Gucci Mane and Jeezy’s Verzuz on Thursday night broke new records for the battle series.
Co-creator Swizz Beatz shared the viewership numbers on Instagram, writing that the Season 2 opener broke Verzuz’s “all-time livestream viewership record,” with 9.1 million people watching the “legendary showdown” between the two Atlanta rappers.
Swizz also wrote that Verzuz’s viewership this year eclipsed ratings for the MTV VMA’s, NBC’s The Voice, the Billboard Awards, the CMA’s, the Latin Grammy’s, and Dancing With The Stars, “respectively on any given night for those primetime shows this year.”
The face-off between Gucci and Jeezy has been one of the only things that the rap world has been talking about all week. Gucci announced the battle after he originally declined to do it, a surprise to many given his history and longstanding beef with Jeezy. In the days leading up to the event, Guwop trolled Jeezy, both for fatally shooting the Snowman’s associate Pookie Loc and for how the rapper dressed on his The Recession 2 album cover.
During the battle itself, Gucci took it as a chance to play several diss tracks, including “The Truth,” which references Loc’s death. For his part, Jeezy maintained that he “wanted to do this shit for the culture,” with the pair closing out the night by performing their collaborative song “So Icy.”
