Reed Dollaz walks away from battle rap and names his price to come back

Reed Dollaz has retired from battle rap, and he made the money the reason. The Southwest Philadelphia rapper announced it in a video after more than 25 years of competing, saying he no longer has a passion for it and that he has completed what he set out to do.

He put himself among the people who built the scene. "I put in over 25 years of hard work. I really could have stopped in the early 2000s," he said, adding that he came back and battled everybody in the new era before deciding the mission was finished.

The pay was the part he spent the most time on. He said battle rappers are overlooked and underpaid compared with other performers, and that someone with his history should be earning $20,000 to $30,000 for a booking. Anything under $20,000, he said, does not work for him, and that figure doubles as the condition on which he would return: if an event will meet the price, he may come outside.

His career runs from the DVD era, when Philadelphia battles circulated on discs, through to the modern URL platform, which is roughly the whole arc of the format's shift from street corner to streaming business. The battle against Kaboom is one of the early ones people still cite; the Chess matchup on URL has been viewed 1.9 million times. He also faced Rum Nitty, Murda Mook and Eazy The Block Captain, a spread of opponents across generations.

What he is walking towards is recorded music and family obligations, both of which he said need his full attention now. The retirement is framed as being in effect until further notice rather than permanent.

The complaint underneath it is one battle rap has been arguing about for years: a format that fills arenas and generates millions of views on other people's platforms while paying its performers on a scale closer to an open mic. Reed Dollaz is a well-enough known name in hip-hop that his walking away puts a number on it, and his position on Philadelphia's battle history is not in dispute.