At the end of this Sunday’s battle- the battle that people are calling “the biggest rap battle of all time,” people were chanting one word, “Hollow.”
The majority of fans and spectators didn’t think Loaded Lux could be beat. “You never know what he’s going to say” was the party line. Lux came to the battle with performance delivery and the kind of complex, intelligent true-to-life bars people had hoped for. Hollow Da Don on the other hand, had one of the most well-rounded performances in battle history. He had punchlines, rebuttals, and aggression. He picked apart Lux’s style with absolute precision. Aside from being a war of words, battle rap is a war of personalities and there’s never been a bigger and more unique personality in the battle world than Hollow Da Don. All the fame, all the attention and accolades and Hollow still is not excited.
Jon Reiss: The reaction online has been for the most part that your battle with Lux lived up to the almost insurmountable expectations put upon it. Did you expect the battle to live up to expectations?
Hollow Da Don: First and foremost, I’m not excited.
Second, I definitely did think it would live up to the expectations. I’m thankful that it happened the way it did and most of all I’m glad the fans got what they wanted.
Jon Reiss: When a person’s about to go onstage there’s a perfect place in between cocky and nervous. When you spit your first rebuttal about the Black Panther costume, it seemed like you were in that place, is that true?
Hollow Da Don: Yeah it is, because I got into my own character. I became a Black Panther myself and I said “Yeah okay, the power is engaged, I feel you on that… but damn, you took a hour to hit the stage, I don’t feel you on that. “ So that was pretty much the point I was trying to make. I feel what you trying to do here but you taking an hour and all that is disrespectful on some diva shit.
Jon Reiss: You kept getting cut off just before you were going to finish the round, did we miss some good bars because of it?
Hollow Da Don: Yeah. The crazy part is I usually use dirty bench for the end of my rounds but this time I put real hot shit at the end of my rounds because I wanted to end with a bang. Yeah I kept getting cut off when I had some crazy shit. I’m going to do a blog and re-match Lux again with a stunt dummy and spit all those bars.
Jon Reiss: Now that you’ve beaten the guy they said was the best to ever do it, what do you do? Are you going to keep battling?
Hollow Da Don: Yeah man, the champ got to defend the title. I’m definitely not going to stop but at the end of the day it’s gotta be right. I think Cassidy might be next. His head might be on the chopping block. Anybody who’s trying to get in the way, whoever they say is the king, I don’t even think people say Murda Mook anymore, so Cassidy or whoever they say is the king gets it next.
Jon Reiss: You gave a nice solid shout out to LOMClothing.com and the I’m Not Excited hoodie was proudly featured. Did you get a major traffic spike on the site?
Hollow Da Don: Yeah, it definitely has, http://lomclothing.com. We’re still getting it up and running how we want to. For the first few days we still didn’t have the payment set up so we had a few thousand come through before then. I appreciate anyone who takes a look, even if you didn’t get to purchase anything, even if you don’t got the money, I appreciate it, love is love.
Jon Reiss: After Lux battled Calicoe, he made the media rounds. He was on Fuse, the Howard Stern Show all and the like. Can we expect to see you on those shows now?
Hollow Da Don: Nah, I’m not really with all that. I mean, I done missed some interviews and shit, got some people mad at me. Sway’s mad at me even though I didn’t miss it on purpose. I’m not with all that getting shit, doing this and that. I want the promotion but I’m not going to go out of my way and try to hit them up. If they reach out- I’ll do it. I’m not against it. But that shit don’t get me excited. I’m not excited at all.
Jon Reiss: There’s a perception that you don’t really care about money. Is that true?
Hollow Da Don: It’s not that I don’t care about money, but I hate having to kiss ass or do shit that I’m not comfortable doing for money. So I will definitely pass up money if I don’t feel right about something. Money comes and goes. People put such a high value on it, but as long as you got a roof over your head and food to eat and you can take care of your people, that’s cool. You don’t have to have millions and billions. But I’m still
