First rule at this Fight Club: No cussing

Outside the Spokane Falls Community College SUB, where the Spokane Freestyle King emcee battle was about to get underway Saturday night, rapper Speed was telling his prophecy. “The first round: all adjectives. The second round: pronouns. The third round: verbs in Spanish,” he proclaimed at the building entrance as his competition and spectators filtered in.

The night looked promising.

Microphone Fight Club was about to begin – and only two hours late.

Onstage the host, Alex Morrow, a.k.a. Mr. Gottahavit, laid down the rules: No excessive cussing. No physical contact. No threatening.

“You can talk about what you’re gonna do to his momma. You just can’t talk about what you’re gonna do to him in the parking lot, ya dig?” Mr. Gottahavit told a checkered mix of about 100 college-aged students.

An emcee battle in Spokane … who knew what to expect? Straight up emcees? Gangsta rappers? Backpackers? A bunch of wannabe posers who saw “8 Mile” one too many times?

It was an uneven split of all the above.

While there were a few true rhyme aces, there were also a lot of jokers in the deck. And the way the competition was organized, it did more to keep weak links in the chain than to weed them out.

Some of the entrants in the first round came with nursery rhymes like “you can’t rap, you sound like crap.” Others relied on tired clichés, and even verses so obviously pre-written that one emcee was booted off the stage mid-rhyme. With a rare setting in Spokane that counted Caucasians in the minority, nearly every white rapper made an Eminem reference, or one was made about him.

And since there was a losers bracket, emcees with rhymes of that quality (or worse) made return appearances. Single-elimination would have been a better use of time, if the rounds allowed emcees two turns apiece so each combatant had a chance to rebut instead of them getting one turn each and leaving whoever loses the coin flip to inevitably go first and be at a disadvantage.

Conversely, emcees that did have witty rhymes also had to fight against the mike repeatedly cutting out or a bad mix in the house speakers.

If it weren’t for emcees such as return champ C-Flow (a.k.a. Chauncey Jones) and B. Genius, and the undeniably ‘hood charm of Mr. Gottahavit, the battle could have been a total yawn.

But during the final rounds, B. Genius and C-Flow’s arch-rivalry was once again resparked. Last year C-Flow defeated B. for the title. This year, B. was looking for revenge, jumping up on stage during another battle just to call C-Flow out.

Throughout the night C-Flow calmly and coolly ripped apart all of his competition with slow, calculated rhymes that showed his experience in a friendly game of the dozens: “You’re wearin’ a white doo rag, so dirty it’s gray/ Am I losin’ my brains or are you wearin’ a Fubu throw back with stains?”

In the end, after two rounds of B. Genius and C-Flow finishing in draws, C-Flow won the $200 grand prize for the second time.

As the night ended, Andre Irvin of Irvin Entertainment made a promise to the crowd to step in and better organize the competition in the fall, promising free studio time to the winner.

One can only hope. The audience deserves more sporting competition, and the rappers who are more than just fast talk deserve to be heard by a larger audience.

eBay watch

This week on eBay, a copy of the rare LP by The Elektras, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s high school band, sold for $1,005. Imagine that reunion tour.