Murda Mook is one of battle rap’s biggest names. He has managed to keep his name in the upper echelon of rappers by dropping superior bars against top tier emcees and coming with a vicious delivery which makes even simple lines sting. He has also kept his buzz by making himself scarce on the battle scene; only battling once in a while against other brilliant battlers. For instance his battle against Iron Solomon was a massacre. He covered many topics starting with the compensation he was receiving from Smack for battling and went on to systematically destroy Solomon. There was also the hype surrounding his verse on the first 2014 BET Hip Hop Awards live cypher which caught the attention of many folks. It further helped to hype another angle; his challenge against Drake to battle, which ultimately never came to fruition.
Without a doubt the wordsmith has clout in the battle circuit and his opinion is held in high esteem. That’s why when he decided to release a freestyle that dissed talentless rappers it cut real deep. The freestyle covers how hip hop’s creativity has dwindled recently and as such has made room for people he thinks are talentless to come to the forefront of the culture and dominate. The rhymes are nasty as one might expect from Mook. He drops lines such as:“As long as the followers are clicking that button, n****s will risk their own survival, “Here’s record me getting shot/here go the rifle/ Now record the doctor telling me the bullet shattered my spinal / Aiiiight, you got all that? Upload that s**t, my n***a, we going viral.”
Not surprisingly, the freestyle has been met with overwhelming support. Firstly, because Mook commands respect and his opinions are highly esteemed and secondly because it has been a shared opinion in hip hop and music in general for a while. There has been a big complaint that auto-tune has made way for untalented rappers/singers to come to the forefront of music since it acts as a bit of an equalizer in that if properly used it can give average vocals an edge. Other than that one sub-genre of hip hop has been dominating the airwaves so the creative envelope is not being pushed as much as in earlier years.
Others of course disagree with Mook’s sentiments, commenting that every man has the right to make music as he wishes and if he’s successful it should not concern others who have not been able to attain a similar level of success.
I think both sides of the argument have merit. Every man should be allowed to make music as he sees fit. If my preference is to make music that sounds just like the trend of the day it’s not anyone else’s concern. If you don’t like my music it’s ok, don’t listen to it. On the other hand it’s important for artists to remain creative and try to push something new, unique and that we can only get from them. If 10 people sounded exactly like Nas he would no longer be special. There would be nothing to prompt people to buy Nas records because he’s just a mirror image of everyone else, and that’s the point. People often cite the late 80s and 90s as hip hop’s golden age, and that’s because no single sounded dominated the charts. You had NWA, Bone Thugs, Gang Starr, Nas, Jay-Z, Brand Nubian, Beastie Boys, Outkast, Biggie, Tupac, Yoyo, Lil Kim, Da Brat, Kriss Kross, Jeru The Damaja, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Run DMC, Wu Tang and a whole host of others on the radio and each artist offered something different. So both sides of the argument are correct. At the end of the day it’s a matter of opinion. As for me I think music is simply changing, and change is great. If I want to listen to old school music I can simply put on my 90s records and I’m good.You can watch the freestyle videos on Mook’s Instagram @murdamookez.
