#SpaceCityBeatBattle Ah, the gorgeous beat battle. This was the third one. Episode Three: Attack of the Tones. It was not as dynamic as the second one, but it remains one of the city's most enjoyable, well-run underground rap events in the city. (If you're unfamiliar with its structure, read this.) There were all sorts of storylines that developed, but the best three were:
1. Tony Dark, a white guy with an exceptional beard, won the event. His most transcendent moment came when, after fighting his way back into the tournament in the wild card round, he found himself dangling perilously close to elimination while battling a producer named Bad Child.
Butted up against the edge of the cliff, Dark took a look at his note sheet, signaled which beat he wanted, then watched the devastation unfold as an earthy sexiness oozed out of the speakers. It was completely unexpected. Up until that point, everyone tried to either overpower the opposition or overclever them. Bad Child knew it was over ten seconds into the beat. Those are the types of moments that make the Beat Battle a must-attend.
2. A 16-year-old Asian kid named Bobby Earth became the Little Engine That Could for about 20 minutes. He was dressed in a black-and-white suit, wore wayfarer sunglasses and bounced all around the stage whenever his music played.
He seemed to be the favorite in the second round after he threw some extraterrestrial menace towards Eklipes, a production duo made up of a skinny black guy with baby cornrows and a chubby white guy in a plaid baseball cap, but had his legs cut off by the twosome's response, a beat that could only be described as being "bombastic warriordom," even though nobody will ever know exactly what that phrase means.
3. hasHBrown hosted the event again. He seemed to highlight every beat with, "Y'all fuckin' with that?" Over and over and over again, he said it. We couldn't stop picturing him saying it during breakfast with his family ("Breakfast is ready, bacon and eggs... y'all fuckin' with that?") or in a corporate boardroom ("And those, gentlemen, are this quarter's revenue projections... y'all fuckin' with that?") or in church preaching a service ("On the first day, God created the firmament... y'all fuckin' with that?"). It's never not amusing.
Note: Jokes are made all the time about Doughbeezy being at all places at once, like a tiny, bald-faded God. It's not without reason, though. As mentioned above, DB was at Snoopy's mixer. We left that, wandered around a bit, then landed at Republika. After being there a few minutes, DB sauntered in. He walked over, smiled, then said, "I heard y'all saw Doughbeezy on the northside."
Our wife, whom, to that point, had never fully experienced what is now referred to as the Doughbeezy Multiverse Hypothesis*, was flummoxed. Shortly thereafter, we left Republika and landed at Warehouse Live. Several minutes later, while stationed near the front of the stage, there was a tap. We turned around, and Doughbeezy was standing there: "I heard you all saw Doughbeezy in Midtown."
The wife's response: "How is he doing this!?" Left the show to get some food from Chachos, DB was working the window. Came home, that motherfucker was lying on the couch watching old basketball games. True story.
*The premise of the Doughbeezy Multiverse Hypothesis: There is not one universe but several, spiderwebbed together into a multiverse. Each individual universe has alternate Doughbeezys, the same as it has alternate yous or alternate Keanu Reeves. Somehow, though, all of the alternate Doughbeezys have landed here in this particular universe. There are a pack of them.
And as Original Doughbeezy kills each Alternate Doughbeezy, Original Doughbeezy gains more and more strength, because they all share the same life force. It's just like that Jet Li movie The One, except instead of karate there's rapping. It makes perfect sense.
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