Eazy The Block Captain vs. Geechi Gotti Breakdown
4.25☆ Rating (Recapped by Q Moody)
In a summer filled with star-studded events and high-stakes battles, from the time Eazy vs Geechi was announced, there was something about it that made it stand above the rest. Even if at times it wasn’t the most heavily promoted because each man had other big battles taking place before it, the element of this being an era-defining clash carried through those weeks and months. The additional factor of the battle taking place in Camden, New Jersey, which is a trip over the bridge away from Philly (the original location for the battle), made this all the more intriguing.
This recap is going to cover a lot of ground so let’s get a few things out of the way. This battle lived up to main event expectations and both men have to be applauded for that. Countless times we’ve seen highly anticipated battles be underwhelming once the time came, but this one checked off every box. It was the masterclass chess match that we all thought it would be. I don’t quite have it as a battle of the year contender level, but it’s right outside of that and with some more time maybe I will change my thoughts on it, that being said still a great battle.
Eazy The Block Captain chose to go first, in a move that I think clearly backfired by the end of the battle. In a lot of ways, it was really surprising to see Eazy do the same thing that put Hitman Holla behind the 8-ball in their battle. While I can understand the thought process of trying to “get ahead” of the angles you know are coming, momentum plays a huge part in battles as we all know and unless there is an undeniable knockout round that a battler has planned in the first, choosing to go first will always be risky. For as great as I believe Eazy’s round to be, it is by no means a knockout round nor was it worth going first for. It may have been more worth it if Eazy chose to spend more time on the Remy Ma situation which in his first he admitted to there being some level of truth to with:
“Wanna know who I’m fuckin’, you’re gay. You wanna know the details?/ Nigga keep this on the DL/ If you heard a nigga did somethin’ to me over a female/ And he ain’t dead, it’s probably cause I still got the female.”
Do with that as you may.
He spends the beginning part of the round planting the seeds for this “Geechi Gossip” theme which would be reoccurring in this battle. The rest of his first round once he heats up is great, but not the ironclad lock of a round you need when choosing to go first. Geechi’s round takes a few lines to heat up, but once he gets to “let’s see if she can manage to keep you alive”, he’s off to the races from there barely taking a line off. This is the closest round of the battle, and anyone who has Eazy winning it isn’t crazy at all. The prevailing sentiment from me however is Geechi’s round had higher highs and a few more bars that stuck with me. I wind up edging Geechi the round because of that, but again this is the closest round of the battle.
The 2nd round is where things start to get a little complicated. This round is a battle of angles and ultimately with things like this it comes down to execution, but also how credible the content is. Eazy returns to the subject of Geechi being a gossiper and uses that as a justification for digging up everything he could possibly find on Geechi. The way he sets it up is actually pretty clever. He spends a large chunk of the round touching on Geechi’s run-in with the law and a case where Gotti served little jail time and attempts to make us as an audience question if Geechi snitched or if was there some funny business with his case. A typical battle rap angle to take that Geechi is no stranger to.
Once Eazy mentions LI The Mayor in his round, however, that was the moment where he says too much and gives Gotti too much room to diffuse it. We’ll get back to that. Eazy then does a whole thing running down the names of Geechi’s mother, mother, and father, and even child support and charges his father had. He tries to land the plane with the payoff being that Geechi comes from a family of thieves, but it doesn’t land for me. Ultimately it’s a confusing thing as a viewer to have Eazy spend all this time trying to paint Geechi as a gossip, but then spending a whole round himself doing the same thing he’s criticized Geechi for. It just comes across poorly and doesn’t make a ton of sense, even if I get the way he set up the round. It’s difficult because I don’t think the material is bad or lackluster, he has some great bars in this round as well, I particularly love the “split the money with your fucking son” line.
It doesn’t help matters that Geechi freestyled to start his 2nd and immediately nullified Eazy’s angle on Geechi’s case, by having the aforementioned LI The Mayor walk to the front of the stage. When you’re trying to paint this image of snitching going on and your opponent already has one of his co-defendants with him at the battle, it’s hard to buy into the conclusion you’re trying to lead us to. He also rebuttaled the child support talk by clarifying his relationship with his baby mother and stating that the kids live with him. It feels like in an attempt to match Geechi’s “messiness”, Eazy spent too much time digging things up and not enough time doing the thing he’s best at: counter writing. He almost completely abandons the thing that’s led him to the dance and it turns out poorly for him. Eazy being the counterwriter is, if he was going to do anything I feel like more time addressing the rumors would have taken more sting out of what Geechi eventually did. I understand the point of you not acknowledging it too much, even though he does a bit in his 1st round, but this was a straight up bad strategy from Eazy, which is the most shocking thing about this battle.
To get back to Gotti, it’s more than just the rebuttals at the start. His bars about being more tapped in with Philly than Eazy, talking about Eazy’s departure from Guntitles, comparing him to their peers, and highlighting which one of them is really the one who can do what they want. It’s all great material, and that’s before getting to this elephant in the room, the Hurricane Du angle. Du has been a consistent point of attack on Eazy ever since his rise into relevancy, but one thing that K-Shine tackled in his battle with Eazy was the allegations of abuse. Eazy has always strongly denied this, at points, Du also publicly denied it so the angle didn’t hold a lot of weight to people. But in the midst of a tweetstorm in June, Eazy and Du got into it and she seemingly confirmed that there was some truth to the rumors that had been floating for a few years.
An angle that had no public credibility now had some more validity behind it and Geechi used to full advantage and executed the angle extremely well, better than anyone has ever tried to address it. He found the perfect balance for it. In a round where it all boils down to the approach, the difference for me is that Eazy’s round was easily diffusible and had some hypocrisy issues, while Geechi’s ending angle was rooted in something damaging that may have some level of truth to it. And this isn’t a public condemnation or saying what I think did or didn’t happen, it’s about when you dig deeper into the material, whose content is harder to poke holes in? The answer in my eyes is Geechi.
The 3rd round is less complicated here and despite this being Eazy’s best round, in my opinion, Geechi has taken this round handily in the public consensus. And people might try to say it’s only based on the last few minutes when he interpolates Aye Verb’s famous 3rd round for Hitman Holla but directs it at Remy Ma. I would say that’s an extremely false statement and that it discounts that it’s not until 9 minutes into his round that Geechi even gets to that segment of the round. Without the obvious angle, Geechi was still putting on a phenomenal performance in this round and it felt like 2018-2019 Geechi returned when you hear lines like:
“12 years old I started bangin’, death or jail, more or less was the options
13 I got my first gun
15 was the first time I shot it
I didn’t stick around to see if he died, I just heard for the sirens
That means somethin’ happened, good enough, shit that was the logic
Nigga, before I ever got a paid to rap, my big homies gave me straps, I considered those as deposits
In the back of the projects, wrappin’ a brick
My niggas never had me ride for ’em
The first time I gave a nigga three full rounds, God was the one who called time on ’em”
By the time he even gets to the Remy Ma angle, it was already one of the best Geechi rounds in a long time so anyone acting like that’s all he talked about or that was all of the substance in his round needs to cut it out. On the subject of the Remy angle, anyone saying he was talking to Remy and that wasn’t directed towards Eazy needs to actually think for a second. The whole point of him talking to Remy is him attacking Eazy and saying that Eazy was a bad person to link with and that he was not worth any of this fiasco we’ve seen transpire for the last few months. At this point in time, those two are inextricably linked so even though he was looking at Remy during the segment, it’s clear as day directed at Eazy, there’s no way around that. All of it wraps up into Geechi’s 3rd being one of the best rounds of the year and one of the best of his career. It’s a genuine highlight and we won’t be talking about the state of battle rap in 2023 without mentioning that round.
All in all, I do believe this was a great heavyweight clash battle, but this is the first clear loss of Eazy’s last 4 years. He was still high level in this battle and without some strategic errors, I feel like this could have been a closer battle and it came down to the finer details of why Geechi wound up winning. Not just in my eyes, but on polls all across social media. I don’t think this was a crippling loss for Eazy or anything as he was still very good. With everything that’s happened, this was a very tough battle to win against someone with Geechi’s skillset. I will say though there may be some credence to the thought some have had that Eazy’s tougher battles have come against people who are more his generational peers (Fonz, Chess, Geechi) and that will be something to keep an eye on going forward.
For Geechi though, what is there left to say at this point? The more I watch this battle, the more I feel like this is one of his best performances ever. Coming into hostile territory and derailing the man on the most dominant run battle rap ever saw. His claim to being the best battle rapper of all time just got even stronger with this. After a year in 2022 where a lot of people felt like that was the beginning of the end for his run and a lackluster Coffee Brown battle prior to this, Geechi fully displayed the level he can still reach and firmly cements himself as the face of this era beyond a shadow of a doubt. Geechi clearly beat Nu Jerzey Twork and Eazy The Block Captain, the two names who have any semblance of a case for that title and now Geechi sits alone at the top. Reminding us all that this generation belongs to him.
Who did you have winning the main event?
— Let’s Talk Battle Rap (@LTBRpodcast) September 17, 2023
Who won this battle?@Eazyblockcapt @bigGeechiMbb
— Chrome 23 (@ChromeTwenty3) September 18, 2023
