I’ve been waiting for months for this battle to come out and I’m happy that it’s finally here.
The story behind this one’s kinda funky. I was going to be visiting the Philippines in September 2010 for a family member’s wedding. I think I found out the exact dates of my trip around August, and I asked Protege to ask Anygma if there was going to be a Fliptop event while I was there.
Turns out they had one scheduled for September 25, and they already had someone who needed an opponent, so I said let’s do it! It was Libs. Being so out of touch with the scene, I had no idea who he was, what he looked like or what he even sounded like. So I did a bit of research, and finished writing my shit. I was pretty happy with what I came up with.
But what’s funny is that Protege messaged me a week or two after, and told me to make sure that my shit is really dope. He saw Libs perform at an open mic and was really impressed. Based off this information, I scrapped what I had written so far and started from scratch.. Which was pretty cool, because I felt I ended up with something that was much, much better than the original shit I had planned.
Come the night of Fliptop.. We left QC around 7:30 and got to the venue at around 9:30 or so. It was good to see old faces and reconnect with people I knew from back in the day. I was battle #12 for the night. I was excited for this event because not only was I battling but there were like 7 English battles (I always thought the English conference is hella underrepresented), and there were good matchups all over (Abra vs. Zaito, Protege vs. RBTO, Skarm vs. Sincity, Plazma vs. JedLi.. way too many to mention!!!) and I always said that I was a fan first, rapper second..
The event went on for much longer than I thought it was gonna go for. I honestly thought I’d be done with my battle around midnight, but we still had ages to go before my turn was up.. Now remember that I just flew in from Vancouver and I was still sorta jetlagged, and plus I came from all the way up in QC.. Man I was getting tired and sleepy as shit!! Right before my battle I had to go to the bathroom to wash myself and wake myself up a bit LOL.
What transpired during this battle you could see in the video above. In my honest opinion, bias aside this truly was one of the sickest battles to happen in Fliptop’s English Conference. Libs came so much sicker than I actually thought he was gonna do.. That mothafucka blew my mind away with his shit! And I didn’t do so shabby myself.
I talked to Libs after the battle and gave him his due props. I have nothing but respect for the dude, I mean wow. It was never about walking away with a W. Which is why I said I would rather lose against someone good than win against someone wack, because at the end of the day it’s about comin out with something for people to watch and appreciate. And based on the general responses to this battle so far, this battle was truly something fucking epic.
All in all, I had a ton of fun, and it’s a great honor to come up with somethin that was so sick. I can’t fucking wait for my next battle.
PS. I told myself I wasn’t going to read the Youtube comments, coz that shit on there could be toxic sometimes. But from what I’ve seen (taking out hater comments bitching about Filipinos rapping in English), people are lovin the battle. And I’m actually not as fazed as I thought I would be with the negative comments.. It’s great feedback, actually.
My return to the Philippines couldn’t have begun any better. Yeah boiii.
{ 3 comments }
