Just a few days after a disastrous and endlessly roasted first attempt, culture-shifting legends Teddy Riley and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds participated in an Instagram battle fans will never forget on Monday (April 20).
More than 500,000 viewers made Instagram Live history by tuning in to watch the two go back-and-forth for over two hours. The music legends dug deep into their respective catalogs and shared some entertaining commentary along the way.
Verzuz orchestrator Swizz Beatz later claimed the battle reached a total of 4 million views.
While Riley was much more restrained with his setup in the rematch, the event wasn’t without its hiccups.
Many fans took to Twitter to complain of permanent freezing and noted they received an error message while attempting to connect. Watching via laptop seemed to be a workaround for anyone willing to put in the effort though.
Instagram publicly acknowledged the technical difficulties, which ultimately weren’t able to derail the battle. Riley and Babyface’s session still experienced some disconnections, but the downtime contained some of the prominent highlights of the night.
While waiting for Riley to come back at one point, Babyface grabbed his guitar and played an acoustic version of Eric Clapton’s “Change The World,” which stands as one of the legendary musician’s best-selling singles of his career.
DJ Premier & RZA Share Classics, Stories & Unreleased Songs In Epic Instagram Live Battle
And on the other side, Riley played the headshots he didn’t get the opportunity to play during the battle — such as Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” — when Babyface dropped off the stream.
Dr. Dre even connected via FaceTime to share a brief congratulatory exchange with Riley. The New Jack Swing pioneer also performed live keys along with Michael Jackson’s “Remember The Time” before signing off from Instagram.
While many fans attempted to keep score, Verzuz viewers were once again the real winner.
Watch the full recap of Riley and Babyface’s record-breaking battle below.
https://youtu.be/K7W1orNPf-I
https://youtu.be/fzWTzECR1Io
[apple_news_ad type=”any”]
Epic. One the best music moments in years. It was an important history lesson too. 2 of the all time greats.
The culture lmao always love that …. I’ll never understand the obsession with celebrities …. especially when all they are doing is pressing play … you all have these songs … you only watched because just seeing a celebrity gets you lame ass sheep hard
There’s a big difference between celebrity and legendary talent. Both Babyface and Teddy Riley have 60 years of hitmaking between them. Their songs served as love song anthems for a couple of generations. This ain’t Kylie Jenner vs. Khloe.
I watched to see what songs they played and also because like many, I don’t know everything they have done. it was a chance to add some classics to the playlist. One of them played a song during the stream and the other didn’t even know it was their song. Lighten up and don’t be so fuckin judgemental.
So was it 500k viewers or 4 million? Pretty big difference
The 500K is the amount at 1 time
The 4M is the amount of people that watched at any given time
so 3.5 million got bored and left?
This s**t weak. Just shut up with the support of all this old hype by young n**gas. Ya don’t know s**t about s**t so shut up and turn on lil yachts.
Twiddle you’re beads in your hair.