For the past 49 weeks, Battle Video Archives poster and Don’t Flop battler Suus has been compiling a list of the week’s most buzzed-about rap battles and taking a community poll to figure out which battle RapMusic thought was worth taking a cross-country flight to one of the greatest cities on Earth just to attend a battle rap event that gets cancelled twice anyway. The four winners of each month are pitted against each other for battle of the month and those twelve winners will go at it to determined which rap battle was truly miles above its peers in terms of quality, memorability, and popularity. For the week of November 25th, posters agreed that you can’t fake respect and chose Smack/URL’s Cortez vs Tay Roc as the sexually tense high school cuddle party of battle rap.
For the week of December 2nd, there’s a whiter shade of pale…er…a hazy shade of winter appropriate to the season. All due respect to Rosenberg Raw’s confounding racial ambiguity, but this past week’s choice battles all showed battling’s ever-present honky reps getting busy in the ring. Tied for first place are Smack/URL’s Rosenberg Raww vs Bigg K and King of the Dot’s 2012 Grand Prix final Arcane vs Chedda Cheese. Both standout matches, maybe even surprisingly so for some, both battles contain the king of hunger and impressive performances that become rarer in the half-time catch phrase culture that battling has slipped into. In a way, both battles had something important on the line; though Rosenberg Raww is, as he staunchly maintains, not white, up until the debuts of Bigg K and Real Deal, he was the only successful Smack battler of his shade (he might not have any European in his make-up, but, appearances make for a lot in racial discourse and perception). Similar to how Arcane’s second Grand Prix run was to rehabilitate his previously low reputation and stake his claim as the best in his lane, Raww needed to take advantage of this bit of gimmicky match-making to cement his status within the URL.
Did he do it? Judge for yourself, and vote for what you thought was the best battle of the week in the official “RM Battle of the Week” thread. Will Canada’s moment of faux-sporting glory edge it out or is the idea of a “gutter white dude” mirror match still enough of a novelty to hold sway? Can the thrill of gossip and public humiliation that make up the bulk of Don’t Flop’s controversial Caustic vs Jefferson Price can close the 13-point spread by Sunday? Could Grindtime’s latest – Dirt vs T Riley pull an upset and continue the fledgling league’s slow climb back to the top?
You’ll just have to vote and find out. And while you’re at it, vote in the “RM Battle of the Year” semi-finals , so we can objectively sort out the kind of consensus that the best arguments are made of.
