Essence Of Battling

. Personals

Personal disses: Probably the most neglected part of battling, yet this should make up most of your verse, and be the basis on which it is structured. It can be disses aimed at their name, character, events they’ve been involved in, their crew, aliases, how they battle etc.

Personal wordplay: These quite often make up the outstandin and quoteable lines of your verse when used correctly. Again this can be played off their name, characteristics and so forth etc. Battles between the top emcees are usually won on this aspect, and it requires a fair amount of skill just to do it at all.

2. General punches.

General disses: When used effectively this can equate to a decent punch. In the higher quality battles these will often be seen as more of a filler, or a weak punch. But once you’ve mastered this it gives you basis on which to build in relation to personal disses and wordplay.

General wordplay: A good skill, but too much emphasis is put on this. Most people have more general wordplay than anything else, but that shouldn’t be the case. In fact it should come in third, after the personal disses and personal wordplay. In reality, if you follow the structure I’m settin out as a rough guide, there should be no more than 5 examples of this in a 20 line battle, whereas there are usually 10 to 15 in an average decent quality battle. This is one of the main things that is over rated by the new “vets”.

3. Imagery based punches.

Somethin else that I feel we put way too much emphasis on recently. This is a good skill, and when used correctly can help structure your verse, flow, and add more depth when surroundin your main punches, but really this is nothing more than a filler. Violence is ok, and when used with wordplay can make a real hard hittin punch, but alone it’s a bit “blah”. No you’re not gonna kill me, or maim me or whatever, so actually has little effect as a punch, and is more of a filler. Although when used right it still makes for a good filler.

4. Talkin about yourself

Shouldn’t really be used in short battles and is nothing more than a filler, but when combined with wordplay can still play a major part in a battle. Can often be quoteables when used with original and real nice wordplay. Though has little detrimental effect on your opponent it can help elevate your own verse that little bit higher. For example, T~R~E and Severe are experts at this.

5. Multi rhyming and inner rhyming

Both are virtual necessities in any tight battle verse, and are often over looked in place of punches. Surprisingly most people seem to forget how much more skill it takes to write a verse full of tight punches with both of these than just tight punches.

6. Flow

I appreciate there is a difference between text and audio, but if your text verse doesn’t flow, and wouldn’t flow in audio, then that’s wack. Blah de blah text and audio is different… yes but not that much different. Text derived from, and still is closely linked to, audio. You’re basically ‘writin’ instead of ‘spittin’, therefore text freestyles should be a lil better than audio freestyles cos you have a lil more time to think and that is the only difference. You don’t have to have a good voice, or good vocal flow with text, but if your verse doesn’t flow then that isn’t a rap battle. It’s a poetry battle or some such thing. Take your stretched lines back to where they came from. Stretched lines don’t flow. You can’t rap them, they are not rap.

Now you must realise that these are just basic rough guidelines of the true essence of battlin, and are all open to differences in views and opinions. We must take into account different styles etc. Who decides which is better? Well the voter’s own personal opinion I guess.

There are also differences with short and long verses. In a short verse then the emphasis should be on quick fire quoteable personal wordplay rather than personal disses quick as much, and less fillers, if any at all. Also if you are battling someone you don’t know much about, especially newbies, then it’s harder to use personal punches quite as much. That is where general disses and in particular general wordplay can be used to fall back on.

As I quickly touched on earlier, text and audio is different, but only slightly. If you wanna separate them then fine, but ultimately they are closely linked. I feel that text has helped develop my audio writin skills considerably, but at one point I differentiated between them too much, and my audio writin suffered. Even if you don’t do audio I don’t think that this should happen.

If you agree that’s fair enough. If you disagree then that is fair enough too. I hope this has been helpful to you.
peace

written by The Pastor Ry