if that’s the case.

At first, I really was caught off guard by Cassidy moving in this manner, but then I remembered 3 years ago when he announced the Worldwide Tournament of Battle Rappers , and that whole grand scheme has disappeared to the point where the website no longer even exists. There was a $150 dollar entry fee, with the grand prize being $100k, and a record deal with Paperboy Entertainment. A quick look at Paperboy Entertainment’s socials shows a janky, unprofessional-looking “label” with plenty of “pay to play” style campaigns. So even if this long shot of a concept did make it to the end to crown a winner, the prospects of the winner seeing any actual success or even the promised 100k sound like it wouldn’t have come to fruition. And this isn’t even mentioning the people who might have paid for entry into the tournament. Did they receive that money back? Did anyone even bother signing up for this thing, or did people see through this obvious ass scam?

I would say I hope this is the last time we have to hear about and deal with Cassidy. As a culture, we learned our lesson that this guy whose actual rap skills don’t match up with the noise and disruption he brings to battle rap isn’t worth our time and is constantly inviting us back into our space. What Cassidy did in the build to the John John battle and in the aftermath showed no respect at all for battle rap as a business or culture. For all the made-up win-loss stats and different names he gives himself, none of it matches up to Cassidy showing his true colors as an opportunist who’s only in it for himself and that all his talk about caring about battle rap is all posturing and that’s not the type of vulture we need to keep giving attention to.

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