The majority of these battles, if not all of them, have never been uploaded online as far as I know. The Scribble 2002 DVD is easily the worst one they put out so I don’t feel bad uploading their footage. I believe the final product wound up showing something like 13 minutes of footage total which is exactly what I have hear minus the final match between Dos Noun & Mac Lethal which can be located at the Top 15 Freestyle Rebuttals post.
The long awaited full length album from Project Blowed veteran and battle scene legend NoCanDo has finally dropped. Jimmy The Lock is 12 songs straight from the creative mind of NoCanDo, one of the battle circuits most unique and original MC’s. For only $7.99, it’s hard not to purchase the CD and show support to someone who has provided you with hours of battle entertainment over the years. After the jump, a music video from the album.
Awesome short notice battle between Dizaster & Monk McNasty. Dizaster perfectly weaves in and out of freestyle and written which is a ridiculous combo, reminiscent of old Iron Solomon battles. Monk also came very sick in this and put up a great fight against Diz who is one of the best in the Grind Time circuit.
Kid Twist (KOTD) and Fresco (GTMW) meet at BOTB5 in Oakland California for this heated battle. This was thought to be a mirror match due to their many similarities (both are incredibly buff hardcore death rappers with imposing physical traits), but I think this battle goes on to highlight just how different they are. Fresco is a much more technical and polished rapper, while Twist is much better at the setup + punch approach with more jokes thrown within.
With that said, both are incredibly talented writers and definitely top tier in each of their divisions. This was an excellent battle and both of these guys deserve tons of props for their performances.
I’m constantly amazed at how large battling is becoming again. The recent influx of new videos by Grind Time is constantly exposing new people to our culture. It hit a huge (and unfortunate) boom when 8 Mile came out, resulting in tons of idiots being shoved into the circuit, but this new explosion seems to be positive.
At work a while back I was talking about rap with a coworker when out of the blue he asked me if I’d ever heard of these two battlers ‘TheSaurus and this one kid’ who he’d seen on Comcast. I immediately knew who he was talking about and told him that they were actually friends of mine. I went on to explain about the WRC’s and where they were from, etc. and he was pretty interested to hear about it.
It’s insane the type of exposure that battling has given some people. The ’06 battles from Jumpoff are STILL being played on Comcast and people who aren’t even into battling are seeing them and remembering 50% of the names of the battlers involved (maybe if Illmac’s name was Dictionary we’d be batting .1000 on this topic).
Each battler who wants to pursue a career in hip-hop or anything related to entertainment needs to take this growth seriously and market themselves as well as possible. People not jumping at the opportunity to establish themselves with a more permanent fixture is pretty alarming to me. Many of these guys are getting 50,000 views on YouTube per battle and they aren’t shouting out a web site in their opening credits. If they had a product like an album for sale, which many of them do, they are wasting a free promotional opportunity to receive free traffic. If only 10% of the 50,000 people went to your site, and of those 5,000, only 3% bought your album at $8 total, you’d be making $1,200 per battle. I ball parked these figures and used very low estimates to drive home the point of this rant: battle rappers are idiots and need to take advantage of the popularity that battling is giving them.
Anyways, you ever hit up a random party and have people talking about battles?
From Battle of the Bay 5 in Oakland, California.
Interesting battle. Continue reading the post to view my detailed breakdown of the match up.
A pretty nifty little cypher video of some sick GT emcees trading verses.
Very impressive. I think the beat is horrible and distracting, but the actual freestyle itself is very good. He doesn’t rhyme the most complex words, but he’s rapping super polished without messing up and fumbling his flow which is far more impressive.
I think it’s great that so many of the SMACK/Glock rapper type guys are proving they aren’t so one dimensional with their styles. Arsonol crossing over into the Grind Time league and showing he can dominate in both circuits is a really impressive thing. The same goes for Hollow who can do both the street shit in the New York leagues as well as fly to Cali and rap about dating Martians.
