Stops on the Beaten Path v1

Dedicated SpeshFX followers will know that I missed a few scheduled posts over the past year. My bad! Life came at me fast, but it’s great to be back. I had been working on a number of stories in the quiet months. Sadly, I’m not going to be able to finish them as complete stories, but I’ve got some pretty sick snippets to share with you. 

Magazine heads would call this a front of the book section. Here, we’re gonna call it “Stops on the Beaten Path.” We’ll see if it sticks.

Beatboxing fan art

Take a scroll through beatboxing Instagram, and it won’t take you too long to find fan art. Bizkit’s album cover. Sketches of beatboxers mid-battle. Birthday drawings. They’re all over. I went to find some of these artists and beatboxers who have had fan art drawn of them and hear what they had to say about it all. 

The first thing I learned is that for the beatboxers, this stuff comes out of nowhere.  

“I was doing the Kickback Battle in 2021, and I was tagged on an Instagram post,” said Josh-O. “I was like, ‘Oh, what is this?’ And it was like a watercolor painting of me doing my seeding round. I kind of freaked out. Someone took time out of their day to draw me, of all people, of all things. It was, honestly, like, really flattering.

Bizkit, who has commissioned fan artists to make album artwork, “never imagined [he] could be in a position where, you know, creative individuals are like, admiring me enough to the point where I'm like the center of their work. Like, that's so crazy to me,” he said.

I spoke with the artist named GyoGyo, who preferred not to share their full name, and they had a very straightforward explanation for why they decided to draw beatboxers:

“I am an artist. The first thought [that] came into my mind [when I discovered beatbox] was ‘oh sheesh, I want to draw these guys.’”

For some of these artists, the point is just to do the art. But when Bizkit sees something that really speaks to him, he gets involved. “I see that these talented people are already capable of making something that represents me well. So I try to work with them. I offer them money, but a lot of them just refuse it.”

I feel like having that sort of fan culture is a sign of a fairly developed sub-culture. And, Josh-O added, even if most beatboxers haven’t found a way to monetize their art, this kind of recognition is nice.

“Getting that recognition from those artists for beatboxing, it's fulfilling in that sense that you do have these fans. People who regularly watch you, really do care about your work and then share their appreciation of you by drawing you.”

Interviews from early 2023.

A beatboxer’s proposal

Gabe Robertson has been beatboxing for a long time. Longer, even, than there has been a national beatboxing championship in the United States. 

For over two decades, Robertson, 36, would “hear sounds and mimic them,” anything to “throw everyone off and then kind of bring it back in,” he said outside the 2024 USA Beatbox Championships in Pittsburgh. An OG and a rookie, Robertson has beatboxed with bands, at open mics, and karaoke, but never before at a beatbox battle, let alone the national championships.

So when he stepped on stage as the 103rd beatboxer to perform at the 2024 USA Beatbox Championships, his girlfriend Jamie Rigdon and her daughter in the crowd, he could only do one thing: throw everyone off and then kind of bring it back in. 

“We've always had music as part of our relationship,” he said, standing outside the event after his triumphant performance. 

“I videoed him,” Jamie said. “And he finished his [performance] and I walked around to catch him as he was coming off the stage to be like, ‘hey, great job.’ I kissed him and he was like, ‘hey, I have a question for you.’” 

Right in the middle of the crowd, Gabe got down on one knee, pulled out a ring he’d been holding for about a month, and proposed. 

“It was a spur of the moment thing,” Gabe said. “I didn’t expect anything big or nothing.”

A murmur made its way through the crowd as a commotion began toward the back. By the time the MCs, Chris Celiz and Kenny Urban, were back on the mic, everyone knew what had happened and it was super hype. 

I’ve been going to beatbox events for nearly a decade and I’ve never seen anything like that before, and Jamie, who was only halfway through her first-ever beatbox event, was just as surprised as I was. 

“I had no idea. Like, I was like, I couldn't believe that he chose tonight. And it was super fun, and it was a night that we'll always remember.”

Mazal Tov to Gabe and Jamie and the rest of their families!

Interviews from late 2024.

A thought from the weekend

Not a reported story — half baked or otherwise — just a thought.

The past fifteen years of elite beatboxing has been a pathway from the internet to the livestage. Whether on HumanBeatbox forums, teamspeak, Reddit, or Discord, it seems every beatboxer’s origin story includes a period of time spent grinding on an online beatboxing platform. 

The best illustration of this story is NaPoM's performance in the 2020 online GBB, a rare occasion where an OG beatboxer who had broken through to the live scene returned to an online battle, years after leaving the depths of the beatboxing internet. 

(“Lay down on your pillow! I been doin this shit since Ventrillo!!!” Iconinc.)

But since that battle, the scope of and interest in online battles has grown. Even post-vaccine, the livestreamed battle is a fixture in the beatbox scene. National championships stream their champs.  The Online World Champs have been going on for five years. Random lovely events pop up and disappear every year. That is in addition to the asynchronous online battles that have attracted many world-class beatboxers as well

And for the beatboxers who have come up in this era, the cache that comes from winning an online battle seems to be more than enough for them to toggle between in-person and online battles well after breaking through to the stage. 

Look no further than the finals of the Online Beatbox Battle World Champs and Clip 2v2 Champs, streamed this weekend, for evidence. 

Exallos, fresh off his first GBB performance and humbled, he said, by his low ranking in the elimination round, defeated USA Champ and GBB veteran Vocodah to win the online champs. And M-Age and Raje, two GBB loopstation battlers, cleared 2025 KBB runner-up Mokbay and Japanese Champion and GBB small-final winner Mahiro. 

There was a time when I would have assumed that making the GBB or winning your national championship would mark the end of your career as a traditional online battler. No longer.  

Notes on The Beaten Path

In 2018, before beatbox was in the New York Times, before the GBB left Switzerland, and before I had ever conducted an interview, I looked for a name for a podcast about beatboxing. Eventually, I landed on SpeshFX, a play on the special effects that make beatboxing fun and the most important phrase in beatboxing at the time — ESH.

(Where did ESH go anyway? Did we have to sacrifice that to get DLow’s happy beat?)

My podcast mentors told me to make sure I could get a copyright on whatever I would name my podcast. Getting the domain for the website was key to building a brand and keeping my audience. I didn’t care for this advice because it meant that my first idea for what to name my podcast wasn’t viable.

There are dozens of podcasts with some variant of “The Beaten Path” as the name. On an idea level I had as good a claim to the name as any. The tagline for SpeshFX says “SpeshFX tells the story of beatboxing, from Boots 'n' Cats to Lip Rolls. It takes you along the journey from discovery to obsession, and deep into the beatboxing community.”

That sure sounds like the beaten path to me.

I have come to love SpeshFX more than I ever could have loved The Beaten Path. There’s only one SpeshFX on earth and it will always be mine. I never want to share it. But all these years later I’m pleased to have found a place in the SpeshFX universe for my show’s first name.

Recent Event Recap

The topic of battle innovation is one I have covered here for a long time, and is set to continue into 2026. Today, we hear from Spanish legend Fredy Beats about EntreFest, a Spanish Battle that is the first of its kind in a number of ways.

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In addition to being Spain's first international beatbox battle, EntreFest answered a question no battle organizers had dared to ask before:

I'll let Fredy take it from here. He opened with a list of all the possible battle formats the contestants could choose from:

There is some battle concepts like classic battle, then ABBA, a show battle — which is [one] three minute [round] each — There is the 30 second rounds. So 30 seconds, 30 seconds each, until they complete six rounds. There is also the button where you press the button and the time stops, and the other one keeps going until they do the six minutes total.

And in the top eight — [from] 45 live eliminations] — the last one goes on stage first and chooses who wants to battle from the top four on the top and like this, the one before the last one, he chooses one of the top four, and until the bottom four choose their opponent, and the opponent, which is ranked first, chooses what is the concept that they're gonna battle with.

To have all these concepts in one battle ... was also a cool thing and very interesting. In fact, the last person ranked chose number one and the one before chose number two. So it was pretty cool that ended up being like what it should have been in a normal battle. But it was, it kept things interesting.

I think it was like around 15 or 16, countries [represented], if I remember correct. But the people that surprised me the most, I would say Isak from Venezuela, crazy style, I think it's two time Venezuelan champion, but haven't heard of him. Of him before, shishone, the newest Italian champion and youngest crazy, crazy life sound crazy battle energy, although he's on a on a wheelchair, he really plays with that as a battle moves.

Maybe it's a good thing to have some constant but concept battles. [All the options were] given to the participants before, and they had some cards that once you choose it, you cannot choose it anymore. So there was limited amount of each kind of concept. Overall, really good start for what I see is a nice international battle in the European scene.

Upcoming Calendar: Wild Cards

• Spanish Beatbox Championship: Submissions until December 7, 2025.
• Japan Loop Championship: Submissions until December 15, 2025.
• Beatcity Japan 2026: Solo Men/kids submissions until December 21,2025.
• Beatcity Japan 2026: Tag-Team/Loopstation/Solo Women/Crew submissions from January 19 until February 19, 2026.

Upcoming Calendar: Events

• Turkish Beatbox Championship: Online, asynchronous. November - January.
• Brazilian Beatbox Championship: São Paulo SP, Brazil. December 6-7, 2025.
• Loop di Loop: Almere-Stad, The Netherlands. December 6, 2025.
• Lithuanian Beatbox Championship: Kaunas, Lithuania. December 6, 2025.
• Beat Brothers IV: La Cisterna, Chile. December 6, 2025.
• Peru Beatbox Championship: Online. December 7, 2025.
• USA Beatbox Championships: Brooklyn, New York. December 12-13, 2025.
• Paraguay Beatbox Championship: Online. December 13, 2025.
• Guatemala Beatbox Championship: Location TK. December 13, 2025.
• Beatbox of the Month, December: Berlin, Germany. December 12, 2025.
• French Beatbox Championships: Toulouse, France. December 19-20, 2025.
• PROTOCROWN Vol.2 Main Battles: Hokkaido, Japan. December 20, 2025.
• Israeli Beatbox Championship: Rishon L'Tzion, Israel. December 25, 2025
• Costa Rica Beatbox Championship: Date TK, 2025.
• Beatbox Insanity New Year Beatbox Battles 2026: Online. January 3, 2026.
• Spanish Beatbox Championship: Zaragoza, Spain. January 4, 2026.
• FentaMan Loopstation Championship 2.0: Online. February 21, 2026.
• Ohio Open Beatbox Battle: Akron, Ohio. March 7, 20226.
• Japan Loop Championship: Tokyo, Japan. March 15, 2026.
• Florida Beatbox Battle: Agen, France. April 24-25, 2026.
• BeatCity Japan: Tokyo, Japan. May 5-6, 2026.
• SpiderHorse @ Aarhus Vocal Festival: Aarhus, Denmark. May 14-17, 2026
• German Beatbox Championships: Berlin, Germany. May 16-17, 2026.
• Maestro Beatbox America: Bogota, Colombia. Dates TK July, 2026.
• Grand Beatbox Battle: Warsaw, Poland. September 24-26, 2026.

If I missed any upcoming events or Wild Cards, hit me up on Instagram, I’m @HateItOrLevitt or @SpeshFX.