MC Battle Blog

In case you haven’t heard, Ness Lee’s apartment building caught fire recently and destroyed pretty much everything in his possession. His vast collection of hats covered in Cocoa Krispies? Gone. It’s a pretty shitty situation all around, compounded more so by the fact that it happened so close to Christmas. Now I’ll never get to know what awesome gifts Ness had in store for me this year.

In all seriousness though, Ness is one of the most humble and respectful people I’ve had the fortune of meeting from our little battle circuit. One would be hard pressed to find a single person who could say anything bad about him (unless you talk to that old person whose car he keyed at Grizzle). It really is a case of, “this couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.” Shit, I’m sure even Ness himself is thinking, “it should have been E.G.”

If you have a little extra cash to throw his way to help him get back on his feet, please send him a donation via Pay Pal by using the button below. I promise I don’t have these donations rerouting to my own Pay Pal account.

After the amount of amazing Ness Lee battles he’s put on for us, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal to lend him a helping hand in a shitty time like this.

Any donation is appreciated, big or small, and will be rewarded with copies of Ness Lee’s entire discography, which is something you should have purchased already. I personally hadn’t bought it, but that’s because I was holding out for a horrific situation to happen to him, forcing him to release his music for donations to recover from personal tragedy. But that’s because I’m a savvy and ruthless businessman who likes to play the odds. Let’s just say I knew a certain 5’5″ battle rapper from Portland, OR who “won’t do nothing!” just might actually do something…

Overall, not a bad battle given the circumstances, what with it being Bartone and all, and Tantrum completely butchering his first round. Continue after the break for my full breakdown me ranting about this battle, as well as a working link to the video.

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(“This is what I had to deal with during this interview. Chew your fucking food, Mac.”)

Kansas City Native Mac Lethal took some time out of his busy schedule to answer some battle related questions, strictly of the goodness of his heart. Well, that and because I bothered him about it constantly for several weeks, but whatever.

Mac discusses old school topics, such as his performances in the early Scribble Jam battles, before touching on Grind Time, the new age form of rap battling. Mac touches on who he feels is overrated in Grind Time, his widely debated battle with Okwerdz during Scribble ’04, as well as his return to battling in the near future. It’s a must read!

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While currently battling an unfortunate and uncomfortable case of bleeding hemorrhoids, I was reminded of my dwindling love for rap battles. I then remembered I have a site about battles which still receives thousands of visitors each month, despite the fact that I never update it. After ruining 2 pairs of boxers due to blood loss, I decided, fuck it, let’s update this blog with some fun stuff for the fans!

So after researching bleeding hemorrhoids for hours online, I quickly realized that no matter how much I picked at it Within the last 2 or so years, the influx of scripted Grind Time matches has increased the popularity of battling as a whole many times over. While I still miss the now decaying on-stage freestyle battles, I cannot pretend that Grind Time isn’t a worthy adversary for battle mediums. Despite its awesome features, however, the league still has a long trek ahead of it when it comes to functioning wholly as a final replacement for all other rap battle platforms.

Here are 5 things I would love to see Grind Time implement for my own amusement, as well as some things I could definitely see aiding them in becoming an officially recognized league for battle rapping by major sponsors and other syndications.

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Excellent battle so far. A few thoughts after the jump:

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I uploaded a .zip file with a bunch of music from your favorite battlers, as well as some of the “older” guys that you damn young kids have probably never checked out. Click here to download the .zip and check out some solid tracks that I dig.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the music in here and the albums that the songs came from. As always, do yourself and the battlers a favor by supporting their music. It’s not affordable to travel to random places throughout the world to battle people for free.

Song: IAME – Maybe I’m High (Feat. OnlyOne, Sapient & Exclusive)
Album: IAME – I Am My Enemy
Breakdown: Both IAME and OnlyOne have competed in the GTNW division before and both are great on wax. This song has a killer beat (as all SandPeople releases do) and all people on this kill it.

Song: Ness Lee – Roarin’ 20′s
Album: Shit homie, just pick one.
Breakdown: Ness is absolutely of the best rappers in Grind Time and he destroys this song.

Song: NoCanDo – Paint Me Impatient
Album: NoCanDo – Paint Me Impatient EP
Breakdown: A favorite of mine from this super old NoCanDo EP. Fortunately for ya’ll, this is NoCanDo so the lyrics are still ahead of their time despite this being an old release.

Song: Okwerdz – Album Freestyle Pt. 1 & 2
Album: Random Acts Of Music
Breakdown: By now, hopefully most of you are aware as to just how good Okwerdz is at freestyle. This is from his first actual release from way back in the day, but the freestyles are still insane. He teamed up with A-Train, winner of the 2004 Scribble Beatbox Contest, to come up with a very innovative freestyle track.

Song: OnlyOne – Punch Face (Feat. 9DM)
Album: Police Brutality
Breakdown: An awesome song by 2 of the very best from the GTNW division.

Song: Pumpkinhead – Alkaline And Acid
Album: Orange Moon Over Brooklyn
Breakdown: One of my favorite releases that year, easy. Marco Polo is one of the best producers out today and him and PH made a great team on this album. Definitely recommended.

This is about half of the songs included in the .zip. I don’t want to spoil all of them! I hope you dig it.

For only $15, Ness will give you the download links to 4 of his full-length albums, totaling at 70 songs. That’s $3.75 an album! And even more impressive, only $.21 a song! Normally I would assume that if a rapper is giving away his music for less than a quarter per song, he is completely wack. Fortunately, in this case, that is not accurate because Ness is one of the best rappers in Grind Time. Unlike the majority of Grind Time’s rappers, he’s been doing music a lot longer than battling in the league and as such, can actually, you know.. make it.

Check out his site for his album sampler and get your ears blown away!

This is a very beneficial deal for you as with 70 tracks + the fact that Ness is an amazing rapper, you’re sure to get your moneys worth EASY. Do yourself a favor and send $15 Pay Pal to jeronethan@yahoo.com and cop some excellent music. It’s nice to actually support good music from some of your favorite battlers. It helps them battle more, as well as to do other shit, like purchase hilarious looking hats for all of us to laugh at!

Here’s another cool article written by our official field correspondent R.J. Check out his thoughts on the battle below.

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And it’s finally here!

Here’s the intro track that official MC Battle Blog field correspondent R.J. was referring to in his Grand Prix Trip Report he wrote last week. Major props to Avocado for being the fucking man and making our battle scene look 10x more professional and awesome than it otherwise wood.