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Math Hoffa says "Road to Total Slaughter" "broadens your perspective on who battle rappers are."
In the second part of his interview with VladTV, Math Hoffa details what fans can expect from the upcoming Slaughterhouse-produced battle rap series, Road to Total Slaughter. The show, which was announced earlier this year, is scheduled to air on Shady's Vevo channel and will follow eight battle rappers as they face-off in an in-house tournament.
“I was blessed to be a part of that,” Math Hoffa said in his interview with VladTV. “This guy, Mike from Shady, great dude, he reached out and he was like, ‘Yo, we want you to be a part of this, not because of your drama. Because you can rap, and you pay attention. We’ve been watching. You’re one of those guys. You impress us, lyrically.’ I feel like, during the competition—I can't give you guys the results, I can’t tell anything—it felt good, to have that respect, from people who are actually big names in the game, like the lyrical respect. Not just the, ‘Oh Math, I’m so glad you didn’t punch that nigga.’ That felt great, ‘cause I feel like there’s so many people who try to overshadow that and try to just sum me up as this one moment, a couple seconds. It was great.”
While keeping mum about many of the show’s details, Hoffa did explain how real-life drama plays a part in the series. “We stayed in a crib [in] New York,” he said. “The tournament is one thing. Just watching a bunch of battle rappers in the crib together, it’s just entertainment in itself. We were doing shit that we were like, ‘Oh shit, that was dope. Wow. This what happens when you put us together for a little while.’ We even had an opportunity to record a track together, all of us. Mook woke me up out my sleep, ‘Dude, come get on this track man.’ I was like, ‘Oh shit.’ It was dope. Like I said, I was hanging around Mook for a little while...I mean, it was drama. It was gonna be drama. It was dope. All in all it was a dope experience.”
When asked if the show features true-to-life drama or staged scenes, Hoffa said it’s “real life.” “You’re mic’d all day,” he said. “Sometimes I forgot that I had the mic on. There was a couple times I was just talking with Cortez, ‘Yo, my nigga, got this mic on right now dog! We can’t talk about this.’ It was dope. I think that a lot of the people are gonna love what came out of that crib.”
More generally, Hoffa added that Road to Total Slaughter will give fans a new perspective on battle rap. “Because It’s one-sided sometimes,” he said, “you’re seeing what we do to get a check. You’re not seeing what we do on our downtime. You’re not seeing the real conversations we have with each other, how we view certain things that’s going on in the world. You don’t see that. So it broadens your perspective on who battle rappers are. I think the world is gonna be impressed…I don’t know how people are gonna take it, other than having a broader perspective, so I can’t say. Again, there are some people who will watch for one thing, and then some people who will take in the whole picture. It is what it is.”
Near the end of the interview, Math teased the possibility of a second season as well. “Definitely,” he responded when asked if the show could continue. “I hope I’m on it. You’ll find out during the show, but I hope I’m on it.”
The show is set to feature a bracket of eight battle rappers competing to co-headline a main event match-up between Loaded Lux and Murda Mook. "It's probably the biggest battle you can put on right now," Royce Da 5'9 said of the show’s planned main event. The matches for the first round are set to include Math Hoffa vs. Dizaster; Arsonal vs. Daylyt; Cortez vs. Marv Won; and Big T vs. Aye Verb.
Slaughterhouse members are set to act as the show's producers and will serve as judges for the tournament