An Honest Conversation About Reed Dollaz
It’s time we have a talk about Reed Dollaz.
Reed’s contributions to battle rap are never in question and never will be. He opened eyes to an entire city’s battle rap scene, has given us legendary freestyles and has had moments of truly achieving greatness in the modern format.
But Reed has escaped A LOT of valid and warranted criticisms. Mostly because Reed is really unproblematic, especially compared to a lot of battle rap. He doesn’t get in any drama, he doesn’t do a wild amount of trash talk and that keeps Reed from being criticized for his low points to the extent in which he should be.
Tay Roc vs Reed is a huge battle. One that’s been talked about for a long time and has been awaited by fans forever. Tay Roc showed up prepared for the occasion, fully displaying how much this battle meant to him, while Reed showed up with weak material and choked. Reed, in one of his bigger battles of the last decade, choked and got bodied in Philly.
Reed hasn’t done himself any favors post-battle this go around, going on Instagram and in interviews being upset about the time discrepancy in the rounds he and Roc rapped. On some level, there probably is a conversation to be had about time limits being more strictly enforced in battle rap. Still, when Reed went on Champion before the battle, he expressed that he didn’t care about how long Roc rapped and that he was “Loaded up” for such circumstances. So, to complain about it post-battle after treating it like a non-issue leading into it is just a bad look and comes across as saltiness about taking a loss. Even in the instance where he stood to the time limit, he couldn’t deliver 3 clean rounds, which is another alarming issue with his battles.
Reed has now choked in his last five three-round battles (Tay Roc, Calicoe, Tru Foe, Oun P, and Pass). He also choked in his 1-rounder against Dre Dennis. He has choked in his last five consecutive three-round battles. In 3 of these, he is the main event of the card and fails to deliver a clean performance. That’s not something you expect from your headliner. In all these battles, he does have flashes of dope material, but it’s far from consistent, and then the choking and stumbling absolutely don’t help matters. But because Reed doesn’t do a ton to garner any unwanted attention outside of the ring and because we don’t want to criticize our legends harshly, it basically goes without being talked about.
And that needs to stop. We have to be consistent in our outage and our displeasure. Reed can’t be allowed to skate by for underperforming and choking when we will admonish other battlers for the same sort of behavior. Just because Reed is a legend, and we all respect him, doesn’t mean he should get a pass. He’s under the same responsibility as any other battler, and if he’s not prepared or his heart isn’t in it, he should stop battling.
In 2022, on his RBE appearances, Reed committed the unholy trinity of battle rap. He read off of his phone, choked, and recycled in battles. If this was anyone else, we would have been on their helmet. But Reed really didn’t receive any flack for this. To top it all off, he did not show up for a battle, and that was the last we’ve had to remember of Reed’s RBE run because he hasn’t been back since then.
Murda Mook vs Reed Dollaz may be the worst main event in Summer Madness history. Mook gets much blame and criticism for this battle, but Reed is marginally better if he’s better at all. Reed won the battle, but he’s not good in this battle either. Again, though, it shows how he gets to skate by because Reed isn’t an antagonistic personality in battle rap.
Reed has his moments. He’s excellent in his Chess battle, he has a major win over Rum Nitty, and he was superb against Eazy The Block Captain last year. He’s been able to get some respectable highlights. But they don’t outweigh the underwhelming or inexcusable stuff, and as a culture, we need to hold our legends accountable, even if it hurts.