A good portion of battle rap is crowd participation. I'd say more than half. A dude can spit hot shyt all night, if the crowd's rejecting him then it's just gonna fall flat.
Hence the current trend of everybody bringing their entire group of homies to stand behind them. The live crowd is not given the importance it should be by the online fans who have longer attention spans.
But part of what makes battle rap interesting is the home field advantage. Make note of how guys love to just keep it local nowadays. Because everybody fears the hometown advantage. There's not enough people going places, like when Dot Mob went to St Louis, when URL went to Detroit. Those kind of things HAVE to happen, because they really mix things up and make battle rap interesting. Think about if URL sent like 3 or 4 dudes down to ATL for Spit Dat Heat. It's not like the URL guys would get shyt on, but you can't predict exactly what the reaction would be. But Smack is always scared of giving up that top spot, how people see URL as #1. So he won't take a risk like that, risk getting his guys embarrassed in another city. Its why everybody's cliqued up nowadays, nobody's REALLY taking any risks. The Rookies vs Vets card was a move in the right direction, but Smack clearly was showing preference to the vets there. And the rookies were coming from all over the place, so they weren't really united. I'll just say this, Smack does things for a reason. And it's not to give you dope battles, it's to see his stock rise to the top.
Smack, dude stepped his game up something serious this year
its gonna be a longgggggg night for me beein in Amsterdam and shyt
