Battle-aide
March 18 2006
Gentle Readers,
Greetings from
Adelaide, where the festival will soon draw to a close. Much has been happening here at the
fringe, so much that I've been too busy living it to write it, so instead of
trying to tell you about everything that has happened I want to just tell a
story about one event, and then I'll recap some festival highlights later when
I get a chance.
Shortly after I
last wrote I saw a poster for a local freestyle battle, which was held at a
club here in town about two weeks ago.
I presented myself at the door and asked if I could sign up, and was
told that sixteen rappers were already pre-confirmed for the battle, but there
was one no-show; however, six other local rappers had already expressed
interest in the one open spot. So
the host held a qualifying battle on the patio between the seven of us, where
he gave us each topics to rhyme about for one minute, then he matched us up in
head to head battles. This was a
proper cypher with MCs and random people crowded around, no mics, and a single beat-boxer
setting the rhythm, and I managed to serve them all even though I didn't know a
single thing about them or the hiphop scene here in general. I actually used that single fact to put
the last rapper down: "I don't know a thing about you / but lookin' at you
I have reasons to doubt you / and I can tell already, this battle's gonna be
dope without you." And so it
was.
In the main
battle I got a chance to see some of the local talent in action before having
to get on stage in the last heat, and I could tell Australian MCs were no
joke. I was put against a rapper
called "Mastercraft," who had short dread-locks, which were an easy
target, but this battle turned out to be less about appearance or background than
about age. He was probably around
nineteen or twenty, and in his first rhyme he launched with "I don't know
what I'm supposed to do / Battling this old dude / I'm just a kid, and he's
like forty-two!" After his
first thirty-second rap, which was mostly ageist in content, he had the crowd
(about two-hundred people), cheering and screaming and I had everything to
prove and nothing to lose.
So of course I
had to come back on the same tip, with rhymes like: "Picture me in this
freestyle cypher / Afraid to discipline a kid who's still in diapers" and
"You're the worst rapper up in here / Would somebody please buy this
under-aged kid a beer?" which got the crowd roaring for me, and when he went
to come back with his second verse he couldn't get a single punch-line out,
which meant he didn't get a single cheer.
Then in my second verse I started with "What's the point of even rhymin'
now? / Damn, I've never heard such a silent crowd!" and finished with
"I'm just tryin' to put it simple for y'all / I'm bringin' the info in for
y'all / And spittin' it in this kid's face, pimples and all."
I wish this could
be a Rocky/Rudy/Cinderella Man kind of story, but in the next round I lost to a
rapper called "Prime" who was my age but wasn't nearly as sharp as
Mastercraft. The best shot I got
in was "I scorch this rapper with my rhyme boasts / And turn Prime into
nothin' but prime roast." I
didn't choke or stutter or anything, but I just wasn't focused or hitting hard enough
and he came through with some Canadian disses about ice hockey and the like
that got the crowd going. I stayed
around and watched the rest of the battle and talked to a lot of the other
rappers and hiphop people in there.
It was a young crowd all around, and the top prize ($500) went to a
seventeen-year old called "Purpose" who was undefeated and virtually unchallenged
all night. I found out later that
Mastercraft was tipped to make it through to the last round and was seen as a
threat to Purpose before
Before I came to
Australia the only artists I had heard of were the Hilltop Hoods, who were this
country's rap pioneers, but I was happy to discover that Adelaide (home of the
Hoods) is something of a hiphop mecca over here, with a thriving scene and some
impressive local talent. The
outcome of the battle was not cash in hand for me, but I did get to make a mark
on the scene and meet a number of impressive artists, connecting with some for possible
collabos after the fringe ends.
It was also a
reminder of why freestyle battling is such a rare and beautiful art form. This is something I discuss to some
length in the general introduction to my book - a battle is an event that
combines the verbal aesthetics of poetry, the improvisation of jazz, the
entertainment value and spectacle of boxing, the fairness of sport, and the
populism of democracy. In a world
that is filled with separations, prejudices and favoritism, hiphop culture and
freestyle battling are a haven for equality. Where else can you say that it truly doesn't matter where
you come from, how rich your parents were, what your race is, how old you are,
what gender you are, what you've done in the past, what you look like, or
anything else external to the event itself? Any of these qualities can be used as ammunition, but
anything that is said can be just as well answered. All that matters in a battle is how well you perform with
your words, and anyone can enter.
Let the best man, woman, or child win.
So much else has
been happening over here that it's a shame to leave it at this, but I
understand the limits of the email attention span (actually I can be a bit
cavalier with those limits, mea culpa).
I perform my last show of the festival tomorrow, and then I have ten
days of regional touring to schools before I head home. I will write more when things quiet
down a bit. For now, I'm heading
back to the fray. All good things,
and may your
baba