Okay guys...
I just heard from Deez and he's not coming back. I won't mention other stuff he's got going on in his life right now so we'll leave it at that.
I mentioned to him in my email that I was extremely disappointed because it looks like straight up cheating. Whether he stole beats and posted them as his own, or as he said, he's part of a producer "pool" of sorts where they're all a part of some group that take a beat from the pile, who knows. All I see is shit that is not right. It's not fair to everyone that ever battled against him, especially those that lost.
The battles and the forums are the lifeline of IllMuzik right now. With this happening, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I could go and remove everything he did, but then that leaves me trying to figure out what to do with the ones that placed beneath him.
I'm sure you guys know, but I put a lot, A LOT of time into ILL. For this to happen makes me really angry because it's kind of like someone shitting all over my life's work. Kind of like in 8th grade when my friend was typing his report on a computer at school and my other friend unplugged it. That kind of mad. This is a big insult to ALL of us. It's not just about battles but it's also an insult to the art of beatmaking. I understand some guys want to use pre-made loops in their beats and I get that, but not entire beats. If you want to use a melody loop from a sound pack you bought, go for it, but at least flip it somehow.
So I'm waiting to hear back from Deez about his content on here. He wants his account deleted, which I was going to ban him at this point anyway, but as far as all the battles he's been in....
Here's all his battle archives:
If any of you guys can help and go through some of them and see what's what. If you use the Shazam app or whatever, it would help a lot. I'd like to at least identify suspect beats and then I'll have to figure something out. If you guys have suggestions about what to do about his wins too, let me know.
See here's the thing: if he won the Beat This (like he just did), then I can move everyone up but then who's 5th? I can check the votes for the Beat This we just had and figure that out, but for the older battles, I don't have those votes saved. So that's something to think about.
In the meantime I'm just really upset, as all of you should be too. You can make fun of the situation but it's not funny as far as I'm concerned. This is a big setback and that's the last thing we need here, as I'm constantly trying to make ILL better and bigger. We don't need scandals. Plus the fact that I made him a moderator at one point really upsets me because it's like he just violated that trust.
The bottom line with anyone, ANYONE that wants to cheat: DON'T. There's always a way to find out.