Don't have to get money from YouTube directly the platform itself made everyone way more visible, it's their own fault not knowing how to get sponsorship/marketing money from other entities during that time besides liquor and Al Capone cigarellos
You don't toss the platform with the most visibility in the bushes, even the content creators who "left" YouTube still post stuff on there because visibility matters more than whatever YouTube pays or doesn't pay for views
Your money does not have to come directly from YouTube, that doesn't mean you dub YouTube completely and move behind a paywall, y'all talking like battle rap didn't fall into the Dark Ages since that happened, they lost the casual viewer completely, what's gonna happen when the current fanbase ages out? Where ya new fans gonna come from if they can't see anything outside of the app?
"YouTube ain't paying us money directly so we leaving" is short sighted as hell and the whole culture lost because of it.
All of the looks they got from BET and these other networks was off the strength of that YouTube engagement, that's what y'all are missing here. They needed that shyt to breakthrough to mainstream conversations.
Even this damn subforum fell off a cliff

look at all the threads with zero to no interaction. Y'all can keep pretending leaving YT wasn't the worst decision they ever made

the state of battle rap today disagrees with you. Nobody checking for none of this shyt like that anymore