Show Me the Money 12

Round 1: A Cappella Rap Mission

Prospective rappers uploaded their audition clips to social media and the production crew selected individuals to attend the first mission. Each contestant will perform a short a cappella rap in front of the producer. The producer will provide an evaluation of the contestant and determine if they will advance to the next round. Similar to previous seasons, the contestant will be given a chain to indicate that they've passed the round. A total of 152 contestants were selected to advance to the next round.

Notable Contestants from Round 1

Round 2: 60-Second Rap Mission

The remaining contestants will participate in a 60-second beat rap, performing their rap in front of all 8 judges. If a producer team does not like or prefer the performance, they will press a button to 'Fail' the rapper. At least one producer team has to 'Pass' the contestant in order for them to progress to the next round. If a contestant is failed by all 4 producer teams, the pit flames will be lit and the stage will lower the rapper down to their elimination, where they will also surrender their SMTM necklace. A total of 73 rappers passed and advanced to the next round.

Round 3: Hell Song Camp - 1:1 Rank Mission

The contestants have been split into categories of High and Low level rappers. A High level rapper will face off against a Low level rapper. To select the matchups, the High level rappers each selected a Low level rapper to face off against. Starting with the rapper who received the most selections, they would choose the rapper they would face. If chosen by only one High level rapper, the matchup is automatically set. This process will continue until 3 unchosen rappers are left - these three will perform a 1:1:1 match. The producers will choose which rapper had the better performance and that contestant will advance, while the loser will be eliminated. Each producer team also has one Producer Pass to save a contestant who would otherwise be eliminated. Along with the 36 rappers that won their matchups, 4 were saved with the Producer Pass, leaving a total of 40 rappers to advance to the next round.

Round 4: Hell Song Camp - 4:4 Team Mission

The producers selected 10 rappers to serve as leaders for this mission, and each leader will choose 3 rappers to be members of their team. Lots were drawn to decide on the picking order for the leaders. Of the 5 available beats, the two teams that choose the same beat will battle each other. All members of each winning team would survive, and two members of each losing team would be selected for elimination. A total of 30 rappers passed and advanced to the next round.

Round 5: Hell Song Camp - Duet Mission

For this mission, two rappers will team up to put on a duet performance in under 100 seconds. If 3 or more producer teams hit the button to give a Pass within those 100 seconds, both contestants will survive and advance. However, for teams that do not get the minimum of 3 passes, both contestants will be eliminated. To select duet teams, an internal vote was held among the contestants to select the top-ranked rappers, and the rappers selected their duet partners starting with the highest ranked contestants. Any rappers that want to duet with those top-ranked rappers can stand on stage and appeal, and the top-ranked rapper will select the contestant they wish to pair with. Jay Park was unavailable for the filming of this round, so Lil Moshpit made PASS decisions solo. A total of 28 contestants passed and advanced to the next round, with only KC and Yang Kyle failing to get 3 passes. Additionally, the winners of Show Me The Money 12: Yaksha's World, Nowimyoung, Mason Home, and YLN Foreign were revived back to the main show and would return beginning Round 6, bringing the final total to 31 contestants.

Team Song Mission

At the end of each performance, the producers of each team would eliminate one contestant. The eliminated contestants after the performances will be part of the official release version of the songs.^[5]

First live performances

The winning teams of the previous round would go against each other and the losing teams of the previous round would go against each other. The losing teams would feature one duet performance with featuring, and one solo collaboration performance with a producer, plus an additional solo performance with featuring for the winning teams. For the duet performance matchups, the team with the lesser audience votes would eliminate one contestant of the two. For solo matchups, the contestant with the lesser audience votes would be eliminated.^[6]