Battling vs Freestyling

MBM

Well-known member
A few months ago, quite by chance, I stumbled across a hip hop battle night at one of my locals.

The standard was highly variable but a handful of top MCs had me pissing myself. Odd thing is, ain't many Battles in town and some people I'd spoken to had driven for hours to be there.

So, on to the point: relative merits of battling vs freestyling to showcase an MC's skills. If you're a good battler will you automatically be a good freestyler?

N.B. one geezer tried to get me on stage but I'm literally tongued-tied so suck at this stuff.
 

originaldrum

from start till done
you may have heard of supernatural, said to be the worlds greatest freestyle emcee, yet does he have an album, i don't think so, the guy does like 150 shows a year or something...
yet no album...

also , if it was up to me the freestyle battles would loose the practice of choosing a word out of a hat to freestyle around, they are giving the freestyle scene a bad rep, i mean - who wants to hear freestyles about going down the local nightowl or hanging out at nando's

not all freestyles are bad though, there are a whole bunch of AUS/NZ emcees who can tear it up,

your from sydney - you must have seen bliss n eso (particularly eso) tear it up totally maggott down the pub
 

mms

sometimes
originaldrum said:
also , if it was up to me the freestyle battles would loose the practice of choosing a word out of a hat to freestyle around, they are giving the freestyle scene a bad rep, i mean - who wants to hear freestyles about going down the local nightowl or hanging out at nando's/QUOTE]



that sounds like the sort of thing you have to do in gcse english exams, write an essay around some words. bad when hip hop freestyling sounds a bit like an english exam
 

hint

party record with a siren
I prefer battles - keep it short and funny.

cos when someone's just spouting on-the-spot stuff it's always best suited to punchlines and general amusement. freestyles tend to go on too long and go nowhere in particular. and like mms says - there's something a bit naff about the whole "hold up something in the crowd and I'll shoehorn it into a rhyme" school of freestyling. it rarely results in a rhyme that you'd actually be impressed by on a finished, recorded track.

of course there's always the mixtape-style "freestyle" of MCs trying out written rhymes before commiting them to their own tracks.

supernatural has put out some "proper" releases, but they weren't very good. nuff said.
 

Diggedy Derek

Stray Dog
Definitely free styles for me. Battles would be great if they were as good as 8-Mile (hey c'mon don't tell me you didn't like it), but it's very tempting for MCs to descend into sexual slurs that, while often funny at the time, actually don't encourage you to listen back to an MC in the cold light of day.
 
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