For those of you who haven’t heard of him, Alki David is one of Hollywood’s favourite bad boys. The 46-year-old Greek Cypriot immigrant is the man behind the super popular TV-streaming service FilmOn and spends most of his time at his $16.5 million Beverly Hills mansion with his third wife, model and fashion designer Jennifer Stano. When he’s not DJ-ing or filming a reality show, the rich and famous troublemaker can usually be found relaxing at his luxurious estate in Spetses, Greece.
The controversial entrepreneur is the mastermind behind the Tupac hologram and last year’s aborted George Zimmerman/ DMX boxing match. What is he into now? He wants to bring battle rap – a hip-hop competition where MCs have to outperform each other with racy and ‘ranty’ rhymes – to the mainstream. Many have tried before him to introduce head-to-head rapping to the masses – including Eminem, Diddy and Drake – yet the public remains a little indifferent.
Alki has been a fan of battle rap for more than 30 years now and certainly seems loaded with passion, persistence and the necessary amount of cash to make his new venture work. His plan is to create an online ‘social pay-per-view platform’, where fans will be able to chat among themselves on the same platform on which battles are broadcast.
He has already launched BattleCam.dom, a nasty TV-show/website on a new platform, Ether, but craves to take it a whole lot further, embedding his hologram technology, social technology and online streaming to engage the viewer.
His production is already meeting big numbers, counting 100,000 fans in just a couple of days. He might have to thank contestants who lose their temper and jump the gun at each other on stage for generating attention and selling-off web tickets in matters of hours.
“If somebody gets shot during Ether, then so be it,” David recently said, unveiling a hint of his money-making business philosophy.
