Quote
UptownKid
you can't have a battle without beef. Noone battles for the fun of it....unless it's staged - which some battles have been (past and present)...but who takes those things seriously. Yeah, folks may battle to see who's skill is better (whether on a b-ball court, on NBA LIve or on a microphone)...but the beef come into play when shit gets' personal, for whatever reason.
That is why I was looking at it from the factor of the timeline in Hip Hop.
True that nowadays and even in the more recent past battles escalated to beef, or beef led to battles
that we might not have seen otherwise.
I'm looking at beef in the same ways as you are as the crossing the line to where things get personal.
I used as reference to my personal opinion of the difference, in what I had only seen and heard in the day.The protocol and criteria was way different back then.Records had just came out.Everything was made and played in the streets.With spots in crews at a minimum for DJ's and MC's, if you wanted to get down you had to take someones spot or be down by law in that case you wasn't gonna see alot of mic or mix time.The only way was to battle each other and the crew decided who won.
There were a few skirmishes afterwards becaue everyone is human.
But for the majority of the time there was no beef or animosity between us,
because remember we were all friends outside of the crew also.
We went to school together, we drank 32 oz. together,we smoked weed together,etc.
Also in the headlners that you see on the old flyers,a majority of those joints wasn't even qualifiable battles.If you will, IMO.They just took turns rockin on separate stages or ones in close proximity.Outside of some Busy bee and Kool Moe Dee stuff, maybe Flash and them had something with Force MDs in the day I can't really remember but most crews only spit a few nursery rhymes here and there.I know you guys you noticed the emcees back then mostly rhymed about how good they was (self-promotion) instead of tearing their opponent a new ass (degredation) which of course even at that time more than likely led to beef.We had a handful of cats that could really get down,but there was no one from my era
besides maybe Mel or Kid Vicious that had the technical proficiency or the rhyming capabilities of those who came after Rakim on up through the mid 90s..It's not even close.Coupled with the non-violent, party structure of most lyrics in the day it cultivated non beef.
I know that you remember
snappin Uptown.remember that s**t.
It was funny as hell unless you was on the other side.It was big in the 70s before Hip Hop.People before me called it
playing the dozens.Now that s**t led to fights left and right haha.Because there were some guys that were really good at it...But for early Hip Hop,battling was only a way to win a spot and if you battled another crew,you probably ended up hanging out later that night as to most of us was from the same areas anyway.I would say that rap during and after the golden era that battling and beef became two of the same.Spinning it back to the timeline itself being the reference I used for feeling that it was two separate things.
I hope i'm arranging my thoughts here correctly, sometimes I get in the way of myself.
Peace to ya, Up!
