Brooklyn’s own talented sophomore Christian battle rapper possesses everything she needs to thrive and take over the game of female battle rap. With only 12 total battles cataloged for her career, she’s showing why the hype is real.
We are a few weeks removed from the 1st quarter of 2022, which puts us right into discussions of who is having the most impressive year so far in battle rap. Pristavia has made her presence felt this year. She has leaped in all areas of her game. Her performance, content, haymakers, delivery, and angles are all starting to form into a polished product. She has a newfound enhanced understanding of being a battler.
So far she’s battled 3 times in 2022, and all of her battles have significant stakes and milestones attached. Detailing her 2022 thus far
The Yoshi G Battle
Pristavia and Yoshi G was a battle that was originally arranged to be on the first Midnight Madness card. The battle was going to be for a Midnight Madness belt and all, until Remy Ma decided to scoop this battle up from Tsu Surf. It was a great opportunity for both ladies to capitalize on growing their brands, by making their debut on Remy Ma’s newly launched battle rap league, Chrome 23. This would not only be Pristavia’s debut on Chrome but also her big stage premiere. With hundreds of people in attendance, It was time to show her style, which had been dominant in small rooms, could also translate on a stage.
You wouldn’t even be able to tell this was Pristavia’s first battle on a stage. She leveled up and looked as comfortable as ever. She showed to have a pristine sense of timing in her punches. Her delivery was sharper than it had been in previous battles. Her performance was on full display. She implemented a good mix of haymakers, schemes, angles, and humor. Pristavia incorporated a freestyle to open her round and her rebuttal game was crazy! She is evolving and proving to be a more well-rounded emcee than she was a couple of months ago.
What makes her so good, is her ability to assert her presence early in a battle. She gets right into explosive haymakers in her first round out the gate that doesn’t always require 4 bar setups. She’s able to completely snatch the energy away from her opponents and take a commanding lead to be in complete control of the tempo of a battle. It makes her dangerous because she can impose her will and she knows what pockets to get into, in order to do so.
She still has plenty of areas of improvement available. She can learn to condense her setups. She still has crowd control techniques to learn. She also could work on writing uphill in her battles to sustain momentum. After she establishes her presence in the 1st round, her 2nd round usually loses steam or takes a dip because she isn’t able to recapture the energy that she’s created for herself. While she has effective angles, they can always get sharper.
Nonetheless, she takes a massive leap in the Yoshi battle from her rookie year and now shows she can battle on a stage too. Her outstanding performance against Yoshi has been decorated with an award from Chrome 23 for the Best Performance of the night and she also was featured on the cover of the Champion magazine, issue #24.
This Champion cover features female battle rappers 40 Barrs, Official, Ms. Hustle, and Couture. 4 all-time great names. Pristavia joins the elite company with her magnificent performance.
Main Events
The following week after her Yoshi G battle, she makes her debut on The Rap Committee, in Ohio. To go against her first top-tier female opponent, in C3. The A.Ward vs Fonz battle was canceled, so this now makes C3 vs Pristavia the headliner of the card. This was Pristavia’s first time being a main event, so this served as another great test for her to show that she belonged amongst the top competitors and while still delivering a good performance as a headliner.
The gift of being a headliner in battle rap is knowing a league has packaged its event centered around your brand. Reaching the levels of being a headliner shows that you have elevated your career to a point where you are the highest draw for fans to want to attend events. However, the curse of being a headliner is that you are probably scheduled to perform last. A fatigued crowd is one of the biggest reasons why most main events fail to live up to expectations because the battle misses the peak window of energy from the crowd.
Pristavia & C3 had the entire room fully engaged and the live stream numbers reached their peak concurrent viewership for this battle. C3 gives Pristavia a very competitive battle, C3 pulls out all of the savvy veteran tactics, she’s bar-heavy the whole battle, and also supplies rebuttals. Pristavia matches wits with C3 in all of the same areas.
A performance from both battlers without there being a clear level of separation between them leaves us with a good debatable battle. While Pristavia doesn’t walk away with a clear victory, she walks away with a main event that delivers for the fans. A competitive back-and-forth good battle that has replay value against a Top-Tier. This serves as a checkpoint to prove that Pristavia can perform as a main act. She was able to battle at the end of the night and still rock a crowd.
Who do you think won the battle?
— BATTLE RAP’S WOJ (@LTBRpodcast) March 6, 2022
She then follows up with another headlining battle. She is faced to go against Danny Myers on Gates Of The Garden. Danny Myers is one of Pristavia’s inspirational figures in this culture.
“Every time I have to watch a battle for motivation, I’m always watching Danny Myers. He’s someone that I’ll never get tired of watching.” – Pristavia via 15 Minutes of Fame.
The inter-gender battle is only for 1 round. But Danny Myers was on 100% full speed ready to give Pristavia a lesson. She went toe to toe with the bar god to put on a great competitive battle. She not only matched him in energy, lyricism, and content but she arguably won the battle. Pristavia is proving that she can hang with high-level battlers. Danny Myers gives her high praise after her performance and says that she is ready for anything in battle rap.
Here is a highlight clip of their battle.
Within 4 months of the year, Pristavia has obtained a performance of the night award from Chrome 23, a Champion magazine cover and 2 headliners. With no clear losses. Pristavia has not only established her case as a contender for Woman Of The Year(WOTY), various media members have reported she is currently in the lead.
Media member Nico, from NICO TV, has created his own statistical battle rap tracker for the award. So far, he has Pristavia ranked as number 1. Another media member and WOTY panelist, Lola Dope from New Era Podcast, has created a 2022 Q1 report of female battle rap. In her blog, she reports she currently has Pristavia as number one as well.
Reflecting on Pristavia's Rookie year.
With the hype growing to new heights, now is as good of a time as any to revisit her rookie year and spotlight all the pivotal checkpoints that led to her going in this overall direction.
We saw a few flashes of Pristavia’s brilliance in 2021. It was after her battle Against Marz in her home league, Gates Of The Garden, that she started to get some spotlight for her talent. The battle against Marz hit 20,000 views on YouTube, which was her highest-viewed battle at the time and she received a co-sign from Christian battle rapper, Th3 Saga. Clips of this performance surfaced on social media and her name started making it’s waves around the culture.
We were still unfamiliar with what her ceiling could be, but she was scheduled to go through her first real test. With a battle on the horizon, she was scheduled to go against her first veteran opponent, in Lady Caution. Pristavia vs Lady Caution is still currently Pristavia’s highest-viewed battle on YouTube, at 60,000 views. Pristavia has a breakout performance against a formidable competitor who at the time, was highly regarded as a WOTY contender. And now she has struck the attention of battle rap.
After her Lady Caution battle, Pristavia has her eyes set to perform on the biggest league for female battle rap, Queen Of The Ring (QOTR). On May 9th, 2021, she announced that she signed to QOTR. She was ready to work and show the world what she was capable of. This year she makes an appearance on a QOTR staple event, Panic Room 5. Her opponent was another veteran in Tia S. Pristavia showed some elevation in this battle and was able to secure not only the victory but another performance trending upwards in her trajectory.
She makes another appearance on another QOTR staple event, No Holds Barred 3 against Diesel. This event was featured on caffeine, however, Pristavia’s battle didn’t air until the following day. She walks away with a 3-0 victory, where she catches a body on her caffeine debut. While the victory was impressive, it was the confidence she displayed in her debut performance that was the biggest takeaway.
She shared the stage with many veterans that night, who were also making their caffeine debut. Many of the experienced battlers could not handle the pressure of the caffeine stage and could not deliver a clean performance. Pristavia appeared to be more poised than some woman on the card who had been battling for close to a decade. It was a clear indication that she wasn’t only just ready for the next level, but she embraced it. This was a sign that we were onto something special.
She ends her rookie year with many note-worthy milestones. In 2021, Pristavia has 2x QOTR appearances, 1x caffeine appearance, registered 2 wins on the URL app, 6 total battles for the year, and remains undefeated. She then links forces with Tsu Surf to become the first lady of GunTitles and she finished #7 on the 2021, Top 10 WOTY list.
To make a top battler list within your rookie year of battle rap is truly astonishing. To be regarded as the 7th best-ranked female battler within a calendar year while you still haven’t even scratched the surface of your ceiling as a battle rapper is enough to let us all know, she was well on her way to greatness.
