Hip-hop off the top: The battle
By Richard Clough
May 10, 2006 9:00 p.m.
Editor’s note: Audio clips in this story contain some
expletive lyrics.
Usually quiet after dark, the heart of campus Wednesday night
thumped to phat beats as some of UCLA’s finest b-boys and MCs
popped, flowed and spit their illest rhymes.
As part of Hip-Hop Awareness Week, a coalition of campus groups
held Mic Club, perhaps the only event on campus to be billed as
“an evening of beat-boxing, freestyling and
b-boying.”
The event was organized by the Cultural Affairs Commission and
the Student Committee for the Arts, in conjunction with the
Majoring in Hip-Hop club. The club, for lovers of hip-hop music and
culture, was founded in 2004 by second-year world arts and cultures
student James Datu.
“We started out as a breaking club, but we wanted to cover
all the elements of hip-hop to build a community for the entire
culture of hip-hop,” said Datu, also known as
“J-Boogie.”
“Majoring in Hip-Hop is all about learning about
yourself,” he said.
The night started off with D.R.E.S. tha Beatnik, who has been
hosting Mic Club in Atlanta for five years, manning the turntables
on the stage in Ackerman Grand Ballroom as the b-boys
(break-dancers) warmed up and the modest crowd of about 120
streamed in.
First up: break-dancing battle.
“This is a competition to celebrate the lifestyle of
b-boys,” said Datu, who hosted the break dancing portion.
The 15 who started the competition were whittled down to eight
in round two, and only four were able to break their way into round
three.
In one of the marquee head-to-head matchups, the judges found
B-boy Steven’s sharp and quick routine to be no match for
B-boy Psycho’s showmanship. After sliding across the floor on
his knees, Psycho twisted his body into a one-handed handstand and
spanked himself.
With a sweaty series of spinning windmills and acrobatic torso
twists, Psycho won the “body rock” break-dancing
competition.
Next up: freestyle battle.
As the lights were turned down, D.R.E.S. took the stage with his
six-member band to provide some live beats as a series of amateur
rappers tried their hand at flowing.
D.R.E.S. proved to be versatile as master of ceremonies,
interacting comfortably with the crowd and injecting pointed barbs
at the rappers who floundered on stage.
In successive head-to-head rap battles, D.R.E.S. decided the
winner by an electronic sound meter that determined which of the
two received more applause.
When one rapper, P.D. Pablo, was met with near silence from the
crowd after his performance, the host stopped the show briefly to
announce that Pablo had received a 57, which is the worst score
anyone had gotten in the five years they had been performing Mic
Club.
“With a 57, you don’t deserve to be anywhere near a
microphone,” D.R.E.S. said to a crowd of laughter.
The freestyler known as “Dumbfounded” steadily
rapped his way to victory in the freestyle competition.
One of the crowd favorites, a large woman known as “Murdah Big
Drawz,” battled a comparatively skinny MC in each of the
first two rounds. The two traded jabs about one another’s
weights, arousing rounds of “ohhhs” from the crowd.
“I do this shit for fun. I never met a girl who weighed
two tons,” rhymed Yellah
Fellah.
“I’m gonna eat you in my fuckin’ mouth. You
not even a cheeseburger, you a McNugget,” rapped Big Drawz,
who said in a subsequent interview she has been freestyle battling
for six years.
For many of Wednesday’s performers, hip-hop is more than a
musical taste. Big Drawz, whose real name is Carmella Scott, said
she travels to area juvenile halls to teach kids about hip-hop and
“use hip-hop for anger management.”
