Ashanti vs. Keyshia Cole #Verzuz: The Unprofessionalism | Part One

Unimpressed R&B fans were willing to give Ashanti and Keyshia Cole the benefit of the doubt when their Verzuz battle was postponed not once but twice! The first time was due to Ashanti catching Covid-19, and no real reason was given for the second postponement. 

After the delays, it finally went ahead last night and was met with all sorts of issues. The stream didn't go live until 10 minutes after its scheduled time, but the worse was yet to come. Fans had waited over an hour for the Verzuz to kick off. 1 hour and 20 minutes to be exact. 

Verzuz founder Swizz Beatz was cussing up a storm in the comment section talking about the "disrespect," while we all had to watch engineers trying to fix Keyshia's sh*tty wifi, which was showing in mash potato quality. So at first the delay was down to technical difficulties. Once they managed to fix Keyshia's wifi, the waiting still continued. 

It seems the Verzuz did not take place in their homes, but at private locations, possibly at some rented studios of some sort. Ashanti showed up first and she appeared in good spirits. It looked like she was ready to have some fun, and she apologised. 

When Keyshia finally made her (very booby) appearance (left), she came on with a stank attitude, and did not apologise to the audience. Nothing AT ALL. It looked like she was ready to snap! There was no excuse for her behaviour. You smile, apologise and put on a show. The lack of professionalism was astounding!

Ashanti was a beautiful class act and served positive vibes only, but Keyshia was extremely rude. You know what they say, you can take the girl out of the hood but not the hood out of the girl. Then they had the audacity to go on a break despite being over an hour late. When they returned from their break, Ashanti had lost all her patience with Keyshia. 

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Her mood suddenly changed, and she had to pull rank when Keyshia implied she was next to start her round. Ashanti just wanted to get things started back up quickly because she was worried they would get cut off. 

At this point, she was starting to tire of Keyshia's bullsh*t. Towards the end they grew really dismissive of each other. A drunk Keyshia was getting up randomly and walking off during Ashanti's rounds on multiple occasions. 

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Ashanti was consistently checking her phone during Keyshia's rounds and having side conversations with her mom and backstage crew. The whole thing was poorly executed and plagued with sound issues. 

The lackluster presentation, the lack of professionalism, the poor planning and handling of this event after two reschedules, it just wasn't worth the one month wait. Having 1.2 million eyes watching you after not being commercially relevant for at least a decade is an opportunity they should not have wanted to waste. If anything, it should have compelled them to give us a better show. Stay tuned for part two, because I'm not done yet.