Big Will freestyles to BET
Da SLU Cru emcee battles on 106 & Park on Friday
By Bill Beene
Of the St. Louis American
No doubt St. Louis has respect on the national rap scene, but freestyle battling is another story.
Yeah, Nelly fired back at KRS-One with a flurry of lyrics that can now be labeled a silencer. He also handily went upside a head or two in his 2003 hit, “#1.” They were effective and staggering counter punches. But everyone knows real rap battles are fought toe-to-toe from the top of the head.
In St. Louis rap, soldiers have a boot camp atop the Hi-Pointe Café on Monday nights with its open mic. One of the regulars, Da SLU Cru’s Big Will, is about to grab St. Louis some respect on the national scene.
Big Will, a North Side emcee, auditioned recently on 106 & Park’s Freestyle Friday MC Battle and copped a spot. After taping today (Thursday), his battle airs at 9 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2.
This past Monday Luqmon, Finsta and Robboo, hosts of the Monday Night Open Mic, along Da Slu Crew’s Odio, threw Big Will an official sendoff party at the café.
The sendoff crowd wasn’t as thick as one would expect, but Big Will rocked it. He was upstaged by rapper D-Mac, recognized in the scene as STL freestyle king, who had the crowd hanging on his every rhyme.
But it’s all good. Big Will has learned a lot from the D-Macs of the Monday Night Open Mic wars.
“D-Mac is a little older than me, so I learned a lot from him, as well as LukeMon, Odie and other cats,” Big Will said. “I wasn’t even old enough to get in the club to watch him come in here and roast guys. That’s one of my influences, as far as battling.”
Big Will knows he and cats like D-Mac and a lot of heads in the Lou who come through on Mondays can do battle, but he has the burden of letting the world know the deal.
“They don’t really respect us for battle, because everybody before us weren’t really on a battle, they were just trying to make the club move,” Big Will said.
“I respect that, but at the same time they don’t respect us, so I have to make them respect what we stand for because everybody don’t do that here.”
Big Will gave big ups to the Monday Night Open Mic as training ground.
“It groomed me a lot, because this is a battle atmosphere. You gotta gain respect, but at any given time somebody trying to get a name can come up and try to take that from you,” Big Will said.
That’s what Big Will was up against on BET’s Freestyle Friday MC Battle.
“If I think this guy is going to stop me from doing what I want to do in life, that’s going to give me the fuel to go ahead and knock him out,” Big Will said of freestyle battling.
Since I couldn’t really make out lyrics while he performed at the Hi-Pointe, I took a couple of shots at Big Will to see what he had.
He laughed and told me he didn’t want to do that to me. Since the big boy was a little apprehensive to cap me with a rap, I dropped a corny rhyme on him, “Your fat head needs fat hat, you look like a like big old ‘hood rat.”
It was rusty, crappy shot, but it was enough to make Big Will fire back with, “I heard your rhyme, it was whacked baby, jeri curls played out back in the ‘80s,” he joaned.
I told him my head of hair was natural and pointed to the hair on my chest, only to have him bust, “You go against me you, get beat, you need to put up that taco meat.”
That’s what I’m talking about. I felt good after that.
To get another perspective, I caught up with hip-hop impresario Fly D-EX of Da Science on KDHX FM 88.1.
“I would just say he needs to get up there and be himself, be comfortable, focus and represent,” Fly D-EX said.
“He going to need a few of those that’s like a knockout punch, especially coming as a challenger. The champ has a bit of a fanbase if they’ve been up there for a few weeks.”
Rapper Lyfstile from Plan B, who rocked the open mic that Monday, gave that fact a nod.
“A lot of emcees have rhymes that they spit all the time so they have them in the chamber, but the key in a battle is having that edge to switch up and go off the top of your head for the situation that you’re in,” Lyfstile said.
“Since he comes to the Hi-Pointe every Monday, he’s going to have lines he knows the crowd is going to feel, but if the opponent is coming off the top of head with something organic, he has to come up with something for that.”
