On March 25th, friends and fellow superproducers Timbaland and Swizz Beatz decided to have a friendly producer battle to entertain fans, and accidentally created an IG Live series -- now called Verzuz.
Over the last month, the impromptu battle has taken the form of a brand, adopting a title and logo; establishing rules of play; creating official social accounts for messaging; and, most notably, exponentially increasing viewership.
Tim and Swizz’s initial Live peaked at about 22K viewers. Not quite a week later, The-Dream and Sean Garrett hit 46K. From the first full week of the battles, music lovers, journalists, executives and artists have debated possible matchups, their dream battles, hypotheticals in other areas of music (like singers