Battle Breakdown

So people just love to breakdown different battles about who won, who lost, who got robbed, who bit who's move, blah blah blah. Well here's something new. Here's a breakdown of a battle from a DJ's perspective about the music. With DJing and music, comes a lot of intricacies and things that people don't just normally see. And that's kinda the whole point about this blog, so hopefully this gives you a little more insight on things and how we see it..

So I watch a battle the other day between two of the most legendary and influential bboys of our time and to be completely honest, the music was horrible! That definitely took a lot out of the battle and I guarantee if the battle were spun differently, it would have been ten times as hype and memorable!

Let's take a journey shall we? The case in point: Kamel vs Remind

1st song: Eric B & Rakim - Know The Ledge. Classic Hip-Hop joint, nothing wrong with that. Once that bassline drops everyone knows the deal. People always complain about the lack of Hip-Hop.

2nd song: Earth Wind & Fire - Happy Feeling. Ehhhh. Played after Know The Ledge? Complete change in mood and feeling. BIG TIME. Definitely a big step in the wrong direction. And while the break on the intro is cool, the DJ didn't even touch the best part of the song! Check 2:32. Seriously?

3rd song: Okay this Charles Mintz song has really been making its way around people's Serato crates. DJ Skeme Richards was killing this song for a long time before anyone downloaded and touched it. But in respect to this battle, still didn't fit. I play this song in the cyphers, but battles, I don't know about that. Definitely not after starting the battle with Rakim! Now while you can't please every bboy and dancer, go watch any clip of Kamel and you will see him killing beats all day. You also can't really control how a person is going to feel about a song at any given point, but as a DJ you have to strive to play music that people are going to snap to! That's your job! Almost stopped watching here.

4th song: Barry White - You Gotta Case. This is what I like to call a "fall back" song. This is that song you throw on that gets it hype. It probably always will, its just one of those songs. I don't have any problem with this other than its been played over and over for years. But as for this battle, it saved it.

5th song: Edwin Starr - Time. Another "fall back" song. Pretty much the same comment as above. The battle started to pick up here.

6th song: Some live cover of the Jesus Christ Superstar ish, pretty cool. Drums are nice. Again, the battle was picking up some hype.

7th song: Brian Auger & Julie Driscoll - The Flesh Failures. Well since the battle was kind of over, it didn't really matter. But if it continued. Really? REALLY? You're gonna play that next? That is definitely not the song you play after those last three. I absolutely HATE when people play this track in battles. That is the epitome of a song you do not play in a battle, in my humble opinion.

In an overall look at this battle, it was spun horribly! The only joints that really saved the battle were joints that have been knocking for years!! What happened to bringing new music to the plate? Who wants to dance to the same music over and over again for years? Just because it still gets people hype doesn't mean you still need to be rocking it over and over. That's not to say, you should never play Edwin Starr or Barry White ever again in your life, but you should get my drift. Some DJs are so lazy to go venture out and find new music to play that has that SAME feeling that these songs had when they were first making their rounds at jams. To quote one of the greatest to ever do it (RIP) DJ Leacy: "As a DJ its the same as a bboy, you can't repeat. I'm gonna play what I played in the finals last year in the preliminaries. And I'm gonna drop some new shit in the finals."

And this is not like this is the first of its kind. There are mad DJs doing it all wrong all over the place! We can't force anyone to hire or not hire people. "You can only lead a horse to water" type of deals. But hey, maybe some people will start realizing these kind of things and see that there is a lot more to DJing than just playing the music.

Call it hating if you will, but reading forum comments there were a lot of people NOT feeling the music. Not to say it was the absolute worst (as I did mention that at a certain point the battle began to pick up) but yeah, it wasn't good. Constructive criticism, hopefully to enlighten some out there.