Rap Battle #2

Game on! looking forward to hearing… and judging. :laughing:

Yes MagsJ, Master of Ceremonies extraordinaire.

Jakob, check out LoopLabs.com if you’re looking for software. I haven’t gotten too deep into it, but on the surface it looks a lot like Garageband.

Ive got a bunch of beats online, but few of them are downloadable and I lost the passwords,
here is one that I made once using Bob Dylan samples
soundcloud.com/fixedcross/meeuw
this one can be downloaded, it could serve for one of the rounds.

Another one
soundcloud.com/fixedcross/loaded-instrumental

this one could work for a kind of philosophy anthem with several rappers
soundcloud.com/fixedcross/fate-is-a-circle

this has some battle energy.
soundcloud.com/fixedcross/the-madness

Nice, those are excellent! That first one is my favorite of those, I could definitely do a round over that.

I propose we do round 3 over Meeuw, you pick another for round 1, and I’ll provide one for round 2 (I’ll likely create one, but if I’m strapped for time I’ll borrow one; either way I’ll make it available as early as possible). I further propose that we each provide about 2 minutes of lyrics per round (which means tweaking Meeuw to move the bridge at 2:40 so it falls between two ~2-minute blocks of roughly steady beat, if that’s alright).

For topics, I think broadly we could do rounds on 1) philosophy of mind, 2) religion, and 3) political philosophy. I think that we both have something to say about those, and there’s something of a progression from the questions of what we are, why we are, and how we relate to each other, so that rounds could interact but also stand alone. And again, I propose an ABBAAB ordering, and 7 days to post each contribution (including 7 days for each verse when one person is posting two verses back-to-back). We should each have the beat on day 1.

These are my suggestions, but I’m flexible, feel free to reject any or all of them.

Alright, excellent!

Ill want to keep to whatever rhyme schema emerges though - I think we are already constrained enough by having such narrowly defined topics, and the best raps always break with or play with the rhyme schemas. But apart from that all this sounds good to me.

The first is the only one made entirely from hand made samples, I wish I could go back to that but modern software is all oriented on prefabricated stuff.
I made that on an archaic Max OS 9 application called Player Pro. I can’t even find any references to it online. Something similar on Windows was Fast Tracker. In case you ever want to try that out, its a great workflow.

two more of these sample beats.
soundcloud.com/fixedcross/beat-swazi
soundcloud.com/fixedcross/track-02

A curiosity
two ILP posts I had my Mac pronounce over a beat.

soundcloud.com/fixedcross/nature-of-the-subject
the original beat
soundcloud.com/fixedcross/arcanum

Any of these that I posted, if downloadable, is good by me for round 1, if you have a preference its probably stronger than mine.

Maybe good for round one;

soundcloud.com/fixedcross/beforethelight

Other philosophic rappers are welcome to use these beats.

I found the tracks from the last battle, I’ll try to post them to Souncloud tonight when I get home.

Doesn’t really matter to me which beat we use, I’ll figure out a way to rap over any beat you can rap over. I’m thinking I’ll use the beat from Phantogram’s When I’m Small for round 2, if that’s cool with you; I tried making one from scratch but I’ve always kind of sucked at it. Probably just take the first couple measures (before the "ooo ooo ooo"s start) and loop, maybe try to pull something from later in the song as a bridge.

As for rhyme schemes, mine are pretty free-form (you’ll see what I mean when I post my old tracks, although I’m rusty and thus not really sure how representative they’ll be), so whatever works for you.

Can you post your round one next weekend?
MC Mags, can you open the debate thread for us?

Finally got the last battle uploaded, available here: soundcloud.com/mjcph/sets/ilp-rap-battle-2009

(posted with the caveat that I haven’t gotten ahold of Impious and if he asks me to take down his tracks I will)

Great, I look forward to listening to this when I get home.

I’ll try to answer to your proposed deadline.

Nice work.
Do you have examples in hiphop?
Awesome that youve got an actual style.

At first I thought you were dissing my style, implying that my raps were not hip hop.

But I think you are asking about my role-models/influences in hip hop. Is that right? Assuming that it is:

At the time of the first battle, I listed my influences, so that was where I was coming from in that battle. I don’t really listen to any of them anymore, but I’m sure the influence stuck.

More recently in the hip-hop genre, I’ve been listening to El-P, Run the Jewels, One Day as a Lion, Childish Gambino, and a French group called FAUVE, a couple South African zef rappers (Die Antwoord, Jack Parow). A lot of the hip hop I listen to is incidental, because I listen to a lot of glitch/IDM, and they often do hip hop collaborations or remixes (examples 1, 2, 3).

What about you?

The debate thread will be up either later today or early tomorrow, for battle to commence. :violence-duel:

Super dope, thanks Mags. Very much looking forward to it.

Ok

Never mind what I said, one influence in particular is RZA. I listed all the rappers that quite influenced my moods, I suppose.
It can all be very infantile, which is problematic now.
So the thing has begun? argh. I have little idea what lyrically to make of these subjects, the raps of the previous load seemed rather free, Ill imitate that.

If those topics don’t work for you, just do whatever. I mostly want to avoid trading rhyming insults.

let me use this beat for the first round. This is not mine, I wish to make such beats, these trap hihats are hard to make though, I wonder if they’re automated. Ive tried it in GarageBand, its not as easy to get it flowing as it seemed to me.

youtube.com/watch?v=6J46apO-Deo