FIRST LOOK! We premiere KOTD's new card and talk to the two guys behind the new direction of the West Coast.

West Coast battle rap is about to change, at least according to the new trailer for KOTD's "Back To Basics 4." The April 16 event in Los Angeles is the fourth in the small-room series, but the first at a new event space made specifically for battle rap. The new locale will be the home of KOTD's Back To Basics series, but will also provide a platform for new exclusive battle rap content that will live on Avocado's Ruin Your Day channel.

Watch the trailer for the new card here (set to the title theme from 2014 horror movie "It Follows"), and scroll down for a quick interview with Avocado and J-Pro about the new direction the West Coast is taking, as well as the line-up for the Day 1 GZ card.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW0d2ns5Wx8

Here's the full card:

The Saurus vs. Daylyt

Caustic vs. T-Rex

Carter Deems vs. Head I.C.E

PNut vs. J Dose

Madflex vs. E. Farrell

The mid-sized card features three battles that fell through at previous KOTD events, as well as the league debut of J Dose.

We reached out to Avocado and J-Pro (the two guys behind KOTD's California division for the last little while) for some more details on The Bunker.

BattleRap.com: What's your vision for The Bunker?

J-Pro: The Bunker isn't an event series. It's a place, where we can host everything from battle rap events to comedy shows. It's our opportunity to produce more content and diverse content on a consistent basis. The Back To Basics series is just one type of event that we'll throw there. The B2B series is about producing classic, fun battles in a controlled and small-room setting. The Bunker allows us to do that or do shows that have nothing to do with battle rap.

Avocado: Yeah essentially building on what J-Pro said, this gives battle rap its first exclusive HUB for a venue. We can now throw events whenever we want, however often we want and tailor the venue to fit the needs. We can build a gladiator style arena if we want. No more bartenders making drinks loud as fuck, shitty club owners and bad Internet connections resulting in shitty PPVs. We'll have ultra high-speed Internet installed and everything will be controlled by us so we can let the battles speak for themselves.

What's the relationship between KOTD and The Bunker?



Avocado: We will still do events for them and with them but not every event done at The Bunker will be a KOTD event.

And you'll be doing non-KOTD battles? What kind of match-ups will we see?

Avocado: Well basically I want to start giving more shine to the people who have sort of been pushed aside like PNut, Reverse Live, Fredo and Madflex.

We're thinking main card headliners along the lines of Bigg K vs. Caustic or Fresco vs. The Saurus and then two undercards along the lines of Only One vs. Reverse Live. I want the whole West Coast to be active in this. Everybody from Rum Nitty to Caustic.

By throwing events more often and booking smaller cards, we'll be able to give opportunities to more people because if they can't make an event one month, there's another one coming up.

How will the events be different?

Our idea is for events to be much shorter. I think it's crazy that we expect fans to sacrifice eight hours of their day to watch a PPV stream. I want our events to be four hours tops.

Also, this will help us build talent. As we start throwing more cards with up-and-comers we want to give them something to work towards, so I want to have more judged battles and more incentives like cash prizes and so forth. Along with their battles being filmed and edited by me in a cool environment.

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Here's a quick tour of the event space:

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Here's the card for the Day 1 GZ Battles event on April 15.

Frak vs. Everybody Knows (KOTD battle)

Sam Kolt vs. Bobby Lee Swagger

Yak Da Rippa vs. Da Kid Clutch

Esem vs. Alias The @ikt

Robo vs. Progrest

JeFFrey vs. Laugh N' Stalk

Get your tickets here. A $20 pay-per-view will be available on April 1.

Thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.