Last week’s VERZUZ featuring Joe and Donell Jones was promoted as a celebration of R&B nostalgia and the enduring careers of two artists who have contributed to the genre for over three decades. It played off of the idea that the franchise is successful simply because Black people love a throwback. But, VERZUZ has become a cultural juggernaut because it understands something the music industry repeatedly gets wrong: cultural relevance doesn’t have an expiration date.
What began as a music battle series during the pandemic has evolved into one of the most influential visibility engines Black culture has produced in the digital era. VERZUZ didn’t just give fans a chance to relive memories. It gave artists who had moved beyond their commercial peaks an opportunity to re-enter cultural conversations.
At a time when so many people were stuck at home, VERZUZ became a digital gathering place for Black culture. Fans showed up for the music, but also for the memories, debates, stories and moments that shaped an era. It wasn’t simply preserving history. It was making history part of the present-day conversation again.
The music industry often treats relevance as something artists lose over time. VERZUZ proved the opposite.
Today’s music landscape is largely driven by what’s new: emerging artists, viral moments, current chart success and the next big thing. Artists from the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s are frequently labeled “legacy acts” once they pass their commercial peak, even when their music continues to resonate.
Too often, “legacy” becomes shorthand for “irrelevant.” But the audience doesn’t always agree.
From a public relations perspective, the genius of VERZUZ was never about declaring a winner. It was about creating an event people felt compelled to watch, discuss and share. Great public relations transforms attention into engagement, and engagement into relevance. VERZUZ accomplished all three.
The impact extended well beyond social media. Artists who participated in VERZUZ frequently found themselves featured across major cultural and media platforms such as Apple Music, Complex, Sway in the Morning, The Breakfast Club, and Funky Friday, outlets that help shape conversations around music and culture. In many cases, that visibility translated into measurable results. Following the success of the B2K and Pretty Ricky battle, renewed interest in the group’s music helped generate momentum around B2K’s single “Mileage,” which became the group’s first Billboard-charting radio record in nearly two decades. Likewise, Brandy and Monica’s long awaited reunion generated tremendous public interest and helped fuel a highly successful joint tour that reportedly grossed more than $44 million.
That’s the part of the VERZUZ story that deserves more attention. Visibility became opportunity.
Traditional music marketing often depends on something new, a single, album, tour or headline to give an artist a reason to reenter the conversation. VERZUZ flipped that model. It took what artists already had, their catalogs, histories and relationships with fans and turned those assets into live cultural events.
Top VERZUZ moments included: Brandy and Monica revisiting one of R&B’s most iconic rivalries; Beenie Man and Bounty Killer celebrating dancehall; Keith Sweat and Bobby Brown representing New Jack Swing; B2K and Pretty Ricky tapping into millennial nostalgia. These weren’t simply trips down memory lane. They were cultural events that generated conversation, media attention and renewed interest in the artists and their music.
That’s why the real winners of VERZUZ were never simply the artists who “won” the battle. The real victory was renewed visibility.
VERZUZ demonstrated that an artist doesn’t necessarily need a new hit record, major label backing or radio dominance to command attention. Sometimes they simply need a platform capable of reconnecting their existing work with an audience.
The recent debate surrounding Lyfe Jennings and NPR’s Tiny Desk raises a different question: Who gets to decide who’s culturally relevant in the first place?
This isn’t a debate about whether Jennings should or shouldn’t be featured. It’s about the gatekeepers who shape public perception of who matters, who deserves promotion and who gets access to mainstream platforms.
Platforms such as Tiny Desk, streaming playlists, award shows and major media outlets don’t simply reflect cultural relevance. They can help create it. They influence who gets discovered, who gets rediscovered, who remains visible and who gets left behind.
An artist can have a respected catalog, a loyal fan base and decades of cultural impact and still struggle to gain access to the platforms that signal relevance today. Once an artist falls outside the industry’s definition of “new,” their cultural value can become harder to see not because it has disappeared, but because of the visibility surrounding it has. VERZUZ challenged that dynamic. That may be VERZUZ’s most important contribution to Black music culture. It didn’t convince audiences to care about artists they had forgotten. It created a space where audiences could prove they hadn’t forgotten them at all.
Ultimately, VERZUZ was more than a music battle series. It was a public relations innovation disguised as entertainment. It created a framework that allowed Black artists to reclaim visibility, reconnect with audiences and participate in contemporary cultural conversations without having to reinvent themselves.
In an era when the music industry is constantly focused on what’s next, VERZUZ reminds us that cultural value doesn’t expire. The music industry doesn’t have a legacy artist problem. It has a legacy artist marketing problem. VERZUZ is showing the industry exactly how to solve it.
Valentine is a Washington, D.C.–based publicist, communications strategist and founder of The Pitch Guy. On TikTok he’s @Thepitchguy
