As we continue the countdown to Ireland’s biggest ever rap battle, our battle expert Nugget returns to Rap Ireland to break down his DFI 2 match up against Siyo.
In his latest installment of the Battle Blog, Nugget discusses his pre-battle nerves, distracting girls in the audience and how to deal with the worst-case scenario; a choke!
Of course, Don’t Flop 4 takes place this Saturday at 3pm. Don’t forget to come down and check out the local talent first hand! There will be 6 Top Quality Battles on the day so make sure you get down early.
THE BATTLE BLOG II – WORDS BY NUGGET
Let’s start with background on the lead up to DFI 2. My original opponent for this show was meant to be Nu-Centz. I knew as soon as it was announced that this had the making of a great battle. We both had enjoyed good debuts, and because we know each other well, it was going to be easy to write for.
I got all my bars down early and I was just looking forward to it. Then when I was in Collie’s, recording my verse for the “2 Joints” track, (check that track out if you’re a Don’t Flop Fan, it has loads of the DFI lads on it) I got word that Diligenz had pulled out! The line up was just about to be released, and we were short one battle. I was looking to battle as much as possible, and knowing that I already had my bars for Nuie down I jumped at the chance to battle Siyo too. Of course, by now everybody knows that me and Nuie didn’t battle on the day. This wasn’t a duck on either of our parts. Circumstances at the time just didn’t allow for it to happen, but who knows what might happen down the road.
The preparation for Siyo was a good laugh. I don’t know loads about him, but I had found out a few months beforehand that he used to be a hairdresser. Now that’s a good job, but it was also obviously something that I could exploit. I also knew that he loved reggae and ya can see that through the reggae references in his tunes. It’s something a lot of people would know about him, so I had to go at that as well. Other than that, I just picked apart his songs and his previous battle to find stuff to throw at him.
On the day of the battle I was a bit all over the place to be honest. I think a lot of people were. With the first DFI event none of us knew what to expect; it was all new territory. The second time around I think the nerves started to really set in. And one thing that certainly didn’t help was the chattering and mistimed laughs of the young girls at the front. No disrespect to them at all, but the constant talking made things very difficult. Several people on their side choked and everyone on their side lost on the day. Watch all the battles again if you don’t believe me. Check for the loud laughs to set up lines and half way through bars; then the punch hits and it gets a lot quieter. Bad crowd reactions! Now don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that the kids there are getting involved with the Hip-Hop thing at a young age. It’s just when you’re trying to put on a serious event, it can be a bad look.
I felt both me and Siyo had an excellent first round on the day. Both our verses came off well and got decent responses. Siyo’s “chewbacca in chemo” line is one of the funniest I’ve heard. I knew some people would sleep on my “mad cos I’m styling on ya” line as it’s a bit of a geeky battle reference. I was glad a few appreciated it though as it was one of my favourite lines I had for that battle. I expected that Siyo was really gonna up his game as he was unhappy with how his first battle went down. Even knowing that, I was still seriously impressed. I thought the round was close as fuck, if he didn’t take it.
However, I feel the battle went downhill from there. I kinda lost the run of myself in the 2nd round. Due to a mix of nerves and the crowd reaction, I completely blanked on one of the lines in my verse. As Pumpkinhead already said “rule number 1 in the MC handbook is when you fuck up, you keep going”. I did the only thing I could think of: I used part of my OT verse to finish out the round. The same thing happened again in round three. This time to the point where I was combining random lines from my OT with bits of my second and third round verses. The only redeeming thing about those two rounds was that I actually threw in a flip or two, “we both lost our first battle but you’re not fucking famous at all”. By the end of the third, I was just pretty much relieved to be done.
I was talking to Siyo whilst the judges were giving their decision. He told me he had forgotten parts of his second and third verses and had to use his OT in their place. I couldn’t believe we’d actually done the exact same thing. We were both pretty much hoping for a clear decision. However as usual when ya don’t want an OT, ya get one. I was glad then that Siyo had chosen for me to go first at the start as it meant I’d now have time to think up an OT while he was spitting. I decided to throw a few flips in from lines he’d had in his first 3 and I remembered the whole”Jamaican, Asian, Haitian” thing which I think was a big factor in me getting the decision. I ended up finishing OT with what was my original closer for the 3rd round “by the way Fifa 10 shits on Pro Evo”. That was about as random as it gets, but I thought it was pretty funny. I honestly expected there to still be time left on the clock when I finished, so I was seriously relieved when I saw Collie’s hand go up for time. I dont know what i could have spit after that!
Overall I learned a lot from the battle about always preparing for the worst possible situation: choking, and that’s something I’ve since used in other battles. I don’t think it was the performance either me or Siyo were hoping for, but I think that kinda makes the battle interesting. It was a lot less structured and really just came down to who could persevere on the day. I honestly think if I hadn’t tried to flip some of Siyo’s lines, the fuck ups in the 2nd and 3rd rounds would have lost the battle for me. Now go watch it….with the volume down slightly as its pretty deafening!
