Showing posts with label hip hop. Show all posts

The reason why?

Because its becoming less and less entertaining to me. Don't get me wrong, there are a few people that I still look for when their new album drop, but the majority of the time, I am engulfed in battle rap. I have always loved battle rap. Mainly because its the rawest form of rap. Most Emcees got their start from battling. Most Emcees got their record deals from spitting their hottest bars against someone that they were told could kill them. Its a huge part of hip hop, with more and more mainstream artist attempting to go back to their roots, and jump in the ring.

Its a sport.

Its about who can craft the best lyrics to verbally punish their opponent. Its about who could demoralize a person with punch lines, metaphors, schemes, and similes. I'ts about performance.

Sorry If I'm using a lot of slang that you are not familiar with, but all my hip hop heads understand what I mean.

Its just that a lot of rap songs are watered down and lack originality. With battle rap, its different. The Emcees are still hungry and passionate about what they do. You could hear it in their voice. Their aggression. Their delivery. They put their career on the line EVERY TIME they battle someone. They know that each battle they participate in could make or break them. If you think about it, that is a lot of pressure. Battlers know this and they still go out and perform like its no tomorrow.

If you love Hip Hop, you can't help but be a fan of battle rap. And if you haven't heard of battle rap-go to Youtube and look up some names of Murda Mook, Loaded Lux, Charlie Clips, Tsu Surf, Tay Rock...just to name a few.

I wake up. Take a shower. Help my wife with changing and feeding our daughter (sometimes lol). Grab something to eat. And then take a couple of minutes to go to twitter and tweet my "Thought Of The Day" before I clock in for work.

So if I have a little extra time, I usually just scroll through my time line to see what's going on...Normally it is the same bs but today all I kept seeing is Kendrick Lamar and how he killed this verse. So being the Hip Hop Head I am, I had to find the song that people were talking about. And I finally found it!

It was called "Control" and it was a Big Sean joint featuring, Kendrick Lamar and also Jay Electronica. So I'm hyped. All three emcees can spit, so I couldn't wait to hear it. So by this time, work started and I told myself that I will just listen to it on my first break. Break comes around and the first thing that I do is open up youtube on my phone. Got the song and started to listen. First off is Big Sean, and he is killing it. I don't know why, but I always thought that Big Sean had a unorthodox rapping style. Not unorthodox in a bad way, its just different than anybody that's out right now. He also never seem to have any passion behind his verses, so his dope lines tend to have no lasting impact/or impression. They just fade away from my memory until I hear the song again and remember that his verse was nice. Any way I digress. Once Kendrick came on, and starting spittin, I immediately was able to tell that he was about to go in! Now I must admit, I'm not too hip to Kendrick Lamar. I mean, I heard several songs from him and I knew he could spit. I especially liked the "Kill My Vibe" Remix with Jay-Z and him spazzing out on the last verse. So I expected pretty much the same type of effort from him with this one. And he didn't let me down. So after a few bars it seems as if his verse took a sharp turn. It was like he was saying, "Hold up! I'm not finished yet, I still got something to say!" And started bring up rappers names. Now its like a unspoken rule in Hip Hop, that if you bring up a rapper's name in a song, you can expect some type of backlash or retaliation. This dude named 10 rappers!! But he did it in a way where he wasn't actually dissing them, which I have never seen done before.

He was basically telling them to step their game up! If no one is willing to put in the effort to take the crown, I WILL!!!

I for one, was like YES!!!!! This is what Hip Hop needs!!! Finally, somebody had the BALLS to say something like this. I have been upset with Hip Hop lately, and this was like a breath of fresh air! He reminded people that rapping is a competitive sport. You want to be respected as the best, you have to master your craft so that you could be the best. I think people were reading too much into what he said or what he didn't say. (People are saying why he didn't say this persons name or that persons name, etc) He also mentioned being the "King Of New York" which lit the fire under some of the east coast rappers, which spawn a rebuttal from Joell Ortiz (Which I think actually killed Kendrick's Verse) but that is what Kendrick wanted. He called Hip Hop out for being soft and the lost of its gritty edge. In other words, I think these Hip Hop artists today are too nice.

Jay Electronica closed out the song and his verse was just okay. He really fell off. It was sort of ironic to have him come on after Kendrick because he was the one that was suppose to be the next to take the throne. He was the one that was suppose to be calling out Hip Hop for what it is. He was the one that was suppose to be spitting the type of verse Kendrick just spit. I am sorta disappointed in him. I have yet to hear one positive comment about his verse on the song.

Anyway, didn't mean for this to be too long, I just wanted to share my thoughts on the "verse heard around the world". Again, it wasn't the best verse I ever heard. I think it was a verse created to be a "wake up call". This could apply not just to rappers, but to anybody's profession. Staying complacent doesn't help you grow and get to where you want to be. Challenging others will help you raise the bar and go to the next level as well. But with this being about a Hip Hop, this was a verse created to let emcees know that what you are doing isn't good enough. And for that reason, his verse will remain memorable.

While watching battle raps on YouTube, I usually scroll down to check out the comments that people make. And most of them are usually ignorant, or consist of a rant that most people could careless about. But one comment kept reoccurring that caused me to write this post. People kept saying...

"I hate when he freestyles"

Or

"He should take his time and write to show that he is serious"

What?!?!?

There were several comments on different videos mainly saying the same thing. It's so bad that one emcee started to get boo'ed while freestyling during his battle. Now, as a avid Hip Hop head this blew me away.  When did freestyling become frown upon? As a child born in the 80's, battle raps use to be all about the freestyle. As a matter of fact, people use to say "Anybody can write, but it takes true skills to freestyle". But it looks like those times have changed. Those times created artists like Common, Black Thought, Cassidy, Wordsworth, etc. that use to rhyme off the top of the head for which it seem like hours... Killing people with their word play. There were no time to prepare. If you were called out on the street, you had to defend yourself that instant, that was it. But now, these battle raps today are filled with schemes, gun bars, or personals that has caused the art of freestyling to die. Don't get me wrong, I love written rhymes too, but I just hope that emcee's today realize that you need a combination of written and freestyles to be a dope battle rapper. I respected battle rapper.

What do you think? Do you prefer written rhymes over freestyles? Or the opposite? Is it harder to do one over the other? Would love to hear your thoughts.