The other day, I was assigned to write a story for BattleRap.com about an enthused Lush One detailing the soon-to-be-realized "hologram battles." I transcribed what I needed to in a bleary-eyed state, wrote the rest, sent an e-mail over to the editor and clicked my laptop shut. About five minutes after doing so, I flipped the screen back to re-read what I’d just written in sheer disbelief.
The technology, which was introduced to the world of battle rap via a quasi-present Cassidy during his press conference with Dizaster is an updated version of an illusion technique developed 150 years ago (and that technically isn't a hologram at all).
It is, however, a step towards Lush’s press release promises that FilmOn CEO Alki David and his gadgets will send battle rap stratospheric. When all is said and done, how do you manage something so far removed from the experience of battle event organizers?
The thrill of a battle event lies in its visceral reality. The little interactions with the crowd and on-the-spot ad-libs would pretty much be a thing of the past if holographic clashes ever became the norm, and while it would be a new form of entertainment in its own right, it really would be the final severance of modern battle rap’s already tenuous link to its roots.
You would also have the issue of the reactions, and the pauses necessary to accommodate them--much would be lost in translation and the audience may unintentionally trample a lot of material. Not all audiences react similarly--a bar that makes a Texan screwface may not do the same to a New Yorker. The potential for pauses would be Andy Kaufman awkward, and they could really suck the momentum from the rest of a clash.
On the other hand, as someone who made the trek from New York to Toronto for King Of The Dot's "Blackout 4" only to be greeted with no fewer than six cancellations, I can see how these kind of projections could circumvent the visa issues that still plague battle rap. You could, for example, see a Bigg K battle in Canada. Bias could be avoided and you could host an Arcane/Caustic battle on neutral ground, with both still performing to their home crowds. As a technology, it could at least smooth over the running of these events, and ensure that fans are getting what they pay for.
The technology may conversely draw focus from the lyrics, both within the writing process for a battler and for a viewer. Once the novelty wears off, this may be less of an issue, but it runs the risk of being a problematic distraction while the format is in its infancy and battle fans are still gooey-eyed about the prospect of a Charlie Clips you can put your hand through. Rappers might also get a little sluggish when writing, knowing that whatever they pen will be blown out of scale due to the impression left by a new technology.
There is also the technical aspect of how these battles will be structured. Will both battlers be part of one projection or would they be separate? Would they be to-scale projections or gargantuan room-sized monoliths? I feel like the smoothing out of all of these possibilities will take a considerable amount of time, and this is the kind of progression that needs to be gotten right quickly if its going to be gotten right at all. It may not be evident which style will work best, and it may be difficult for one partnership to do enough work with enough variety to come to a satisfactory conclusion about what really pops.
While there would be something hugely impressive about seeing a twenty-foot Arsonal yell in his detractors’ faces, it does also open up the possibility of a twenty-foot naked Daylyt. I’m pretty certain that witnessing his ethereal testicles swinging backwards and forwards at the size of a beach ball is not what people refer to when they speak of the ‘essence’ of hip hop.
However, would this be any less hip hop than the kind of face-to-face battle with which we’re so familiar? Is UFC not real fighting simply because there’s money and presentation behind it? Battle rap defined itself as paralinguistic the moment the first mid-clash prop was brandished. If you asked 2008 Organik, watching his first KOTD event in a park in Toronto, whether he thought he would ever see KOTD artists performing on a stage in front of thousands of people, he’d probably laugh at you. Five years later, this is standard fare for a battle event in Canada. Battlers have adapted to bigger stages, and they have proven, on the whole, to be versatile enough performers to stay urgent as the platform has advanced.
Consideration needs to be given to the notion that these moves are not necessarily a step forward for battle rap, but for one content creation company. Judging by how litigious Alki David has shown himself to be in relation to the use of his technology at ComiCon and Cirque du Soleil, he is not going to be handing out freebies. His partnership is with Fresh Coast Media Group, not with battling as a medium. I expect this to cause some rifts if this really is the way things are headed--it could certainly pull the rug from under some of the major leagues and would also, I imagine, siphon off some major players in their rosters.
On that theme, I hope the money trickles down to the battlers who are invited to appear as (r)apparitions. Whether this would be reflected in their fees, and these performances would be licensed for a certain amount of re-appearances, or whether the continuation of the tours would be entirely dependent on the success of the previous night and the battlers saw some kind of residual payment from it, the introduction of serious money into the sport should be reflected in fair remuneration of battle rappers for their services. As Lush said: "No more living in their mothers’ basements."
Would I pay to go? Absolutely 100 percent fucking yes. How much is a difference matter. I would say $25 is the extent to which I’d be prepared to stretch for a standard four/five match card. That, to me, is a fair price for a day of entertainment at which the battlers would not be present, and ultimately, you could always see the battle online afterwards. But if the event was handled in a way that created a brilliant vibe on the day, I think that would be a spectacle worth watching. I have attended, and hated, a New York Yankees game. Almost nothing happened. However, the beer, hot dogs, atmosphere and company made the experience worthwhile. In a similar vein, I hope that there is enough going on around the battles to make the events worth attending.
When all is said and done, battle rap revolves around the science of winning the respect of the room. Is it really possible to do that when you’re not actually in the room? Hip hop is about crafting something out of nothing, not removing the two people creating that something from the room and inviting people to watch it. While the focus would shift to the crowd experience, a facet of which I wholeheartedly approve, I do feel that having two projections shout at each other would remove one of the joyous, interpersonal aspects of battle rap. That friction would be wholly missing.
On a vaudevillian level, though, the concept of hologram-like technology is really, really exciting. I’m just not sure it has the legs that Lush One seems to think it does.
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