On November 18, 1994 Hieroglyphics and Hobo Junction went head to head behind the mics on the Wake Up Show, otherwise known as Hiero versus Hobo. These two Oakland underground rap crews gave us one of the most influential rap battles in hip hop history that has helped shape what we know today as Battle Rap and beef.
King Tech, co-host for the Wake Up Show, stated in a HipHopDX exclusive, “Casual versus Saafir wasn’t like the Rap battles that you have now where it’s preformatted. You stand there and nobody says anything. To me now, it’s different. Back then it was real animosity. You didn’t know whether they were gonna fight you or you’re gonna rap.”
Casual, founding member of the Hieroglyphics, and Saafir, leader of Hobo Junction, were the ones who started it all. Each to his own success back in the early 90s, they increased their profiles by finally making it a point to meet and work with each other. Casual asked Saafir to freestyle on his debut album Fear Itself, which released in February of 1994. “Saafir was just one of the homies hanging out in Central Oakland,” said Casual, “And after eight months of us kicking it, I tried to put him on my album.”
Around the same time, Saafir was working on his own debut album Boxcar Sessions, which released in May of 1994. “I was in the studio in downtown Oakland working on a song called ‘Hype Shit’ about a situation that really happened to me, and I asked Casual to be on it. I did it out of respect for the fact of him asking me to freestyle on his album.”
This is when miscommunication developed the beef that brought us to the battle. Casual didn’t just have Saafir do a snippet on one of his album tracks, he got featured in a full freestyle titled “That Bullshit.” In return, Saafir wanted Casual to do a song on his album. Casual agreed stating that he was on his way to the studio that Saafir was at. He never showed up.
“It eventually came to the point where we were discussing the matter. I thought and said to him that he was ‘putting too much on it.’ And he responded: ‘Oh I’m putting too much on it, huh?’ Then the next thing you know we had beef or what have you,” stated Casual.
“I didn't let nobody disrespect me like that. So I felt like I had to respond. If you disrespect me, we fightin’,” asserted Saafir.
Saafir attended one of Casual’s shows at a club now called The Independent and just walked up onstage from the crowd. They started battling each other. “It was some classic Hip Hop shit. He had his DJ put a beat on, and he went in on me. Then after him, I went in on him,” Saafir explained. Next thing you know, at the end of the battle, Saafir called for a next battle to take place on San Francisco's KMEL.
Sway, co-host for the Wake Up Show, commented, “It was the period that happened where there were rumblings between those crews, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute…hold up. Why y’all beefing? This is a great thing about to happen.’ It was well known in the Bay Area about the beef before we brought them on the Wake Up Show.”
A few weeks before the battle went live on the radio, Saafir called out Casual in a freestyle, “Casual, your pap smear is back. Your blood lacks the samples and chromosomes to blow up the microphone, the mic is on, what's wrong? The mic is on, what's wrong? You’re not rambling, you're gambling witchya life, what them dikes look like?”
“No matter how big you feel the beef was, you should have been able to overlook that because you may have possibly even got your deal by being associated with me. People are going to remember you from being on my album,” Casual comments about Saafir.
Everybody was anticipating the battle and with the obvious beef that was going down nobody knew what to expect from the two rappers. “We had won so many awards at KMEL for so many years by then, so they let us play what we wanted on air,” mentions King Tech. The Wake Up Show was in the midst of it’s success and it was a big deal if a rapper was a guest on the show. “The Wake Up Show was such a mammoth back then, it meant something different if you come on our show,” Sway said. “We were embarking on something that none of us had experienced, and in a way that no one had ever experienced or obtained on radio.”
They promoted the date all the way up to the last hour so all Californians could tune in. KMEL was the biggest radio station in the country at the time, according to Sway.
“When we got on the air, you can tell from the music that the battle was real intense. And by the end of the battle, I’ll tell no lies: when we came out the lobby, it was packed with over 100 people from East Oakland that were there to make sure I was okay,” commented Casual, “Like I said, the streets came out and told their own story to where there were shots fired after that shit.”
To this day, the battle remains a draw. Some say Saafir clearly had sicker rhymes but many think otherwise because he had writtens whereas Casual had been spitting straight off the dome. This battle brought together a lot of things aside beef, crews and publicity, it was a battle between two different styles of rap. Casual stated, “It was the old version of freestyling, which is just rap that you have written, it’s not gonna be on none of your albums versus off-the-top,” he adds, “He (Saafir) stayed kicking written raps without referring to his ability to freestyle. It was a battle of two art forms as well as it was a battle of two artists.”
After this moment on the station, the Wake Up Show became a battle show. “Before, it was just a place where you would go on there to spit your lyrics, and they never used to put two emcees against each other,” says Casual, “So that moment was exploited by KMEL, and even MTV and Viacom with their freestyle Battle Rap shows.”
From the beef to the battle, Hiero versus Hobo echos the Battle Rap scene that we know today. Listen to this classic moment in hip hop in the video below. Check out the full article on HipHopDX here.
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