WHAT ARE YOUR GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS AS A BATTLE RAPPER SO FAR? I’ve had a lot of achievements in King Of The Dot. I’ve won the Grand Prix tournament, which is probably my most esteemed achievement, just because of the difficulty level of the competition… The competition level now in today’s battle world is so much more vicious and you really have to be on point and show different aspects of your game so to be able to win that tournament twice in a row and be undefeated in that format is probably one of my greatest accomplishments in battle rap right now. Also, winning the King Of The Dot chain in 2010 is up there too and I’m hoping to win the chain back.
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR MOST RECENT GRAND PRIX WIN? The Grand Prix final, to be honest, was one of my best performances so far. I think I’ve come a long way. The new era of battle rap is a lot different than how I got started and the era that I came from, the freestyle of battle rap was all about one or two punch lines and more simple raps but something that would get the crowd responding. Nowadays, it’s a lot more technical and people are doing a lot more multi-syllable word play, schemes and all new elements to the game that you have to master. In this Grand Prix, what I tried to do was prove that I can do anybody else’s style better than them and that all culminated in the last battle.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE PART OF BATTLING? The crowd reaction and the atmosphere. In this day and age, the battles are all written, who you will be battling months before you’re battling the person so it’s a lot different from the freestyle era when you never knew who you were going to battle next. Now, with so much put into it, so much time invested going into the battle, the payoff is the day when you perform your stuff. You are basically writing specific material that you can only spit one time. It’s not like writing a song, where you’re going to go in the studio and record it and tour around and perform that same song at a bunch of different locations. You are writing the best material that you can possibly write and you only get one chance to deliver that material and you have to do it properly. You can’t have any slip-ups. So the real payoff at the end of the day is to be in front of the crowd and everything culminating in that one moment. When those punch lines start to hit and you see the crowd reaction, it is the payoff.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR STYLE OF BATTLING? I’m very versatile. I can do everything it takes to make a good battle rap. To be a good battle rapper, you have to be able to do comedy, you have to be funny, you have to have charisma, you have to have personality, but you also have to have serious wordplay and bars that make the crowd go “oooh, that’s just mean.” You have to have the ability to get personal… I think that is a quality that’s lost in some of the bigger names in battle rap. A lot of stuff is too generic. You have to be able to switch into different cadences with your flow, you have to use multi-syllabics to your advantage, but not overused. I think a lot of rappers use that as a crutch. I think that what battle rappers need to have is a blend of all those qualities and that’s what I would consider my style. I guess I would call my style the full package.
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