This week's furor in the warped world of battling is Daylyt again attempting the long-threatened public defecation, this time against Real Deal.
It has left many questioning whether Daylyt is going to elevate the culture as a form of pulp entertainment or if, in completely undermining the lyrical element of battle rap, he is flushing it down the very same toilet he should've used in Phoenix.
Let's get one thing straight: Daylyt is an extremely talented individual. His charisma and craftmanship within matches are amongst the best in the world. His writing and his manipulation of those tools we so often see emerge in the URL style (and, resultingly, everywhere else) are masterful. And his sense of shame is entirely absent, which is almost always a fascinating thing to watch unfold.
His most on-point skill, however, is his marketing. In the "Battler X does Y in Rap Battle" culture of modern match-ups, no other rapper (bar maybe Dizaster) causes this much commotion on Twitter, on forums or by word of mouth with as much frequency. No one has pulled off antics on such a large scale before (case in point: his meltdown at Total Slaughter) and no one has treated them as a serious part of the form either (his possibly completely fabricated promise of the WWA [World Wide Antics] league in BattleRap.com's Phoenix interview confirms his dedication to shenanigans, however real it may or may not be).
He isn't the first person to use antics to try and dent the conventions of a medium. Punk stalwart GG Allin became infamous for being more or less the apex of everything Daylyt is as well. He would sling his own feces at an adoring audience and sexually assault fans onstage, taking the "fuck you, I don't care what you came here for" ethos to a whole other level.
Andy Kaufman, an alternative New York comedian from the 60s and 70s, also completely bent the rules of his form, inviting a whole audience for milk and cookies, having mental breakdowns on chat shows and resolutely refusing to be funny during his stand-up shows. In blurring the boundaries between the real, the art and the utterly stupid and theatrical, he challenged people to redefine the reason they laughed at jokes. This seems to be a closer approximation of the dent Daylyt's attempting to make.
Let's come back to the central question here. Is Daylyt building or breaking battle rap? The most damaging thing about this question is that it's being asked at all. Daylyt, as per all other top level battle rappers, is out to push his brand, get people talking and get seen and paid more. These antics may or may not serve some higher purpose: only he knows that. But they are a promotional tool above everything else.
The most harmful thing for battle rap culture, out of all of this, is that one man's promotional stunts can be considered enough to pull an entire movement down. As widely known as he is right now, he is just one battler and for every Daylyt there are 10 dedicated barsmiths who simply want to be known as the best in the world. Daylyt once, very recently, arguably occupied that hallowed mantle, and given that he was being booed pretty consistently throughout his most recent battle against Real Deal (even after he started spitting bars), more or less willingly gave it up.
These stunts have also made wins and losses look meaningless. It's safe to assume that beating a Daylyt who spends two minutes writhing around on the floor half-clad in a Spawn costume feels no better than losing to a Daylyt who is on form with his writing.
He is also injecting some much needed fun and theatrics back into a scene that, aside from some of the British MCs (Shuffle and Marlo stand up) has become pretty starchy and po-faced since the bar-heavy wordplay style took over.
Whatever positives can be gleaned from this pratfall, it’s all becoming both exhausting and boring by this point. Sure, people are talking. But are they really surprised anymore? His recurrent mania is becoming an elaborate visual slogan. Something for fans to shout along to. And they very quickly became tiresome as well.
Don’t get me wrong: it was funny. Potty humor inherently tends to be. When I heard about it, I smiled. I told my fiancee. She laughed and said something.
But it’s not shocking anymore, at least not to those who already know what Daylyt is about. And that’s sort of sucked the life out of these instances. It’s the "Saw" franchise of hip-hop. It’s the clickbait of the battle rap universe. Partake for a day or two, then get on with your life. And clickbait, as good as it is for turding up 80% of Facebook news feeds, is not the only thing on the Internet.
Battle rap moves on.
Is Adam completely wrong? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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