MC Battle Blog

Earlier last year Fresco was kind enough to field questions from the members in our battle forum. And like the trooper that he is, he came through and answered them with that special kind of Fresco pizazz that we’ve all come to know and love.

You can find Fresco on Twitter and be sure to check out the official Fresco MySpace page in order to get your daily Fresco fix. And be on the lookout for The So Clean Mixtape which is dropping March 19th.

Q: If you find that you’re a lot better at freestyling than your friends, how do you improve? Just keep doing it by yourself?

A: I’ve always been an adaptive learner.  They say that babies have an abundance of active mirror neurons, and that’s how they learn to speak at a young age.  I feel like my mirror neurons never turned off.  If i spend a certain amount of time with someone, I will unconsciously master whatever they are good at just by watching or listening.  It could be cards, videogames, computer programming, speaking another language, or in this case freestyling.  I tend to out-do anyone I spend time with.  So I’ve always been a little ahead of the curve on freestyling as compared to those in my area.  I don’t really practice anymore, but when I was really trying to get good I would do a bunch of different games I made up.  I would watch videos of great freestylers like Juice or NoCanDo, and pause the video at random intervals and try to predict their next line and then freestyle off of it for awhile.  When I fell off I’d hit play again until I had something decent.  Also I’d record all of these sessions and listen back to what I could’ve said or done better.  That was one of a bunch of games I had, but I think the best thing that happened was I would just freestyle so much that my brain was on constant freestyle mode.  I’d walk around life just rhyming words to the point where it got annoying to me, but it helped.

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It’s a freestyle video where people are actually freestyling. It’s great to see Okwerdz putting these out so often and if you like ‘em, subscribe to Okwerdz YouTube channel and get them as soon as they drop. Okwerdz has long been one of my favorite freestylers ever and Dizaster is also incredibly entertaining off the top. He puts lots of style into his delivery which is something not enough people do.

I had to dig deep in the archives to find this one. This is footage from the finals of The Cypher’s 2 on 2 MC Battle in San Diego, CA. This marks the first time that Illmac ever went down to Cali and mingled with the battlers. I wish the footage was better, but that damn Phillip Drummond uploads in the worst qualities! Okwerdz & NoCanDo make a pretty great team up here, but in the end, the short one and Bo-Rat were too much for them.

If you crank up the volume you can hear some great quotable lines from these veterans in their primal stages. This battle was filmed during a time when calling someone a Keebler elf was a hot line.

For those of you who either know me personally or who have known me through my online antics throughout the years, you’re probably aware as to how critical I am about certain things with regard to battles. If I hate something, I really hate and conversely, if I enjoy it, I really love it.

Frequently though, you will find me bitching about something or another in a half-assed manner because I’ve given up on explaining certain things in detail. Over the years, after constantly repeating the same stances and opinions into deaf ears, I’ve grown sick of the process. I now instead opt to simply tell people to shut the fuck up because they are idiots.

Two of the most frustrating things that I experience in the battle community are as follows:

1)       People who are incredibly wack who somehow receive props from the general populace.

2)       People who are incredibly dope who somehow receive hate or apathy from the general populace.

What I’m trying to explain through this rambling preface is that instead of simply telling you all to shut the fuck up, which I’ll likely continue to do, I will instead explain thoroughly why I believe certain people are either underrated or overrated (more frequently I will explain the former). To sum it up, I think its criminal for certain people to never receive the props they actually deserve.

Alright, now let’s get onto the article.

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KOTD battler Tiggz (I have no idea who this guy is to be honest) and Tantrum recorded some verses over the old Weatherman beat Gut You and half of it turned out really insane. I’ll let you decide which person absolutely kills this track (Hint: It’s not the guy who starts his verse off with, ‘I got a lyrical strong force.’)

While you’re listening to Tantrum absolutely demolish this beat, you might as well check the old Tantrum interview that took place shortly after his battle with dumfoundead happened.

This is a guest article written by RJ, a fan of the battle circuit. It deals with common themes in the battle scene which can either lead to a great performance or an incredibly basic and boring approach, depending entirely on the user of such methods. It’s a solid read so check it out. It’s posted in it’s entirety after the break so check out the full post to read it.

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Well this should be a fun little event. Unfortunately Engineer Vs. Only One isn’t going down, which really sucks ’cause that definitely would’ve been a barn burner. There’s some nasty matchups on this card and I’m really looking forward to Reverse Live Vs. 9DM. I think it’s one of 9DM’s toughest challenges since Evil can mimic that loud, aggressive, asshole-ish style that 9DM has become accustomed to.

I predict that somewhere in that match, each person will be wished death upon by cancer, AIDS, or perhaps a car wreck which is caused by a pinata filled with hepatitis infected syringes exploding and popping the tires, etc. You know, the usual stuff.

(“MarvWon seen here posing behind some dude in a blue coat.’)

MarvWon, the Detroit powerhouse is currently celebrating his day of birth so do him a favor and send your well wishes. And while you’re at it, check out his music video Stomp as it’s excellent.

Keep checking back as we’ll have Okwerdz’ thoughts on the battle very soon.

It’s always fun to see a neat little freestyle stage battle.