Versus 2: An MC and Beat Battle, Review + Photos
Click on photo for slide show.
Stage left is Stik Figa. Small and lanky in glasses and a skullcap, he emits the comic charm and easy-going nature of someone who rarely pays for his own drinks and who’s welcome to crash on the couches of his friends any night of the week.
He ambles like a Slinky.
Stage right is Info Gates. Surly, his sleeves are pushed up to his elbows, his Kansas City Kings ball cap pulled down low over his eyes, he struts like a prizefighter.
Info turns to the audience and says, “I swear to God this is true.” Then he rhymes: My pops is in Florida on his deathbed/So how the fuck am I gonna lose to a skinny-ass meth-head?
Like kids on a playground, the people in the crowd go Ooooooh!
More than 200 people are packed into the Record Bar for the second annual installment of Versus 2: An MC and Beat Battle.
In hip-hop’s verbal martial art, freestyle battlers must bend their impromptu rhymes to insult their opponents while winning over the crowd with cleverness and consistency.
“If you don’t come prepared,” says Okwerdz, a nationally accomplished battle MC who’s here from California to judge tonight, “you will get fucked up.”
Organized battles like this are hard to put together and rare in Kansas City. But two MCs, Sephiroth and Vertigone, have organized Versus to try to get the sport going again locally.
