Rap is a Battlefield
Say what you will against Eminem. Call him white trash usurping a black man’s medium. Complain that his latest disc lacks the genius of his past records. Bitch and moan that he won’t shut up about ex-wife Kim, his mother and his miserable childhood.
Even so, Eminem is a phenomenon. Everything Marshall Midas touches turns gold. Who else could sell a single about child molestation and farting, or bring black hoodies, mix tapes and battle rap to the forefront of pop culture?
No surprise, then, to find television shows and documentaries about freestyling and battling creeping out of the creative consciousness. In a way, it’s almost insulting. Taking financial advantage of a raw but beautiful cultural ritual smacks of capitalist whoring. At the same time, battle rap is so complex and fascinating that it’s hard not to want more.
The Battle for L.A.: Footsoldiers Vol. 1 is one of the first documentary films to penetrate this underground verbal boxing circuit. As much a film as a promo piece for West Coast rap crew Tunnelrats, The Battle for L.A. invites the curious to a world of unrefined Hip Hop.
It’s a world not unlike 8 Mile. Here, word-slinging warriors spit syllables like poison. Punches and kicks are traded for vicious lexical assaults. When these competitors pound one another, it’s pride that’s at stake.
As a documentary, Battle succeeds because it doesn’t tell us a story—we’ve already been to 8 Mile. Instead, this documentary rolls the film and ducks for cover. In return, we get a ringside seat with one hell of a view.
Sadly, two things don’t work for this movie. One is short bits of interviews with the battle rappers. While these could have been interesting, mostly the MCs just repeat one another and barely scratch the surface of why freestyle battles are so engaging. The production and mixing is also off, to the point that the beats these poets skip over drown out their words. That’s a shame, too, because some of these tongues pack quite a punch.
—Lloyd Babbit

December 2, 2004 * Vol. 14, No. 49
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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