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I Don't Understand Battle Rap

Also the concept of a career battle rapper is fairly new

Most of the vets probably got into battles to get a deal,but rap changed

So the battlers you see now are mostly artists who's career took a detour and they made current day battle rap

But,now ppl with no interest in making music at all just become battle rappers.
 
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1/2 said:
bruh I know ONE nigga thats into this, he's posting videos all the time

other then that I see it here

makes sense tho, cuz I slept on a lot of east coast shit to begin with




we had "cyphers" in school....niggas just flowing and passing it around saying fly shit.....never "battled"

not saying its never been done anywhere around here it just wasnt the thing
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I came up around lyrical killers.You had to talk that shit
 
But there are still less street nerdy battlers and even the hood street battlers are nerds to some degree

I don't think nerd is a bad thing.Just means they put extreme focus into some niche things

Grindtime and KOTD focus more on non street battles
 
Word...Life said:
You’d always see niggaz rhymin and their boys behind them sayin their bars wit’em and adlibin’ like it’s a real track lol
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True story

My raps back then were more a long the lines of Canibus,Ras kass,early Em

They weren't specifically street but capable of coming off aggressive

My friend was more of a party MC

When he moved back to NYC he was surprised about how every cypher up there was "I got the big 45 my block get so life......"

He started using some of my verses to not get bullied in cyphers.
 
Lurk Rambis said:
Side note. Intresting enough, I didnt know the battle rapper moon was a OG battler from back in the day. I knew of the fight club but I didnt know he past as Moonie D so I did my googles and found that he battled RZA and Craig G in some random battle fest lol. A YouTuber had an intresting story about how this all came about too.

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BLAZE was a dope event. I remember as a kid, i think it was maybe 2000 or 2001, they put the whole event on HBO. Watched the entire bracket and the final battle was Eyedea vs Shellz and Eyedea won it. This was all pre acapella format though of course, but shit definitely had a following. Im not sure if they put every event on HBO but i definitely watched the Shellz vs Eyedea event on HBO.
 
Lou Cypher said:
BLAZE was a dope event. I remember as a kid, i think it was maybe 2000 or 2001, they put the whole event on HBO. Watched the entire bracket and the final battle was Eyedea vs Shellz and Eyedea won it. This was all pre acapella format though of course, but shit definitely had a following. Im not sure if they put every event on HBO but i definitely watched the Shellz vs Eyedea event on HBO.
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Was 2000
 
Whatever happened to Shellz?

I remember he had a mixtape presence circa 2001/2002, probably because he won the battle ya'll posted.
 
Hellczar said:
No lie any written battle or freestyle was extremely looked down upon growing up. It was looked at like cheating
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I think a lot of that changed when iron Solomon came and crushed fight klub. He used to get shit for having writtens all the time, but he was dope af and brand new and made a huge impact at the time. It wasnt long after that that the grindtime and URL started. Smack already had DVDs with battles and I think a lot of those were a mix of freestyle and writtens, but most freestyles are written somewhat at some point. Lot of these "off the top" rhymes were written and just stored in the brain for a long time. That's why you'll see a rapper go do freestyles for a radio show and when their album releases a lot of those freestyle rhymes are on the album.

Saw black thought do that at the BET cypher with eminem and mos def. He spit damn near entire verse that is on the "how I got over" album.
 
Hellczar said:
No lie any written battle or freestyle was extremely looked down upon growing up. It was looked at like cheating
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Yeah but at the end of the day,the term freestyle didn't have to be off the head

Plus even if a nigga doesn't write it if you rap enough you probably know certain words rhyme or naturally got something you go back to in most freestyle rhymes

While I loved off the top freestyles and was good at it,as the culture got bigger,nobody wanted to pay for choppy simple raps

I like the written genre better as a viewer

Smack would never have gotten where he is with off the head freestyle battlers
 
theres many different layers to this shit @1/2 keep fuckin wit it and you'll start seeing some of the different styles
 
I lost interest in battle rap a long time ago. I'm out of the loop on whats going on and tried to get back into it but get bored of it real quick. I don't feel like i'm missing anything
 
Lou Cypher said:
I think a lot of that changed when iron Solomon came and crushed fight klub. He used to get shit for having writtens all the time, but he was dope af and brand new and made a huge impact at the time. It wasnt long after that that the grindtime and URL started. Smack already had DVDs with battles and I think a lot of those were a mix of freestyle and writtens, but most freestyles are written somewhat at some point. Lot of these "off the top" rhymes were written and just stored in the brain for a long time. That's why you'll see a rapper go do freestyles for a radio show and when their album releases a lot of those freestyle rhymes are on the album.

Saw black thought do that at the BET cypher with eminem and mos def. He spit damn near entire verse that is on the "how I got over" album.
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Well if you have dozens of rhymes memorized, when you freestyle you will inevitably, and inadvertently, say punchline from your memory bank. It's not cheating but it is what it is.
 
Bed$tuy said:
I lost interest in battle rap a long time ago. I'm out of the loop on whats going on and tried to get back into it but get bored of it real quick. I don't feel like i'm missing anything
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Battle rap is at its best its ever been honestly. You have to know whats going on to really appreciate it
 
Sage Wonder said:
Battle rap is at its best its ever been honestly. You have to know whats going on to really appreciate it
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Im cool with Poisen Pen. He invited me to a few of them. Only went to one where Gorilla Nems was performing. Last I've seen Nems was at The Pumpkinhead tribute about a year ago in the lower east side at Mercury Lounge. He performed a funny song saying everything is garbage. ya baby moms is garbage. ya instagram is garbage. ya whole damn life is garbage.... dude is funny
 
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