Real Deal, aka Trevor Weller, is a prolific battle rapper who is the reigning KOTD champion. While he is presently the top dog in King of the Dot, RD has performed on numerous platforms. His resume includes stints on BOTZ, URL, Grind Time, I-Battle, and pretty much every reputable league you can think of. Real Deal is currently immersed in the biggest, most high stakes battle that he has ever been a part of. Weller is presently looking for justice for his father Charlie. Details on the tragic, devastating episode can be found here. LM2’s Dylan Bowker spoke with Real Deal and got to delve into quite a few topics.
Bowks Talking Bouts
It turns out that Trevor isn’t the only Weller with a flare for performing. Real Deal said, “I think my son’s best impersonations are like cartoon people. He does a really good Beavis and Butthead. He does a really good Peter Griffin and all those guys. Starting to get a lot better with real people……I love his Walken a lot. His Walken’s pretty good. I actually like his TJ Miller. It’s left field but yeah, man.” His son has aspirations on being part of the Saturday Night Live cast and is very much making moves to increase his profile out there.
Real Deal’s platform has allowed for him to share his son’s work but social media can also create some oddly contentious situations. A brief beef with Michael Rapaport brought some attention to Real Deal’s twitter. Real Deal thought it was strange that Rapaport was attacking rappers who clearly didn’t make music for him. The lack of a real hot take within Rapaport’s tangent lead to some playful bantering with RD that heated up. Rapaport’s son even got involved at one point but things ave since died down with that feud.
Mental Health and Compliments
Though he engaged in some combative Twitter discourse, the bulk of RD’s battles have occurred in the world of acapella hip hop. Real Deal has dropped some interesting themed battles over the years. One of those being the Mental Health battle that drew viral attention. Real Deal stated, “It was wild everything kind of fell into place perfectly. Liam had hit me up a little while ago…We had a compliment battle. Originally I had Oshea. They had to push the date a couple times.”
LAD Bible had seen some tweets from Oshea they didn’t like and pulled the battle. Despite some last-minute replacements/ switches, things went off well. Real Deal stated, “The venue was very receptive and they loved the comedy part first. I used that to kind of get their attention and reel them in. Even the things that looked negative we didn’t see coming, we turned into a positive.”
Real Deal
Another themed battle that RD has been part of is a compliment battle. In fact, he was supposed to be part of what would eventually become the most known compliment battle of all. Real Deal quipped, “I was supposed to be the compliment battle for Pat Stay before Rone. But I had something booked so Pat reached out to Rone and of course it ended up being incredible…..We’ve got some ideas cooking to really put some hype around it…..Not that I want to make a career out of doing 150 different compliment battles but I think that one in particular needs to get done.”
Having been in the game for so long, Real Deal has always done a great job of further honing his skills. Maintaining some semblance of his core approach all throughout but always growing and going through different performative permutations.
Real Deal quipped, “I was explaining this to somebody before. They had seen some of my battles and they were like ‘oh you were in that dude’s face’. So they’d probably seen some older battles. And I’m like ‘yeah, man. Over the years, I kind of dialed that back a little bit.’….It was weird for me to be like barking on somebody and then just have a beer with them right after. Don’t get me wrong. Energy is different like Brizz Rawsteen or something.”
Music, Wrestling, and MMA
Real Deal has virtually seen it all in the world of acapella battle rap. RD the Chef even battled Dizaster in an MMA cage. This connection to Dizaster recently came up with his son after going to the movies.
Real Deal said, “Well, the funny thing is that I watched that battle back after. I took my son to see Bodied. He loved it and everything. He was like ‘man, Dizaster’ and I was like “Yeah, that’s my man. We battled’. Did the battle in the Paid Dues festival. We were both under the impression that you battle in the first round and if you win, you battle in the second round. Well, we both lost in the first round. So then they were like ‘yeah, you guys battle for third and fourth place’. So the hilarity now is we were literally battling for like a hundred dollars.”
Real Deal continued, “We’re battling in front of like five thousand people. So it’s really dope…..I’m going to make a bunch of middle eastern jokes. Pretty sure he’s going to make a bunch of white trash jokes. And we’ll make it work. Now I love the battle looking back. If it happened today, people would be fucking upset…..It was a really different experience with an octagon and everything. I noticed things hit with Dirtbag (Dan) in the first round. I had good material and everything but I didn’t realize my crowd and the same thing happened to Diz.”
He also gave interesting thoughts on combat sports and what a concussion truly is. How often the severity of it is discounted by some people. It’s a medium where the magnitude of punches/ effectiveness of one’s approach can be quantified more clearly and objectively.
Real Deal and Battle Rap
Punches in battle rap however are far more subjective. A return of judging in rap battles is not something that the reigning KOTD champion is keen on seeing beyond title match situations. Real Deal said, “No, I don’t bro. I really don’t. Me personally, there’s a lot of things that I don’t agree with that some people do…..Somebody will be like his dude got bodied and I’ll watch it and be like yeah he didn’t though. For me, I would have to have such absolute trust in the people that were judging.”
It’s so difficult to gauge the severity of punches, different approaches resonating with some people more, style preferences/ personal affiliations, etc. Though some have tried to create metrics for battle rap performance, it has become a borderline impossible thing to quantify in some sort of irrefutable kind of way.
King of the Dot
We also talked about musicians getting older, having friends who are indy wrestlers, etc. Laugh N Stalk, Marv Won, and Real Deal are in a faction called Nation of Conversation. Real Deal might battle Laugh N Stalk in a Simpsons themed battle and appreciates Brett’s deep knowledge of the series. Real Deal is also a musician. He has a few records to his credit at this point but is always looking to grow. In fact, he’s aiming to put out another project sooner rather than later.
Real Deal stated, “I’ve got to get back to making some music. I’m starting off the new project. I really gotta get the pen moving, man. Fucking spent spring break drinking like a fish, man. I realized something though, I can’t be an alcoholic because I literally ran out of stamina. Don’t know how real alcoholics do it, man. Hit like nine days straight drinking. I only drink beer by the way. So by that ninth day I’m like ‘fuck, man’. I had every reason to just be like ‘get back on the horse’….Could never been an alcoholic. I don’t know how the fuck they do it. ”
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