In the world of hip-hop, one of the skills that an emcee must have is the ability to freestyle lyrics off the tops of their heads. Now, some are much better than others at this, but to be truly considered an emcee one must endure some level of the trial and error based experience known as battling.
DJ Bizzon, one half of WMSE's Tuesday night hip-hop show known as The Madkids Show, and Power Family Movement have put together a series of battles that will pit several emcees against each other for the sake of attempting to create more hip-hop culture events in Milwaukee.
"The battle is an eight-emcee, single elimination tournament where each emcee gets two 30 second intervals to showcase their lyrical abilities and freestyle skills. The winner receives $100 in cash and prizes. Over the coming months, three more emcee battles like this one will be held and in the summer of 2011, a championship battle with the four winners will be held to determine the Takeover Freestyle Champion of Milwaukee." DJ Bizzon told me.
Performing at the event will be Frankie Flowers, Raze and SPEAK Easy, who will also pull double duty for the evening as the judges of the event. Rapper and designer Dana Coppafeel will be the event's special guest judge.
Throughout the evening, Field Lehmann will be doing live art, adding another interesting aspect to the event. To see an example of what he does, visit his Web site.
Putting on The Takeover Freestyle Battle isn't the only thing that DJ Bizzon wants to do for the Milwaukee hip-hop community.
"I'm holding this event in an effort to bring more hip-hop related events to Milwaukee. When I say hip-hop, I mean all four elements of hip-hop: emceeing, DJing, breaking and tagging. With all the talent here in Milwaukee and the surrounding areas, focusing on all the elements, not just emceeing, should be relatively easy. I started with an emcee battle because it's something familiar and I wanted to kick this series off with a bang."
The Takeover Freestyle Battle is being held this Friday at the Miramar Theater with doors opening at 9 p.m. and the battles beginning at 10:30 p.m. If you bring a nonperishable food item they will knock $2 off of
the cover charge.
Born in Milwaukee and raised in the Milwaukee suburb of Brown Deer, Concordia University Wisconsin alumnus Poppe has spent the majority of his life in or around the city and county of Milwaukee.
As an advocate of Milwaukee's hip-hop community Poppe began popular local music blog Milwaukee UP in March 2010. Check out the archived entries here.
Though heavy on the hip-hop, Poppe writes about other genres of music and occasionally about food, culture or sports, and is always ready to show his pride in Milwaukee and Wisconsin.
