Mark Grist's Blog

21-02-2012: Blizzard battle aftermath

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I’m guessing that some of you have stumbled on this because you’ve seen me competing in a rap battle whilst wearing a suit. It’s only a small part of what I do, but it’s also the most well known. The battle itself was really just a part of what Mixy and I do as Dead Poets. 

First off, despite what you may have seen written online, Bradley is NOT my student. I live in Peterborough and he lives in Manchester. I left teaching full time in 2010 to work as a poet, although I still do the odd bit of supply work. We went with a teacher/student angle as we thought it'd be funny and it hadn't been done before. 

And that leads on to the next thing I want to say about the reaction to the video. I’m not doing this to teach Bradley any kind of lesson. He clearly doesn’t need one. He came with really intelligent bars. He also used less offensive language – choosing to be the more sophisticated of the two of us, whilst I was the one who ended up trawling the gutter. There aren’t many 17 year olds who would go into a rap battle and insult their opponent by referencing Germany changing their national currency.

Finally, this isn’t my first rap battle. I first battled as ‘The Count of Monte Gristo’, back when I was still teaching full time. My first battle was against a guy called Omen in Peterborough (another emcee you should check out). I won that battle as well – probably with my best line being

 

‘I went to university? Is that the best that you’ve got?

I’ll take your mother to the opera, and destroy her private box.’

 

Other than that, I’d like to say thanks to everyone that watched the video or reposted it. I'd also like to say thanks to everyone I've met within the battle rap community. I’m doing this as part of a poetry show I’m writing called ‘The Geek shall inherit the Earth’. I’ll be taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer to see whether anyone finds the experiment as much fun as I do.

The next battle to come up online is against Zain Azrai, a really decent guy from Malaysia. The challenge I set myself was to take him on without any misogyny, homophobia or racism in my bars. We’ll see what people make of it when it comes out!