The Wildstyle Story #21: Battle History Part Two
As noted in the Battle History Part One entry, I stopped journaling in May of 1987, and I didn’t start again until 1990, and I’m pretty disappointed in myself for that. Essentially, at the height of all things Wildstyle, I didn’t capture those moments, or any other life moments in that time.Of course, the reason why I wasn’t journaling is because I was busy doing. So, between Wildstyle, work, fun, and learning how to live life on my own in my first apartment, I wasn’t thinking about journaling a whole lot. But, I still remember some battle stories in that time. Here’s a few of my favorites:
LA VS Micheal Coleman: I don’t remember what Michael’s MC name was or if he was in a group. I believe he was, in some way, affiliated with Full Deck who I’ve mentioned in a few of these #WildstyleStories. Anyway, somehow LA and Michael agreed to battle at the MCD’s dining room were I worked in North Chicago. I remember Michael was already sitting down in the far back of the dining room with a few of his people’s. LA and I walked in, I believe wearing our Wildstyle jackets, on my day off 🤣, and we head to the back. Being that Michael was the challenger, he goes first. I always remember his first line, “When I walk into the party I always get respect/Should I slay ’em, aww, what the heck”. He had some flavor, but he, nor anyone in the area at that point really, was ready for what LA was unleashing. The Lyric Legend rises victorious once again, as startled fast-food patrons look on.
AMC VS Navy Dude From New York: One day, the crew is at the Great Lakes MCDs, and it’s a weekend and it’s packed! I remember I was aggravated for some reason, possibly for one these situations that I’ve already described in an earlier story, or of a similar root cause. As I’m standing in line, I notice this dude peeping me out, looking at my Wildstyle jacket, and I’m already annoyed, so his staring isn’t helping, as it wasn’t that he was looking, it was the way he was looking. Finally, he says to me, in a strong New York accent, “You Rhyme?”. I look at him, in my annoyed state, and go “Yeah” as I also sarcastically look down at the “MC Coolie” on my jacket. He says “You wanna try me?”. For some reason that didn’t compute so I was like “Huh?”. He repeats himself and I’m staring at him with a confused expression. Finally Madd Maxx says, “He wants to battle!”. I’m like, “Whatever, grab your food and meet me in the back”.
When we both get back there, he says something to the effect, “What you got?”. I’m like “You called me out, what do you got?”. He makes some excuse about why I should spit first, probably because he’s from New York knowing their mindset at the time. At this point, I’m so agitated I don’t care, so I spit one of the best battle rhymes I had (Wildstyle File #3, which I wrote about a couple days ago), and I’m going in with vigor! He is looking at me pretty intently the whole time, occasionally showing some reactions to the style and lines. When I finish, he’s like, “You’re nice….you heard of Kool G Rap? You sound like G Rap…”. I wasn’t mad at that, as that verse in particular was inspired by “Poison” (by Kool G Rap). Plus, I was, and am, a huge G Rap fan, and I didn’t take his comment as a slight of him calling me a biter, in general or by his demeanor, so it was a pretty solid compliment. He then proceeds to say, “Let’s not battle, let’s just spit verses…”. I’m like “Cool” since I know that means I “won” the battle. He was kind of nice though. I remember one line he said that I kind of wish I thought of, “3 5 7 is my pick for the lotto”, which he delivered in his smooth style. If I’m remembering correctly, he was from Brooklyn, and I remember to think he slightly reminded me of the Brooklyn group, Ultimate Choice, who I was a fan of. He’s one of those dudes who I wonder if he ever did anything else. Who knows, he might have been an MC on something I heard later.
AMC VS Ice And FIre (?): I’m actually not 100% on that group name. I remember the group from a couple talent shows, once of which I mention in the Wildstyle Live Performances Part One Story. All I could remember for the last couple of decades is that they went to Waukegan West, and one dude was dark skinned and kind of heavyset and the other dude, who I thought was a dope MC, was light skinned, kind of athletic build I guess you could say. I recently sent that description to King Rand of D.B.I to see if it rang a bell, and he responded saying that might be Ice and Fire, and immediately that sounded familiar, so I feel pretty confident that could be it, so I’m going to refer to them as that here.
In any event, I got into an argument/debate backstage with the dark skinned dude at a Talent Show at Waukegan East that both Wildstyle and Ice and Fire were in, the same one I describe HERE where the microphone blew out and we were sabotaged. Basically, I was frustrated because at these Waukegan events there would be bias against North Chicago artists, and on top of that, they didn’t really respect our style because we were…well, wild. So, backstage as we were getting these off-putting looks and some snide comments, I was making it known that whatever the result of the Talent Show was, we would gladly battle ANY MC who thought they were better when the show was over outside. I definitely said it on stage and I believe I also said it backstage…probably more than once. He was basically trying to explain to me why we weren’t the best, and we actually had a different debate about Hip Hop in general. I can only remember that he had something to do with N.W.A. I actually think it was about who was the best in N.W.A, and we saying it was Eazy E, and I was arguing for MC Ren, but shouting out D.O.C, as an unofficial member of the group, and that debate somewhat accurately mirrors the contrast in what many of these competitors backstage preferred VS what Wildstyle did. Whatever the case, he wasn’t really trying to battle, so I was simply responding to him being insulting, and technically so was he. But, that was as far as it went.
That said, this was either in late 1988 or in 1989, after LA and I had graduated, and these dudes were still in school. So, I’m not sure how much longer after this it was, but I went to Waukegan West, snuck in the school, and I was looking for these dudes to battle, which in hindsight is hilarious and/or ridiculous, but I was hungry. I don’t think that was the only reason I was there, but it was definitely one of my primary goals. I rolled up in there with I think one other person, of course wearing my Wildstyle jacket, looking serious. So serious in fact, we heard a security call on the PA system and we were soon being escorted out of the building…unsurprisingly.
Then, around this time, Hardrock Alliance member Black Man Zeke had connected us with a young lady named Shareema (not sure about spelling), who went by the name Vicious Diadora, and after an audition, I had asked her to join the crew, and agreed that Maxx and I would produce her demo. Soon after that loose arrangement, LA and I went to Waukegan West close to school letting out to pick her up to work on said demo, and that same dude from Ice & Fire who I had the aforementioned debate with sees us, and I get in a battle with him in front of the school. There’s a pretty decent sized crowd of rowdy dudes, pretty much all street cats. And, I KNOW I’m setting off on him because he’s looking frustrated and these other dudes are making excuses. They are saying things like, “All you got is big words”, “Try another style, all you got is scientifical this and that”. I’m responding to them, insulting their intelligence, telling them to smarten up because I’m not dumbing down. It’s kind of all in good fun, but also getting a little more intense as it goes on.
Eventually the dude I’m battling says I’m going to get my partner, and jets. LA and I are waiting out there, still having words with these entourage of dudes trying to harass us, and us dishing it back just as much. When the other MC shows up, he sees who we are and I think it caught him off guard when he saw who we were, nat least that’s how I take it from his reaction. But, he says, “Yeah, I’ll battle you, but next week”. Now, like I mentioned before, I thought dude was dope, and he was always cool and never disrespectful, even when his people were doing so, but at this point, of being harassed non-stop, I’m aggravated, so I respond with something like, “Take a week, take a year, do whatever you need to do, and let us know, but you’ll never be ready to handle this”, or something extremely close to that. That’s when I apparently went too far. The other dudes, who are not Ice & Fire, start getting really aggressive and talking about switching things from battling to something more physical. But, LA and I are still throwing back insults, BUT doing so as we walk our way back to my Hyundai Sonata. They follow us all the way to the car, semi-surrounding the vehicle and being threatening as we drive away…and we’re still talking crazy too. It almost got SERIOUS. Battle Rap is wild y’all…. But, alas, another win in the Wildstyle column.
In hindsight, I wish we could have gotten past that because I’m curious to what Ice & Fire did later, as well as what the one (light-skin) dude may have done solo. I never heard any of their music, except at the couple of talent shows I saw them at. They are one of those groups that I think about from time to time, curious as to what they did later, or if they still have their demos back then because I’d love to get my hands on them still. But, for all these years I couldn’t remember much about them. But, while writing this, I decided to search online and find a Waukegan West yearbook from 1989, and I found the main dude from the group! His name is Joeree Wilson, but I still haven’t found out any info about his music career from that point or since then, but perhaps I’ll eventually get some more details…
Wildstyle VS Racine, WI: Ok, that’s certainly a dramatic way of putting it. Even though Waukegan/North Chicago was close to the Wisconsin border, we never really thought about pursuing opportunities there. In the 80s and the early 90s, my trips to anywhere in WI were rare, with the exception of the few times I went to Madd Maxx’s house in Kenosha. In hindsight, I wish Wildstyle would have been more active in pursuing other opportunities, such as shows/battles in Chicago, Milwaukee, and other neighboring cities. However, at the time, I wasn’t aware of any scene out there in Wisconsin, or much of one in Chicago, because there really wasn’t a means of hearing about those other scenes and what was happening there.
All of that in mind, I can only guess that someone we knew heard about a “Hip Hop party” in Racine and that’s why went out there. I don’t believe we knew anything about a contest happening that night. It’s my recollection that we got the venue, which I remember being a High School Gymnasium, and that it had a decent sized crowd, and at some point, the DJ announced there was a Rap contest and the winner would get $100 (I think that was the amount). And, while that wasn’t a lot of money, this was late ’88 or early ’89, and we were just starting to go into the studio to record songs, so $100 could easily cover two songs being completed. I think we had to look in the DJs crate and pick an instrumental to rhyme over. There were only a small handful of groups in the contest, and it was clear that at least one or two of them were down with the DJ, and they were probably the local favorites. We were completely unknown. But, we are there in our crew jackets and sizing up the competition. When we get our turn, LA and I go into full freestyle and battle rhyme mode and do a pretty solid performance and the crowd definitely responds well to us. At the end, when they do the voting, with the DJ going through each crew and asking the crowd to make noise, we get the most noise. Right away I can tell that he is caught off guard and doesn’t know what to do, so he says, “That was close (specifically to one of the crew’s he was down with), so let’s do that again”. LA and I are like, “Close…how??”, but they go through it again. Same thing. Their crew had a couple young women in the crowd screaming for them up front, but overall, it sounded to us like the crowd was with us. Still, they announce the winner as the other group, and you can hear some small rumbling in the crowd by a couple people saying we should have won, and some people even came up to us to give us our props. We were definitely aggravated, but I also remember thinking that it still felt good that some strangers who never saw or heard us before showed love like that, so I still felt like a winner. I also feel like this show was a turning point for us to stop thinking about talent shows and similar events as being contests for us. We treated it more so like the name states, as a primary means to show our talent. And, that’s why we would often do those sort of events, and while on stage we would challenge any of the other rappers in the building to a battle outside after the event. We were already accepting that we weren’t likely to win those sort of contests, and although it would have been nice to have won some of those, and I’m not even taking away from some groups that did win, because sometimes talented groups did win, but it always felt like more of a popularity contest than a talent one. That said, winning that $100 would have been nice because I bet would have recorded the studio version of “(When You Hear Those) Drums” or either “Blast Your Radio” or “Cause 4 A Riot”, as those were the next songs on our studio list to do at the time, and I believe not having the money at the time put those songs to the side, and then by the time we purchased our home studio equipment, we had new songs and opted to dive in recording them instead, which made sense.
All of that in mind, the biggest takeaway from those frustrating organized battle situations is they ultimately led to me spending a lot of time thinking about what a fair and balanced MC battle should be like. I used to spend a lot of time considering that, and I don’t believe I had a reason why I was pondering it, other than working through my frustrations. But, it proved to be quite useful a few years later when I was asked to be the Head Battle Organizer for Scribble Jam (1996–2008), which became a prominent foundation and eventual influencer of organized battle culture since its inception, as I’m still learning and hearing about how Scribble was important for many people and battle leagues. So, I suppose a (backhanded) thank you to all those sabotagers and charlatans is in order.
And, that basically sums up the most memorable battles in the Wildstyle story, though there were certainly others because were always on the prowl, taking on all-comers, but honestly once 1989 hit, Wildstyle had a battle reputation, and there weren’t really many people issuing challenges anymore. For a short period, I would say that we were the very top of the MC Battle food chain in Lake County (circa 1988–1990). If there is anyone else who feels they, or someone they know, should be awarded or debated for that slot, I’d be interested to hear who and why.
In closing, and in response to that previous paragraph in particular, MCing is really the only thing I’ve ever been heavily competitive at. Sure, in the spirit of having fun and getting into the mindset of doing some other competitive things growing up, I did act competitive. This would apply to playing basketball, one of my first loves, as well as snapping sessions, playing spades, sports in gym class, and surely some other things. But, I never really cared about winning those things. I was always more about enjoying the moment, and part of the fun might be teasing or taunting the opposing team/competitor. But, that’s a far as it went. However, with MCing, it was different. I wanted to be the best in my scene, and I was hungry to expand that and eventually compete with the best. I used to read about the New Music Seminar MC Battle for World Supremacy, and dream about my chance to compete. But, I didn’t have an understanding of how it worked, and I thought you had to be entered by a record label or other known entity. I didn’t know you could simply submit an audition tape. I learned that in ’94 when some of my friends from Chicago entered (Gravity and both Rob Free and Judgmental from Kinetic Order, the latter who became the champion that year). But, from about 1988–1991, I would look for any information I could find about that battle and study who the competitors were, and I’d write verses and practice Off The Head rhymes directed at them, and the other competitors names that I recognized, all in the name of keeping my skills sharp in case I ever got the opportunity. That said, the champions in those years, as well as the runner-ups, were high level competitive and amazing MCs! And, while I personally feel that from a purely writing perspective I was in the same weight class as them, they all had other factors that made them dynamic, and obvious champions. Mikey D (’88 Champ) had incredible stage presence and an understanding of how to effectively use creative, but relatable battle rhymes. Freshco (’89 Champ) was an absolute MC style technician with an uncanny sense of timing. S.E.R.G.E (runner-up to Freshco), made his excellence seem effortless…he was brilliant! Kidd Jazz (’90 Champ) was a raw freestyle monster. So, I have no problem admitting that beating any of them would have been highly unlikely, but if you’ve ever been in an MC battle, or any similarly competitive event, you likely know that anything is possible when two skilled people are locked in combat. And, I’ve heard a few years of those NMS battles, and many MCs who are impressive lyricists and MCs didn’t do well in those settings for whatever reason, sometimes choking or making bad decisions that cost them the win, and that was a setting where I think I would have felt comfortable in, but alas, we will never know…
