#BattleRap
IF you know anything about Hip hop, you should be well vested in the art of battle rap. It is one of the most impressive lyrical altercations on the face of the planet. I know shakespearean poetry is beautiful, if you can delineate what the greatest poet that’s ever lived was actually saying.
In the streets, we have adapted to our environment and thus found a less violent way to defeat our opponents. With drugs and alcohol found on every corner, the streets needed a platform that wasn’t censored by broadcasting commission rules or involved with corporations and their red-tape legal mambo jumbo.
Soon after rap was discovered and dissing other cats being the order of the day. Streets across the world had been accustomed to the cypher; a circle of rappers going head to head or passing the mic to one another.
I was introduced to battling back in 2002 at a place known now to most as Ghandi Square, when I was there it was still known as Van Der Bijl Square; a bus terminus that’s populated by scholars of high schools from across the city of Joburg. At that time in New York, a gentleman by the name of Troy Mitchell was already in the business of filming these battles at sneaker stores, alley ways and in the streets of course, selling them off on DVDs, now known as “Smack DVDs”.
Smack as he is now popularly known has taken the culture and craft of battle to the mainstream without watering it down a single drop. URL now boasts millions of views on Youtube, which has lead to BET’s ‘106 and Park’ allowing Smack to facilitate and host what used to be freestyle Friday to ‘Ultimate’ Freestyle Fridays on primetime.
What the guys at URL have created now, is not new to the lovers of battle rap but definitely not at such a major scale. Double Impact is a combination of two Mcees with the same style against 2 opposites of the same style. Just take a damn look at what’s in store for viewers come March 26,2016.