A History of Crowd Reactions and Participation in Battle Rap

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participation – Over beats. Cant stop

Show 106 and Park, Scribble, Cassidy/Freeway, Millz/Ness, etc

2. So two things we saw when the trasnition was first made:
First – crowds rarely reacted to the point of interrupting the battle. Consider the reactions that the following lines would have gotten in today’s style of audience reaction:

– Steel Kabom 415, 815,
NH Trex 245, 420
Lux/Miles – 135, Lux Miles 2 315,

Even up to the beginings of early Youtube crowd reaction didn’t resemble what it is today – and even once it did it was limited heavy:

– For example watch these clips from Arsonal vs Conceited in 2009 and consider how difference the audience reaction may have been if it happened today… only 5-6 years later

*Show arsonal Conceited Clips*

Another thing we saw during this transition was alot of not stopping due to massive crowd reaction when the big responses DID happen

The various battlers that did this fell into one or two of three categories – Battlers from the beat era, battlers influenced by the beat era, or battlers who were rappers first…so there was a beat when they wrote their lines.

Heres a few examples:

Show Ness/Iron
Show Ness/Mysonne
:35 Mook/Trex 2,
Trex/Kasa 108, 255, 308,
Trex/Kasa 2 – 141, 148
Trex/Tec – 355, 717,
Millz mook – 1311
Math/Dose 1:20
X Factor Nems – 225

Another thing to consider is that writing in battle rap back in the day did not necesarily resemble what we have today. Today battlers often write with an emphasis on large punchlines. Back in the day, this wasn’t necessarily the case.

So as battle rap grew, so did the audiences. And so did the venues. And so did the crowd reaction. This is sort of the middle period in terms of crowd reaction – both in when it happened and level of crowd reaction.

When you watch battles from this time frame you’ll certainly see HUGE crowd reactions… here’s just one example:

Jin Dz Aladin Jasmine

But the big distrinction here i guess is that crowd reaction to the point of stopping battles was far less than we have today.

————————-

Beyond Amount of Reaction:

Ok so now lets talk beyond just levels of reaction and battlers’ responses to it.

Musical Crowd Participation

This was really common in Philadelphia as well as anyone who did music. The people’s camp or even people in the audience would say battlers line along with them.

Jihad Dose

Bricks Dose – 655

Steel Styles – :40 – :55

NH Rex – 655, 815

Say it Again

“Say it again” is one of the coolest trends in the audience based battle rap history to me. QP sort of accidently brought this in while he was battling B Magic

QP B Magic

And after that point, it began to be a common thing in battles… where audience members would scream for battlers to repeat lines… and the battler would do so.

Remix it

And what alot of people don’t really connect is that it was the “say it again” thing that sort of opened the door for Hitman to do his remixes. When he did his first remix, he was asked by several people in the crowd to SAY IT AGAIN and he even asked them “say it again?”

Remixing, as pretty much everyone that watches this battle knows – allows the audience to be a bigger part of the experience as they know exactly what Hitman is going to say.

Crowd Completing lines or phrases

This one is pretty cool and has been around as battle rap became more acessible to see on a regular basis.

What will happen is battlers saying their old lines and the crowd repeating it – or battlers saying phrases from the past that the crowd already knows.

Stay Hollohan – 518

Hollow Clips what im gonna say next?

Stay Marvwon – 1755

Tec / Miles – Bodybag

Or, the audience saying the battlers slogan with them –

Magic Nitty 1815

Arsonal “Another niggas state”

Hoffa bars right back

Arcane show em how supposed to be done

DNA GTFOH

Shotty Show up

In all these, the audience becomes part of the show.

Using Crowd to pick words

This occasionally happens. In this the battler asks the crowd for words to use in their rhymes.

DNA Ill
Mac Lethal Illmac
EF Jeffery
#battlerap