Over the summer, MuchMusic contacted Soul Plane and informed us that they would be invading our lives for a good couple months to film our band's debauchery and give us some national television exposure and to put us through rockstar training to see if we have what it takes to make it somewhere in the music industry. If you haven't seen the episode or heard the verdict yet, catch it online now at http://www.muchmusic.com/tv/disband/soulplane.asp (full-screen the window for the optimal in-yo'-face experience). These are my memoirs from our time on set with Much...
Day 5 – July 22nd, 2008
Location:
Time: 12 30pm
Based on the “clue” (a Polaroid photograph of the front entrance of Orange Lounge Recordings) given to me by Greig Nori the day before, it didn’t seem like it would require too much intellect to figure where we were supposed to be today. The “clue” was supposed to lead to a challenge that was mainly meant for me – I had no idea what it could be; trust me, I spent most of last night harassing everyone in Soul Plane to help me think of the possibilities (Kevin’s theory was that they were going to try to take me out of my element by making me dance, and Luke’s guess was that they were going to make me sing – either way I would have pulled pistols). By morning, as we made our way down to MuchMusic, I had stopped caring almost entirely and decided to just let them bring it on.
We were met by Julie and Chris (the same cameraman who filmed us yesterday, but not the one who was at Machinehead Studio) when we arrived at Orange Lounge. We were directed into the lounge seating area to wait for further instructions. During this time, Hector went around the members of the band asking them if they had any idea what today had in store for me and how everyone felt having been granted access to one of Canada’s most prestigious recording studios. We were all hoping we’d be able to record a track here or something, but obviously this wasn’t in the plans. Before long, Julie came to get us and told us to make our way down to Studio A.
As I opened the door to the recording room, I saw Greig Nori standing there with a huge shit-eating grin on his face. Beside him was somebody anyone who lived in
Greig, still smiling like an asshole, turns to the cameras and goes, “Yui, welcome to Orange Lounge Recordings, I’m happy to see that the clue wasn’t too tough for you guys to follow. This is Bishop, one of the fiercest battle rappers in the world. Today your challenge is going to be to enter a freestyle battle with this guy right here. Do you think you’re up to it?”
Did I have a choice? I fought every instinct to run away screaming. I wasn’t about to pussy out in front of my band. I kept my composure and told him I was definitely up to it. I’m never scared to get my ass handed to me in a battle, especially by someone of Bishop’s caliber; my only regret was that I had removed myself from the battle-rap scene almost completely several years ago and had vowed not to go back. I had left because the concept of battling itself (where two emcees stand face-to-face and do their best to creatively degrade each other as much as possible in spontaneous rhyme and rhythm – see 8 Mile for more details) had gotten played out, the scene was dead, the competitors were generic, and almost every battle ended up in fisticuffs or bloodshed or death threats because someone couldn’t take a joke. Borrrrrrrrrring.
That was like, two or three years ago. Now Bishop was about to bring me out of retirement, and I would have come back for no less worthy an opponent.
Greig then asked me how I felt about having to battle Bishop on MuchMusic cameras. He asked me if I was nervous. To be honest, I wasn’t even nervous – I think I’m beyond the point of being shook over anything rap-related, I’m pretty confident in my ability to perform no matter who I’m being judged by. But now wasn’t the time to think, now was the time to freestyle. I looked Greig in the eye and said that I was just looking forward to being ripped apart by one of the game’s greats, and that although I’ve obviously heard of Bishop and have an immense amount of respect for his rep, I wasn’t too starstruck to bring my best. The battle emcee in me was ready to fuck some shit up despite knowing already what the outcome was going to be (come on, it’s Bishop… this guy could out-rap me in his sleep). Greig laughed, wished me good luck, then told me I had to go first, and acapella (that is, without a beat to help me keep my flow). I didn’t even wait for them to tell me “go.”
I did my best to hit him in the weak spots with my verse – I talked about how no one in Scarborough wanted him repping the city despite the fact that he had a “Scartown” t-shirt on; I questioned his sexual orientation, and his sense of fashion (I told him he looked more like he should be working on a golf course with the plaid shorts he had on, and that his rhymes were as played out as his all-white Air Force Ones). I even questioned his credibility, telling him that before his battles against Jin (internationally-renowned Asian freestyle battle-rapper), I hadn’t even heard of him. At one point I gestured swiftly to the camera and accidentally dropped the sunglasses I had clipped onto my polo – I made reference to this in my verse and told Bishop that if he kept “frontin’, he’d get ‘dropped’ like my glasses,” just to prove to everyone watching that my rhymes were a genuine freestyle and truly not premeditated. As I was rapping, I paid close attention to Bishop’s body language. He seemed taken aback at my ability to handle myself on the mic, and his eyes got real big at some of my lines, but at the end of the day, he still looked completely unfazed.
When Bishop picked up on his turn, it was made real clear, in living colour, why this man is not to be fucked with in the battle-rap division. His flow was smoother than most conmen, his delivery a hail of rapid-fire machine-gun bullets – it was like a perfectly executed mob hit: some of the shit he said, you just didn’t see it coming. It wasn’t so much that his verse was better than mine – in fact, he didn’t pick my visual presentation apart like I did to him; there was almost nothing personal about his attack. However, he blindsided me by tackling the battle from a completely different perspective, combining some hard lines with a consistent flow and delivery, and by maintaining that powerful and dominant tone in his voice and holding a steady rhythm, there was no way you could stay unimpressed. He came at me with lines like, “I ain’t talkin’ about drivin’ when I’m ‘poppin’ a Yui,” and “your name remind me of something gross… ‘ewwyyy’…” and that was pretty much the end of me.
I may not have won the battle, but everyone who was watching was at least impressed by my performance. Much cameras were able to capture everybody’s reactions (Soul Plane’s, Greig Nori’s, and Bishop’s), and the producers told me more of the same: they were not expecting to bring my business to Bishop’s front gates. Based on the lyrics I write for Soul Plane’s music, I seem like a pretty soft, reflective dude (and that’s how I’d like to come off – the alternative has been done and done again in the realm of rap music these days – it’s not cute anymore). There’s nothing aggressive in my verses, nothing that would indicate that battle-rapping was such a major part of my career history (it’s how I began rapping in the first place). As a result, they thought I would either choke or back down – on MuchMusic cameras for the entire nation to see? Bitch, please. Their thoughts:
“I definitely didn’t expect you to do as well as you did. I didn’t really think you were gonna choke or anything, but I was hoping you would struggle through your rap a lot more than you did.”
- Hector, MuchMusic field producer
“I don’t know too much about this battle-rap shit, but from based on what I heard, I’m not even sure I can just name a winner.”
- Greig Nori, Canadian music industry professional
“Yo, for real I got mad respect for this kid Yui. He came at me real hard… I mean, he really went in. I didn’t think he was going to get that deep, but yo, he really went in on me. I can size up most emcees just based on this… you know, this cocky-ass, arrogant vibe they give off but Yui wasn’t doing none of that. He just stood his ground and did his thing and he wasn’t scared to fuck with me. That’s what it takes to be a good emcee. That’s big, man, that’s big, so mad respect for that, though, for real.”
- Bishop, legendary battle emcee
“Bishop obviously won that battle... like, c’mon, he didn’t even stop [his verse] to breathe. It was just line after line. But Yui did a really good job holding his own.”
- Gideon, Soul Plane lead guitarist
“I don’t know how Yui did that. I was more nervous about it than he was.”
- Mel G, Soul Plane lead vocalist
Greig then told Bishop and I to adjourn to the control room of Studio A, where he was to give me feedback and work with me on my verse for the Soul Plane song “Impossible,” the track we had chosen to play in front of the panel of judges that would be evaluating us on August 9th. When we got into the recording room I had a chance to kick it with Bishop before the cameras started rolling – he asked me the average “get-to-know-you” questions like how long I’ve been rapping, where I’ve performed, what my aspirations as a recording artist were, etc. I learned quite a bit about him, too – he was slowly shying away from music and gradually making his way into acting; he had been in “Narc” with Ray Liotta and Busta Rhymes back in ‘02, and he played Alex de Large in a theatre production of “Clockwork Orange” recently. I was thoroughly impressed at his credentials and how humble he was about honing his crafts and balancing his passions all the while slowly turning everything into a moneymaking career move.
When the cameras were on, we worked on my lyrics. After I rapped my verse out loud for Bishop, he looked up at Julie and Hector with a quizzical expression on his face: “What am I supposed to do to this right now?” Julie told him that he was supposed to hit me with some feedback, some pointers on how I could improve my verse and make it ready for the judges I would be facing “in a few days.” Bishop laughed and replied, “But yo, real talk, I ain’t even mad at this verse. It’s hot. I don’t know what else to tell this kid.” I took immediate advantage – I looked into the cameras and said “Ladies and gentlemen, I just want you all to know that this is coming from Bishop, Toronto’s most-feared emcee.” I wasn’t lying, and I’m sure he appreciated the compliment. Honestly, though, it wasn’t that my verse was flawless or anything – far from it. It’s just that it’s hard to critique a rapper’s flow, delivery and overall performance of a verse unless you hear the instrumental that is supposed to serve as a backdrop to the verse, and this was apparently something we couldn’t accommodate (the rest of Soul Plane had been dismissed after the battle and were out getting lunch).
Finally, for the cameras, Bishop pushed himself to find something to tell me to improve on in my verse: “Uh… if I were you, I’d try to go deeper into the topic, the concept. Like, you did a real good job here, but you could go further into the situation and really bring out ‘doin’ the impossible.’” You could almost tell he was saying it just to say it. I agreed, and I said I’d look into it and fix things up in time for our live gig in front of the judges. He then found more advice to throw my way: “When you spit a verse like this, it’s gotta make an impact. You’re the first thing in after the intro, right? You gotta punch them right in the face with it, dawg. It’s gotta come killer the first word you say – you gotta have conviction. The flow’s nice, I like it, and I wish I could hear the beat it’s on, but from what I can tell here, you gotta bring that energy.” I nodded and thanked him graciously for these tips, and told him I would re-work the questionable parts as soon as I got a minute to recover from the battle wounds he had inflicted on me about an hour ago. He laughed, wished me good luck, shook my hand, promoted the both of us on MuchMusic tape, and we walked out of the studio together. How touching.
What a best day of my life.
