I've been watching battle rap for a few years now, so I'm sure that there are longer-tenured fans in this subreddit who can shed some light on this in a more thorough way. My question is this: do battle rappers involve themselves in battle rap for the purpose of establishing their name so that they can promote their music or do they do it with the goal of becoming known as the best battle rapper?

Obviously, every rapper is different, and we've seen numerous rappers launch their own business ventures outside of music and rap entirely. I just wonder about the motive for a lot of guys to get into battle rap because it is such a niche area of the rap genre.

Another thing that prompted this question was that I've noticed that battle rappers tend to have longer shelf lives compared to studio rappers. Of course, it takes less to get in the studio and record an entire album and go and perform on tour than it does to write rounds for different opponents, but that also impacts the volume, meaning that a battle rapper can make more appearances with new material in short periods of time than a studio rapper presumably could (unless they're on an insane tear releasing new music and mixtapes weekly).

The point is really just that battle rappers seem to stick around the battle rap space longer on average than studio rappers stick around. A battle rapper could battle for as long as 20 years, but we don't see very many studio rappers in the modern era doing so for that long. At least I haven't seen it, anyway.