NEWS
ATLANTA, GEORGIA - SEPTEMBER 12: Artists Timbaland and Swizz Beatz attend day 1 of REVOLT Summit x AT&T Summit on September 12, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Paras Griffin/Getty Images for RevoltLooks like the word on the curb is out about co-founders Swizz Beatz and Timbaland’s popular Verzuz brand finding new partners to play music with, in social media app Triller. Last week, rumors unexpectedly swirled about Verzuz separating from their Apple Music relationship. In an early morning post (March 9th) to Instagram, Swizz Beatz exclaimed, “Finally something that the creatives own officially!!!! @timbaland it’s showtime!! By the artist for the artist with the people!!!”
Triller, launched in 2015 by co-founders David Leiberman and Sammy Rubin, allows users to take snippets of songs and create quick shareable clips that span the length of their imaginations. Boasting downloads in the 100 million range, Triller seems to aim at playing close to celebs and record labels that distribute the tracks that all the youngins flock to rock. Can Verzuz find the footing needed to expand the battle brand in uncharted ways with Triller? We’ll all have to wait and see.
A typical Verzuz battle, which has featured dozens of match-ups with the likes of DMX vs. Snoop, Bounty Killer vs. Beenie Man and even Gladys Knight vs. Patti LaBelle, routinely scores collective social media viewing numbers into the millions. During the height of the pandemic lock down in 2020, Swizz and Timb’s competitive creation gave much needed light hearted moments and brought back the love of songs from times past.
What this post means as far as deal points between the artist challenge platform that pits music stars catalogues against one another, is also yet to be explained. In the meantime, Swizz got busy after the posting, in seemingly celebrating the news by launching into an IG Live playlist party dubbed “Zone Radio (also born out of the pandemic times like Verzuz).” This edition by Swizz was also in honor of International Women’s Day, “Let’s shout out all the women!”
He didn’t address his announcement about the deal in the live feed, but we are sure to hear more in the coming days, if not sometime later today. Let’s give the fellas a moment to get the announcement all the way explained, as we are sure Swizz is bursting to get the info out. More details to come.
NEWS
No matter what you thought of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, there was only one undisputed winner by the end of it all: the reaction community in the worlds of streaming and YouTube. Your favorite content creators broke down the bars, reacted to all the most shocking moments, and helped this showdown become one of hip-hop's most culturally significant and resonant moments in a long time... For better or worse. See, the battle's technically not over yet, but only because the 6ix God's idea of victory is clearly quite different. In his federal defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group – his label – for releasing K.Dot's "Not Like Us," he named various content creators who allegedly helped boost the track's widespread popularity and, as a result, its supposedly defamatory nature.
Furthermore, the specific allegation that Drake brings up in this highly controversial lawsuit is that UMG "whitelisted" copyright claims for YouTubers, streamers, etc. concerning "Not Like Us." This means that they would be able to monetize their content without facing a copyright claim from UMG over "Not Like Us," and this isn't really an allegation because various creators have backed this up. But a few important (alleged) caveats that people are talking about online need to be clear. First, "whitelisting" supposedly happens on behalf of a record label behind a song like the West Coast banger, and UMG is instead the distributor of that track. Secondly, as rapper and online personality ScruFaceJean brings up as seen in the post below, tracks like "Push Ups" were also "whitelisted" by its team.
Along with Jean, many other of your favorite content creators spoke out against this Drake lawsuit. Zias! and B.Lou, for example, spoke with their lawyer about the possibility of countersuing for emotional distress, as they found the Toronto superstar's accusations and his implication of them very disturbing and misguided. NoLifeShaq also dragged The Boy through the mud, calling him "soft" and positing that, whether "whitelisting" happened or not, they would react to "Not Like Us" accordingly as they did to his own tracks.
In addition, it's important to bring up that many others fans have pointed to how Drake excitedly used streamers to generate hype and reaction clips for his own diss tracks against Kendrick Lamar. The most direct example is with Kai Cenat, whom he texted to "stay on stream" before dropping "Family Matters." Ironically, the Twitch giant appears in this clowned-upon defamation lawsuit as an example of what the OVO mogul's accusations and implications are. And one more thing: there is no direct link between monetization and algorithmic boosting on sites like YouTube. With all this in mind, content creators seem to feel almost insulted at the idea that they only reacted to the two biggest rappers in the world beefing with each other because one of them would allow them to make money. If Drizzy knew the first thing about the reaction community, maybe he wouldn't have included this...
