Every hip-hop stereotype is true
December 10th, 2008 at 03:18

A few weeks ago I was joking with my trendy new London friends, Eve and Hel, about wanting to go to a rap battle after watching a few on YouTube. For the uninitiated, a rap battle is when two rappers get up on stage and slag each other off whilst “freestyling”. I never actually expected to end up going to a rap battle, but then that’s what happens when you live in a city which has everything.

So we decided to go to The Jump Off, at The Astoria, which is a monthly festival of hip-hoppery, which pleasingly, is almost exactly how you would imagine it to be, as it turns out that every hip-hop stereotype is true.

What made this all the more interesting is that immediately prior to going here, we attended a Skeptics in the Pub debate on UFOs with psychologist Chris French from Goldsmiths Uni and UFO crackpot Nick Pope. It was very much the antithesis of hip-hop: you’d need a collective noun for Guardian readers to describe the demographics there. This was actually superb – both French and Pope swapped sides and argued using each others arguments, just for the intellectual challenge. The best bit though, was that it provided an interesting contrast.

We weren’t really sure what to expect at the Jump Off, because to be honest, we’re all a bit middle class (Hel especially – she went to grammar school). This is something of a disadvantage in the hip-hop scene because if you don’t have an unpleasant back-story you’re not considered to have much credibility. We did plan to hip-hop up our appearances a bit – the others bought baseball caps and so on, but we didn’t care wear them in the end. We did try to modify our personalities slightly though – for example, Hel had to change her intonation when mentioning her Estate, to being merely ‘the estate’, and I if asked, planned to respond that my degree is from the “University of Life” (it was a BA (dishons) Stabbin’ with Beatboxin’).

We joined the queue for the Astoria and within seconds, a man said to us “Want some weed?”, so we immediately knew this could get interesting. This was only confirmed whem the man on the door asked us what gig we were here for, as we clearly didn’t look like the hip-hop demographic.

Walking through the door frame, I was subject to a rather ominous frisking. Though having your bag searched is quite a regular occurence at London gig venues, usually it’s just a case of the bouncers taking a half-hearted glance at your bag and saying “that’s fine”, though in this case, my arms and legs were thoroughly patted-down and I had to turn out all of my pockets. This certainly exacerbated any anxiety I had about getting murdered.

What struck me on entering the venue was not, thankfully, a knife or some stray bullets, but just how out of place we looked. Not because we were three white people at a gig for a genre with a predominantly black fanbase, but because everyone else looked like they knew about hip-hop and rap and stuff – they all decorated themselves with chains and knives and sportswear. My hip-hop knowledge extends as far as The Beastie Boys and Flobots. Also, I probably have more hair than every other man who was in that room put together.

Interestingly, they were filming it all for YouTube and presumably the telly at some point – so look forward to seeing my face looking slightly bewildered in the background of some promotional material soon!

The bill was an interesting one – it seemed to cover all of the hip-hop bases. We got there a little late, so the first act that we saw was comedian Toju, who was apparently on the dire Balls of Steel, who was described on the poster as being a “militant black guy” – so as you might imagine, his set had some uncomfortable moments for the three people with probably the pastiest skin there, as I’m sure we all collectively prayed “please don’t pick on me”. Thankfully, he wasn’t that sort of comedian, but did enter the stage saying “all the black people in the audience say ‘yeah’” to a humungous cheer, followed by “all of the white people in the audience say ‘yeah’” which led to a few weak grunts from around the room. The rest of his set was jokes and an awful lot of libel about various hip-hop celebrities which I’m sure would be excellent if you understood the references and didn’t just listen to ska.

Afterwards, and in-between acts, a DJ played some tunes (laid down some beats?), in which most of the songs sampled sound effects of gunshots. They songs also sounded more-or-less the same. Unlike ska. Ahem.

Next up was what could best be described as a Whores Fashion Show. Presumably at the behest of one of the corporate sponsors, the apparent finalists for “Miss Hip-Hop” paraded around the stage for a few minutes in what could best be described as clothing designed by the colourblind. In a few cases, it appeared that they’d forgotten to finish getting fully dressed before entering the stage – I assume it was because of time pressure, as the event was running slightly behind the published schedule.

There were also some men on stage (I don’t think there was a corresponding “Mr Hip-Hop” competition), who didn’t seem to know much about fashion either. A lot of the costumes consisted of a hoodie and trousers with the same pattern on. I’m dimly aware that it’s embarassing for women if two women show up for something wearing the same dress, and I experience similar anxiety if I see people wearing the same t-shirt (complete with witty slogan/logo/etc) as me – so I’d assume turning up wearing the same patterned trousers and hoodie are the ultimate embarassment. Not that they seemed too bothered.

The next segment was called “Got Talent”, in which members of the audience demonstrated their hip-hop skill to the audience in a bid to win fifty quid. This was pretty entertaining. There was a mixture of beatboxing, rapping (both with a beat and acapella) and normal singing. Like with any talent contest, the calibre of the talent was varied, and the audience were encouraged to cheer or boo the contestants. Whilst it was harrowing and a little heartbreaking to see people get shot down and their dreams smashed in front of their eyes by a few hundred people booing, this was offset slightly by hearing people in the audience “brap” the rubbish performers. I first learnt this from my mate Dan:”brapping” is when you make a gun shape with your fingers and shout “brap, brap” – it’s gunfire, you see. Way to dispell the stereotypes, hip-hoppers.

My favourite thing about this segment was that most of the contestants were the sort of people I’d cross the road to avoid walking past, and that all of the rappers had given themselves rap names. One contestant, who called himself ‘Stabs’ (no, really), was surprisingly threatening in a Wolf-from-Gladiators sort of way, getting moody when he was knocked out of the competition. As it turned out, most of the raps people did were about how difficult it is living in South London. I’m glad I live north of the river.

In the end the winner though, was a singer who we speculate won only because he was singing in a very heartfelt way about his mother. How much he liked her, I mean, rather than implying that she was a prostitute that he would like to shoot.

After the talent segment, it finally reached the point in the evening we’d all been waiting for – the rap battle. It was a special ‘grudge rematch’ between Micky Negro and Arkaic – who had duelled previously. It was phenomenal.

Obviously, all previously held values we had about racism, sexism and homophobia being bad had to be suspended – not an easy task when you’re there with two fairly militant feminists, but it was an incredible sight to see. Arkaic got served. And it totally made the whole evening worthwhile. The audience were really into it to, reacting to every rhyme with great enthusiasm. The freestyling was genuinely impressive too – the rappers reacted to what was going on around them and to what their opponent was saying. There was, of course, a lot of lazy rhymes calling their opponent “gay” or “whack” but there were also a lot of clever ones too.

I think the battle could have gone either way until Arkaic, a white guy, made the mistake of bringing racial matters to the forum. When he claimed that Micky Negro had a face that looked like it had been “hit by a frying pan” because he was black, he seemed to lose the audience’s sympathy, leading to Micky Negro’s final knock-out line of “This is like Barack Obama versus John McCain”, at which point the audience went wild, leading to a crescendo in which the DJ weighed in with some dramatic scratching, even though he still had time on the clock – it was clear who the winner was going to be.

Content, we left soon after this, not bothering to stay for the final “pillow fight” segment, which surprisingly, was literally just a pillow fight – there wasn’t a hidden hip-hop meaning, such as ‘pillow’ being slang for ‘gun’ or something. It was just people fighting with pillows, which seems a bit tame, really.

It was all pretty incredible really – the sort of thing that we all agreed was well worth going to, but that we should never go to again.

Comments(4)