Chrome 23 makes history by setting off the first female battle rap tournaments for$25,000. This tournament consists of marquee names, all-time greats, upcoming emcees & mid-tier emcees. A healthy balance and mix of competitors.
It was a wonderful night full of battles with a great atmosphere, the operations for the event ran very smoothly. This is now officially Chrome 23’s fourth event. And from the past three venues they’ve been in, Nebula, SOBs, and Amazura, I do believe KAKEZNYC can be a real future home for Chrome 23. The venue was the perfect size for the energy and for the atmosphere to be captured correctly. Every battle was able to feel the energy from the crowd, Remy Ma & The Chrome team is working with the Ruin Your day Production team to have them running the production of this tournament. We have an in-house production team from within the culture assisting with Chrome’s ventures, which is a relief to many fans of the culture.
It was a ton of outstanding performances, so many of the ladies were performing with their life on the line and rapped their hearts out for the chance to advance further to that $25,000 prize. You can ask anyone in the room who was their performer of the night and you might walk out with several different answers and none of them would be incorrect.
It was that much of a competitive night from so many stand-out names some surprises some tough decisions and some bloodshed. All the things we love in a tournament the storylines to twist and turns for the unexpected & unforeseen outcomes.
I want to take the time to really salute chrome 23 for making all the proper adjustments to the way they ran this event it was borderline flawless.
the only critique I would have for the events would be for the judges. Hopefully, Drect and Remy Ma can have a full video breakdown of how the judging system was implemented for this battle and I would like to see all the judges give their actual scorecard for the battles seeing how they’re using a full unified battle rap judging criteria it would make for a more nuanced conversation if everyone understood the point system and we knew the actual winners and losers by the point totals.
Nonetheless, the judging panel was credible with battle rap pioneers legends rappers, and very credible media members providing some of the best evaluations of the performances today. The event was spectacular. The second round of the tournament will be filled with a bunch of competitive matches and there’s enough time in between the tournament for everyone to properly get ready
Judges:
Drect (Founder of RapGrid, Battle rap Historian, creator of Unified Battle Rap Judging system, pioneer, league owner & Battle Rap legend)
Sara Kana (Team Homi, Historian, Pioneer, Legend, League Owner, & God Mother of battle rap)
Eazy The Block Captain (#6 Ranked Battler on the URLTV App and one of the best & hottest battle rappers active)
Tony Bro (Credential Media member from Black Compass Media)
Reda (Credential Media member from Champion, 15MOF, AnR Show, Previous Chrome 23 Commentator)
LTBR Award Recipients
Battle of the Night: E-Hart vs Chetta
Biggest win: C3 over 40 BARRS | Chetta Over E-Hart | Chayna Ashley over QB Black Diamond
Upset Of The Night: Chetta vs E-Hart
Best Performances of the night: #1A C3 & #1B Bonnie Godiva | #2 Chetta | #3 Chanya Ashley | #4 Yoshi G | #5 Ms. Miami |
Recap Podcast
Chanya Ashley vs QB Black Diamond
Chayna Wins by split decision 3-2. She had good flow patterns and pockets, and her 2nd round was just as good as her first. The 1st round was debatable but edged to Chayna and she got the 2nd round clear. 3rd round goes to QB but it was too late by then for her to turn the tide in her favor. Extremely competitive and debatable battle. Not a clear win by any means.
Drect: Chayna Ashley
Sara Kana: Chayna Ashley Reda: QB Black Diamond
Tony bro: Chayna Ashley
Eazy TBC: QB Black Diamond
C3 vs 40 BARRS
40 BARRS goes 1st and has a weak, choppy round, and C3 responds strongly and takes the first clearly. She places her self in a dominant position. 40 still can’t get it together in the 2nd and C3 continues the momentum putting the nail in the coffin to secure the win. 40 had some nice layered content in the 3rd but still could not deliver it cleanly, leading to a unanimous decision for C3 in a dominant showing. POTN (performance of the night) caliber battle for the veteran C3.
C3 Looks to be one of, if not the best battler remaining in the tournament.
Chetta vs E-Hart
The Upset of the night! This victory was very reminiscent of Tru Foe’s massive upset over Geechi Gotti at Ulitmate Madness 5. Chetta put on a full display of passion, hunger, and grit in her material. She put pressure on E-Hart every single round. Chetta is rapidly punching and landing some harder haymakers from time to time, but even the punches that weren’t landing the hardest with the audience were still being delivered with full intensity and commitment. E-Hart is gliding and coasting with pure efficiency, versatility, and poise as the veteran she is. She is able to garner a ton of reaction that rocked the room at the exact same rate as Chetta. If not, arguably exceeds the bar Chetta set. This battle was an amazing back-and-forth and can easily be regarded as a top 10 battle in Female battle rap for the year of 2022. By no means, is this battle a robbery but it was certainly shocking.
Over the last few years, tournaments have truly shown us that sometimes the gap of talent doesn’t have a significant disparity as projected by the fans and the culture. And any given Sunday, anyone can put on a display of total effort and hunger. E-Hart was a favorite by 90% to Chetta’s 10%, and sometimes there can be an expectation curve by fans but more times than not, when you back someone to the wall and their only choice left is to be strong, you find out how strong they really can be.
Drect: E-hart
Sara Kana: E-hart
Reda: Chetta
Tony bro: Chetta
Eazy TBC: Chetta
Ms. Miami vs Hazzy
No Mics? No problem! Ms. Miami easily had the best vocal projection and base in her delivery out of the contestants. And that projection was able to establish her presence. You felt Ms.Miami from all the way from the back of the room. Her performance was on point, she delivered strong content and found the perfect structure when to place emphasis on her bars or engaging the crowd while she performs. She put on an electric performance vs Hazzy. Hazzy did have some good material in spurts but had an overall inconsistent performance where she had a few stumbles and pauses that derailed her own momentum.
Miami advances with a unanimous decision.
C Bri The Lyricst vs Sheist Raw
Shiest Raw tried her best to establish a presence and was delivering at a very sharp and aggressive pace. While she had all of her intangible aspects in order, her content fell short of being able to captivate the room. C Bri puts on a wonderful performance where she really showed the versatility of her skill set. She was talking to Shiest, punching back to back, and also used some comedic timing and landed some humor to defuse the tension in the room and defuse some of the aggression of Shiest. And this rendered to be effective for C Bri. And she captures herself a unanimous victory by the judges.
Bonnie Godiva vs Kay Prophet
Kay prophet goes first and has a very strong round to set the tone. Bonnie is able to combat that with some heavy haymakers on the 2nd day of a back-to-back. She battled Kausion, Saturday on RBE then travels to NY, and is still in her bag for round 1. 2nd round was debatable as both ladies did their thing, but it very much felt like 1-1 going into the 3rd.
Bonnie got the 1st, Kay prophet got the 2nd. The 3rd round was kicked off with Kay Prophet and she held her own and showed she belonged on stage with these calibers of battlers, but Bonnie was as well-rounded as we’ve seen anyone in recent showings. With a plethora of punches, jokes, directness, different flow pockets, creativity, freestyles, and props, you name it and Bonnie did it. Because of that Bonnie Godiva wins the 3rd with another potential POTN caliber win, in what feels like a 2011 QOTR classic vs Kay Prophet.
Unanimous decision for Bonnie Godiva
Kausion vs CheyRaq
Kausion coming off a back-to-back, shows a bit of fatigue in her pen. She opens the battle with 100% full intensity and energy but her content in the first two rounds was solid enough to hold some weight in the room but not strong enough that she couldn’t be overpowered. CheyRaq has a bit more versatility and range in her content. She was able to get into some dope rhyme patterns, some jokes, back to-back punches. She was just very lacking in energy. She arguably had the better material but didn’t deliver it as if she did.
Kausion has an outstanding third round and it was her best round of the battle and the nail in the coffin to secure her a win by a majority decision. She will have to step her pen up for her 2nd round performance vs Yoshi G.
Yoshi G vs Koko Kakez
Yoshi G puts on a master class and has a dominant performance in the first round of the tournament. KoKo choked at the very beginning of her first and couldn’t get her round off smoothly. Yoshi G used vet tricks to garner the building’s energy and steal the momentum. The second and 3rd rounds were also dominated by Yoshi, who showed superb class and poise throughout. KoKo had some potential but we hardly got to see it with the lack of preparation and/or ability to step up and deliver the material.
