Jumpoff WRC07
These are two of the best rap battles ever to me[1]. Unfortunately, there is no real tape but they had to use a second camera.
Thesaurus and Illmac were among the best in the world at that time. I didn’t know anything about Marv and Quest but they were super funny here. Both pairs have complementary styles but different from the other group. The majority of punchlines are around physical appearance - short, ugly, dark, fat...It’s hilarious listening to these guys throw schoolyard insults at each other and stay that creative.
These battles are semi-finals of a championship so the pairing was known and everybody came with some pre-written rhymes but there were still some obvious off-the-top stuff thrown and the performance is more free-flowing than staged.
IMO this organization and tournament kicked off the whole MC battle league thing and propelled it to extreme sport status and industry in itself. GrindTime, King Of The Dot, URL...all started after Jumpoff.
Thesaurus vs Iron Solomon battle from that era is a close second. ↩︎