Scribble Jam Edmonton

The Event

Scribble Jam is this big organisation of rap/hip hop events and MC and DJ battles that take place all over the USA (and Edmonton Alberta Canada) culminating in a big throwdown in Cincinnati. The Edmonton edition featured a handful of MCs and DJs competing for their chance to participate in the big leagues and about 10 local hip hop acts for extra entertainment value.

The Crowd

Every black person in Edmonton was there. The other half of the bar was filled with white kids and a scattering of asians. I felt like I didn't really fit in because a: my clothes (very ordinary, no bling), b: I'm not really into hip hop culture and, c: I'm too old to go to bars. Good crowd though, they were very enthusiastic and well behaved. The floor often errupted into impromptu breakdancing sessions. Very postitive vibe. At one point one of the rappers (this "big boned" chick) started asking the crowd how long they'd been listening to hip hop for. How many of you have been listening to hip hop for five years? BIG CHEER. How many of you have been listening to hip hop for 10 years? BIG CHEER. Etc etc until she reached 25 years and another big cheer went up, which was BS because the average age at the event was probably 22. I wanted her to keep going because they would have just kept on cheering. How many of you muthuh ****uhs been listening to hip hop for A HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE MUTHUH ****IN' YEARS? BIG CHEER!

The Acts

I don't remember all the names and there was no program, so apologies in advance. There were about 10 acts and the organizers gave them each about half of a full set. To be honest, that was waaaaay too much. That would have been way too much for me even if the line up was Ladytron, Queens of the Stone Age, The Donnas, Sahara Hotnights and The Beastie Boys. (Yeah yeah, if I were any whiter I'd be clear. I know.) There were actually a few really good performers. There was this one hot girl saying overtly sexual things into the mic and I liked that for obvious reasons. Oh, and she sounded pretty good too. She was wearing these things on her hands that were either boxing wraps or fingerless gloves and I kept trying to figure out which they were every time she walked by. I hope having some scruffy tourist staring at her hands all night didn't traumatize her. Then there was this multi-talented fellow who played the drums AND the sax AND arranged his own beats. He was a pretty good rapper and as a performer he was brilliant at engaging the crowd. I couldn't remember his name so I just called him "Backflipper" all night because he kept doing backflips off the stage. The highlight was probably Kaz Mega who eventually went on to win the DJ competition. He looked like somebody gene spliced Urkel with Kid N' Play. This dude was all about the 80s; he wore a thriller jacket and an NES controller belt buckle. He also sounded awesome and was easily the best all around entertainer of the night. As a whole though the show wasn't all that good. The problem was there were too many guys who just got up and spat unintelligible into a poorly tuned mic over off-the-shelf beats. It didn't help that there were a couple of acts that I really disliked, like the guy I'll just call Emo Rapper. Rap and Emo don't work well together IMO. (Though to be fair, Emo doesn't mix well with anything. Not even itself.) The event dragged on and on to such an extent that near the end of the evening I wasn't enoying some acts that I otherwise would have, like the duo from Calgary who just tried to be as crude as possible. I would have found them amusing four hours earlier, but by that time I just wanted to hear the rap battle finals and get the hell out of there. The event ran 6 hours. Six. Hours. 1/4 of a full day. The DJ and MC battles probably took an hour combined, and maybe 2 hours of the rest of it was worth listening to. It would have been much better if they had either drastically cut the number of acts or limited each act to 1 or 2 numbers. Even the crowd who live and breathe this stuff seemed to be losing interest for the last 1/3 of the show. A hint to the organizers: sometimes less really is more.

The Battles

I was a little disappointed in the DJ battles at first because I was expecting them to produce their beats live. Instead they all just got on stage with their iPods and pressed PLAY. Once I got over that though it was actually pretty cool. The beats these guys produced pretty consitently had me bopping my head. My favourite of the pre-lims (and possibly the night) was by Backflipper, but he lost the next round. Kaz Mega was consistently awesome and secured a well-deserved victory in the final.

The MC battles were the highlight and were what I presume everybody came to see. As the competition went on the guys who only had a few good lines in them or the ones who said the same stuff to everybody (You can't even compete with me! I'm the dopest MC! Your lines are wack! Get off the stage, Jack! Etc) were weeded out. Surprisingly the final ended up being between 2 scrawny kids with similar styles who had consistently come up with awesome disses specifically targeted at their opponents. In the end M.C. Chedda Cheese, the shortest, youngest, scrawniest, squeakiest, whitest competitor won it with his scathing rhymes and unfaltering pace. Don't underestimate him, Cincinnati. (See his goofball Gnome rap here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFaCVUKsRtw&feature=related )

Overall

There was honestly some pretty good stuff there, but the other two thirds of it was mediocre or worse. It didn't help that they split every round of the battles up. It was real frustrating at 1 A.M. to hear the semi finals of the MC battle and then have to endure more mediocre rap for the better part of an hour to hear the final. In the words of the friend I went with: "This would have been an awesome event if they'd have squeezed it into two and a half hours".