MC Battle Blog

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.

I wanna talk about Slick Rick for a second.

Slick Rick told stories. I know that there are MCs who story tell today, but they don’t tell stories the same way The Ruler did. It’s not that he didn’t have some clever wordplay, or that he didn’t have ill metaphors and similes (“I broke the fuck out like I had the chicken pox”), cause he was a well rounded artist and he used those devices when it was necessary. But for the most part, he just talked to you. I’ll keep it recent so the kids feel included. Rick did a track with Mos Def and Madlib last year called Auditorium where he travels through Iraq for an afternoon in the eyes of a soldier. If Iraq is the subject of your song, you’re playing into pretty familiar territory; that is to say, this isn’t going to be the first time you’ve heard a verse about it. Rick doesn’t try to grasp the war as a whole or offer overarching criticisms while slinging shit at the administration. He brings it to ground level and describes what he sees around him. A kid throwing a bottle at him, a merchant giving away food. He leads the story up to a group of musicians getting down on the street corner before he kicks something for them. Then, one simile (“now the kid considered like an Elvis of Baghdad”) and he’s out. The verse works because of the way Rick approaches it, because of the angle he uses, because of the overall concept. The narrative itself is gripping shit, the imagery is vivid. What you decide to say is just as important as how you’re saying it.

I wanna talk about Aye Verb and Dumbfoundead for a second.

I don’t think anyone would argue with me if I said Verb and Dumb were two of the best battlers active in their respective styles. Verb dummies his opponents. His presence translates to camera near perfectly. Aggressive is an understatement. Everything about him is constantly in attack mode, from his content to his voice to his pacing to his body language. Dumb embarrasses his opponents. Anyone who’s heard his music knows how technically precise and complex he can be, but he rarely flashes that quality in his battles. His focus is on catching the crowd, pulling them with him on a string while he peppers the dude across from him with punch after punch. Stylistically the two have almost nothing in common. But creatively is another story. It’s all about angles with both. About taking shit that’s been said a million times and approaching it from an original perspective.

The challenge of finding originality is a tougher one for street battlers; their subjects, their opponents, are all so similar and interchangeable. It makes it real easy to fall back into gun-talk-wordplay, into basically taking the “I’ma kill dude” angle and dressing it up, making it sound good. What sets rappers like Verb (and Mook and Lux and Marv and Hollow and every other street battler with crossover appeal) apart is the sophistication they approach that topic with. Verb never just kills you in a way that relates to your name. He’s got all kinds of ridiculous, overstated, wonderfully entertaining ways to kill you. To this day, I don’t think I’ve heard a better gun talk concept than “even his guardian angels duck” (7:11). Don’t get me wrong, it works because of how he presents it, because of the internal multis, the hand actions, the southern-tinted booming delivery he spits it in. But all that presentation doesn’t mean shit without the concept behind it, the image of this guy strapped up firing rounds at SB’s rising soul, while the angels carrying him off to heaven hit the deck.

Dumbfoundead’s originality is impressive in the way he takes a tired subject and freshens it up from a referential point of view. Lots of people have called F.L.O. fat. No one has thought of using a mock Twitter page with updates about food to do it. Dumb has more versatility in the way he presents his angles than almost anyone in the game. He draws concepts out for an eventual payoff (All I Know Is That: The The Saurus Story), he arranges typical two and four bar setup-punch schemes (“You’re Ecuadorian, that’s like comparing Pepsi to Coke”), he allows his strongest ideas to stand on their own, no setup or presentation necessary (The first ever silent battle). Few guys have that kind of awareness and discipline with their angles. Put a fantastic concept like a silent battle in a lesser MCs hands, and you’ll get a four bar partially forced combination. I bet EG can write ten of them in ten minutes. It takes skill to condense your best idea into a single bar, the same way it takes skill to draw out your best idea over 6 bars in a rapid fire scheme. But it starts with the great idea. My point is this. There’s a million ways to present your concepts in a battle, structurally and stylistically. None of that matters if the concepts are corny.

I wanna talk about D.N.A. for a second.

Let me preface this part. I think D is dope as fuck. I’ve been using the word presentation a lot and I don’t think there are many guys better at that aspect of battle rap than D.N.A. His wordplay is innovative and clever, his delivery is on point and his crowd control, especially when he’s playing as the home team, is unparalleled. Ok? I like D.N.A. I think he’s good at what he does. But I think what he does, more often than not, is basic as fuck. To me, that’s more frustrating than anything else. The kid has all of the tools, but he just hasn’t put them together yet. From my perspective, that has everything to do with the work he puts into developing his concepts. He’s satisfied with empty wordplay as long as the wordplay is sick. As long as it makes sense and it pops, that’s good enough for him.

Take a look at the start of his OT round against P-nut again. “It’s funny you mentioned DNA” – really? What’s funny about that? It’s your name. You expected him not to say it? Setup-punch, double meaning, name based basic concept (I fucked your girl). “It’ll put P in a bag like a catheter” – really? Setup-punch, double meaning, named based basic concept (I’ll put him in a bag). “You’re bound to take an L, P” – really? Setup-punch, double meaning, named based basic concept (You’re going to lose this battle). “Don’t tell me Campbell’s is the one who got P souped” – really? Setup-punch, double meaning, name based basic concept (You’re arrogant). That last one gets me more than anything else. The depth of that idea is the fact that Campbell’s makes pea soup. That’s as deep as it goes. At no time in a battle should an MC be referencing pea soup, especially if the only point is to say your opponent is cocky. That’s corny. When the dudes at the venue are reacting to that line, what’s going through their heads? “OH DAYUM SON, PEA SOUP! CAMPBELL’S MAKES THAT SHIT!  AND THAT’S THE FIRST LETTER OF HIS NAME!  How does he write this stuff?”

I wanna talk about concepts for a second.

What they come down to is depth and variety. All four of those punches feature an above average amount of creativity in their presentation, in their delivery and arrangement. But the underlying concepts either aren’t there, or aren’t intelligent, deep, provoking. If you ask me that’s just lazy writing. It’s lazy writing in the same way doing alphabet schemes is lazy. It’s taking the first angle you can think of (the name of your opponent) and presenting that, dressing it up with technical devices. I don’t want to come off like I’m just shitting on D here, because that’s not my point. He’s not the only dude who structures his verses like this, and he’s not in any way the worst offender. He’s just the most talented example to me, and the most frustrating one because of that. I wanna see what he can do with real deep concepts and ideas. I wanna see him apply that wordplay to relevant original situations. When I watch a battle, I wanna see an MC come up with angles on their opponent I could never think of, shit that makes me pause the footage and scroll back to make sure I caught what they’re spitting.

I never came across a Slick Rick track I only listened to once. Get your bars up. Make me run it back.