How did it go? The reason I ask is because I find freestyle rapping to be challenging and incredibly fun. I also happen to really like money and, during my four years at NYU, freestyle battle rapping was lucrative enough for me to serve as my “college job.” Granted, freestyle battle rap is an even more specified niche than freestyling (or the umbrella of rap battles for that matter), but after taking a few years away from it, I’ve recently stepped back into ring and it’s as fun as ever. I currently hold two titles — UCBEast’s Battlicious and Spike Hill’s Freestyle Mondays. The topic of freestyle rap’s appeal comes up in conversations from time to time. Thus, I’m more than happy to share what it is about freestyle battle rap that I find so appealing.
I believe there’s still some confusion in circles in regard to rap battles (especially post-8 Mile): many just assume every rap battle is a freestyle, as if the realm of competitive rhymes were reserved for the extemporaneously ones created on the spot. This isn’t the case. There’s both pre-written and freestyle rap battle circuits, and if you’ve seen a major rap battle in the past five years, the overwhelming odds are that it’s from one of the pre-written leagues. URL/Smack, King of the Dot, Grind Time and any of the larger leagues which have been steadily growing in popularity since 2008 or so have been pretty transparent about their competitors duking it out with pre-written rhymes, but this element is embraced as part of the sheer entertainment spectacle.