After a great night of battles at DFI 4, Nugget returns to Rap Ireland for the third instalment of the Battle Blog. This time out Nug breaks down two of his most recent battles: his match up with Nate at Don’t Flop Blood in the water 2, and Brosy from DFI 3. In this edition, he discusses battling strangers, switching verses, and being the first Irish rapper to get a win in the UK.
THE BATTLE BLOG III – WORDS BY NUGGET
Something that I always kinda dreaded when I first started battling was having to compete against someone I know very little about. In retrospect, it was a good thing that it happened to me early as I now know that it just makes you a more creative battler. My latest two battles to go up online were both against people I’d never even met before: Brosy and Nate.
I may as well start with the Nate battle as that came first. I had seen him battle Rayzel when I traveled to Manchester for Redzer vs. Sensa. I was really impressed with him on the day; he had seriously funny punchlines and an amazing presence. My original plan had been to travel over for Blood In The Water 2 just as a spectator, but when I told Eurgh (president of Don’t Flop) I was making the trip, he said he’d have to set up a battle for me. I knew it was going to be tough as I didn’t know much on Nate, and his battle from Manchester hadn’t even gone up yet for me to pick apart. However some good Facebook and Youtube sleuthing paid off, and I found enough to go at him on!
My idea for my first verse was to take something most people wouldn’t consider a bad thing and diss him about it. He’s a break-dancer, so he’s fairly in shape (no homo). People always insult me for being fat and out of shape, so I though it would be funny to flip the script and diss him for being the exact opposite. It would at least be a different approach anyway. The second verse was mostly just random jokes I strung together. That’s why I put it in the middle; it would have been weak to finish on. And then the 3rd was mostly build up to about 2 or 3 really good punches I had saved up for the finish. I always enjoy when in a battle someone builds a great scheme up to a punch at the end and I feel this verse did it well. The final punch was clearly my strongest so I went with it even though I wasn’t sure if people would get it or if they’d react well.
On the day of the battle itself, I had a chat with Nate beforehand, and I have to say he’s a really sound bloke. We were both hyped for the battle so I was defo expecting a good match. My first round came out well from my perspective. I thought it might have gotten a bit of a better reaction, but fuck it. I felt it was even enough at the end of the round. I thought Nate had some good lines. He had actually looked up my stuff as well and I liked his line referencing my song Loser.
Second round we both choked a bit. I’m proud to say we both recovered, and neither of us had to be stopped early. I can only put my choke down to nerves and losing the run of myself. I got a good reaction for the “are we in a fuckin racist joke” line and kinda jumped on ahead in the verse too much. The line I ended up using to fall back on “I hope that when ya meet a bird she gets ugly and her tits go lopside, next time ya go on holiday i hope ya come back and your dogs died” was just a generic battle line. I think every battler should defo have a lot of these for back up.
Then the 3rd round came and I felt I got everything out well. When I hit the “no dogs, no Blacks, no Irish,” line I couldn’t believe the reaction. I tried to get out another bar but the crowd was going crazy and the time ran out. I was seriously chuffed. I felt that was the line which clinched the win in 3.
After winning the battle, I was on a serious high and didn’t shut up about it for about 8 hours. I was delighted with myself when I saw that I was featured in the trailer for the event. The wait for the battle seemed like an eternity, but it was definitely worth it to have the first win for an Irish emcee in the U.K.
The Brosy battle was a kinda similar situation to the one with Nate. I didn’t know much on my opponent, but I knew he was a great rapper. Despite having appeared on the “2 joints” remix along side him, I knew next to nothing about Brosy. All I had to go on was that he is from Cork and was formerly known as the Dutch Gold Kid.
I also knew that his opponent had flopped on him the last time so I had to exploit that. On a serious note, fair play to him for traveling up again, after he did all his prep work last time and made the journey up only to have his battle fall through.
During the preparation, I decided I would throw in all the Cork and Dutch Gold jokes I could think of. I had to go the funny route as you can’t really be mean or horrible to someone ya don’t really know.
When I was prepping, I actually came up with some really good lines that I had to leave out. I won’t say what they are as I might still use them someday. But basically I left out four bars and one of the punches was by far the funniest line I had for him. My reason for not using it was that despite the fact that that those who got it would have loved it, it would have been lost on 95% of the people there and 99% of those watching on youtube. I replaced them with some pretty decent bars but I was still kinda disappointed.
On the day of the battle, I was well buzzing and wanted to put in my best performance yet. I’d like to think I did that. A lot of people had made nugget references on the day (I counted 6 or 7 anyway) so I decided to mention it at the start of my second verse “every other battle today had better disses for nugget than you”
I thought Brosy actually had some hilarious lines and if he maybe had some more directed stuff for me it might have went the other way. My favourite bar of my own on the day was probably “the only reason this kid has a dutch in his hand is for the muscly man on the front of the can” I really liked how it rhymed and also the fact that it suggest he was a homosexual… or at least admired the male form.
I thought the decision on the day was a fair one, but saying that I felt Brosy was extremely good for his first time battling. He has a really good sense of humour that I think hiphop fans, especially in Ireland, will really warm to in his coming battles.
When the video eventually went up, I was a bit disappointed that my last bar got cut out. If you want to know what the full punchline was check the video blog posted above. And while we are at it, I have decided to include some lines that I had prepped for Brosy, but never ended up getting to use on the day. Enjoy – Thanks for reading this and watching the Battles!
I had to lose the first line of my second verse to make way for the line about the other battles mentioning me :
“Man your so shit even your name is bland, to get the name Brosy he simply took the y of his favourite 80s band”
And here’s some bars from I would have used in OT:
“Remember that Dan track from back in the day, a song about sending Roy Keane fan mail to say, What’s the crack with a game? Anyone who heard that track was amazed, Not cos the rapping was great, But cos sending letters to another bloke is actually gay”
