Bad freestyling is like a bad first kiss. The timing is off, saliva flies with directionless abandon, and when it’s finally over, mutual embarrassment brings on heavy silence — or in the worst case, raucous booing. UNC Charlotte’s “Survival of the Illest” competition saw both reactions earlier this month.
There are some things amateurs just shouldn’t try. Throwing knives at a human target is one that comes to mind. Trying to improvise witty, insulting rhymes to complex, changing rhythms in front of a packed auditorium is another.
20-20, a twig of an MC with long, tree-bark dreds, said it best after winning the competition: “I don’t mean any disrespect, but freestyling is like boxing. You can’t just get up and step into the ring. You have to condition every day.”
Despite the didacticism, 20 (we’ll call him Twenny) was barely more accomplished than the other wannabes. An early rhyme showed promise:
“Get out of here son,
I’ll shit you out my rectum. . .”
But before anyone could page a movie producer for the rights to Twenty’s rap film, he revealed his lack of range: Most verses focused on the last stage of the digestion process. In the finals, Twenny defeated Lacrosse, a blond, pale-as-paper hipster in a vintage elbow-patched sport coat. Lacrosse had quickly become a crowd favorite for his fluttering moves, skin pigmentation and slowly enunciated verses. To one of his many competitors in an oversized jersey, Lacrosse quipped:
“I’m a dresser.
That’s a dress, sir.
Take it off and give it to your sister.”
Like the others, Lacrosse couldn’t come up with enough rhymes to finish the 20-second rounds. Another rapper began a verse, “I smoked so much weed, I’m really high right now,” but he was too incapacitated to finish the promising couplet.
Backstage, I speak to the rappers about freestyling. The goal of a freestyle competition, according to rapper J-Swoll, is to “get on them, talk about their mom and destroy their personality.”
“Do me! Do me!” I beg, and he looks me over. If someone has told him I have an overprotective mother, I’m toast.
“You’ve got the green on (a reference to my jacket?).
You must get the weed on…”
I never knew “on” rhymed with “on.”
Charlotte rappers — freestylers and non-freestylers alike — are trying to turn this hip-hop wasteland into a Southern hotspot like Atlanta or Houston. In those cities, rappers have united and focus on the community instead of individual careers. It’s a strategy the Charlotte rap world is trying to emulate.
I ask J-Swoll the difference between East Coast and Southern rap. “New York rap is commercial. It’s about money, cars and jewelry. Dirty South is more laid back. It’s about looking at your surroundings and how you got out of the ghetto.”
J-Swoll says his group raps about abstract topics, such as poverty, racism and the economy. I notice he has “A.B.G.” written in big, blue, cursive letters across his shirt. I ask if that’s his group’s name.
He nods. “All About the Green.” I think he’s back on the green plant theme, but he elaborates: “Money makes the world go around.” I guess that technically qualifies as an economics lesson.
The Charlotte-based Tycoon$ is a hip-hop collective that’s practically a conglomerate. True to their name, Tycoon$ consider business as important as music. The group has a clothing line with the tagline “Rap or Die” (hopefully for Tycoon$, Puffy doesn’t set his litigious eyes on the gear). Their music video for “G’Mackin” can be seen on BET Uncut and MTV2, according to Knic-knoc, the group’s clean-cut white producer who handles promotion and lays down most of the beats. A mall fragrance model by day, Knic says the group is about to do a documentary.
Before the show, girls in a dance troupe shuffle past Tycoon$ in small herds. Jonny-5, a wee rapper with a young face, has a comment for each one. “Damn, look at those calves,” he says as a girl in camouflage capris passes. When another group of females mosies by, Jonny chirps in singsong, “Put a little switch in the hips because I’m watching.”
Billy Bad, a Lenny to Jonny’s George, barely takes notice. Jonny flashes him a questioning look. “They ain’t on my level,” Billy justifies. “They got no jeans game. They got no shoe game.”
“Are you going to fuck her shoes?” ribs Jonny.
Eight pounds of jewelry is not a prerequisite to performing freestyle in this city. In the slam-poetry world, Charlotte isn’t just a hopeful up-and-comer; it’s one of the top cities for the art form. Having never gone to a poetry slam, I thought all the subject matter would be similar and all the poets would be discontented, revolution-calling whiners. I found out otherwiese last week at McGlohon Theatre. Perhaps stale subject matter and hackneyed images are simply products of bad slam poetry. While there may not have been any happy poems at last week’s event, you’d have to be lacking consciousness not to be affected.
Diversity among performers and their acts marked the event. Quiet Poet invoked humor, riling up a mostly female crowd on the subject of her newly practiced abstinence and her frustrations with men. Sheldon, who looked like the Old Man from the Sea, played off children’s stories. Swan told a story about abuse, choking up halfway.
Maze Forever’s sonorous voice and maddening tempo literally raised hairs on my arms. Maniacal, a G.I. Joe look-alike with “I make stuff up” printed on his T-shirt, possessed such lyrical cadence and alliteration it almost didn’t matter what the words meant. And Q, the eventual winner of the event, mixed sweet-sounding hymns into the most creative, active and symmetrical pieces of the night.
“The talent level has soared in the last three years,” said Terry Creech, SlamCharlotte’s founder, coach and a former HBO Def Poet. “The literary ability of our poets, the writing, is tremendous.”
This article appears in Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2005.
