How to Host A Freestyle Rap Battle

You can host a freestyle rap battle at your school or college. It's a great way to get the closet rappers out and exposed to your local hip-hop community. It's also a good fundraiser - if you have enough talent to entertain a crowd.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Spread the word way in advance to potential rappers. This is before you print the flyers, etc. You need to spread the word that there will a rap battle and anyone can be in it, but they need to practice. This is also a good time to line up acts that can follow and proceed the battles.

2. Create flyers about a month to three weeks before the event. A lot of different people listen to rap, so make the poster as appealing to a large audience as you can make it. Don't make the poster look it's only for people who rap, or else no one will show up. Those other rap acts you lined up? Put them on the poster.

3. You should have:
   
   An master of ceremonies who knows every participating person's name (on a sheet of paper) and can keep the crowd moving.
   
   A sound technician who knows about PA's, mics, and getting the music system to work at your school or college (this person doesn't need to know about rap, but needs to know a lot about making music events run smoothly).
   
   A person who runs the beats. This can be on an iPod, or turntables, but just make it simple if the person isn't that experienced. All the beats used for the night should be in order on a playlist, along with extra beats for extra battles, if there are any.
   
   A person who smoothes the event out with the school. This person should know how to host events, get teacher sponsors, and convince the administration the event will be a positive addition to the school program.
   
   A graphic designer who can make an appealing poster that attracts a lot of different people to the event.

4. Your schedule should go like this:
   
   Opening with the master of ceremonies.
   
   Performance of a whole original song by an opening act (an aspiring rapper or r&b singer on campus.)
   
   The first battles. Keep each battle short. Stop the battle and move onto the next one the second both rappers run out of steam.
   
   Have the master of ceremonies determine the crowd vote by the noise of the cheering for each rapper.
   
   Then, the performance of another original whole song by another school act.
   
   Another set of battles, etc.
   
   Toward the end of the event, the best people should battle each other. At the end, crown a winner and a runner up. Give the top three people some type of medal or award.

5. If your event went smoothly, people will look forward to it every year.

6. If your school doesn't have that many talented rappers, use your skills to make them better. Hold a rap workshop and teach them the basics of staying on beat, making freestyles, and using rhymes. You can make a lot of mediocre rappers a lot better by teaching them the basics of rap. Show these rappers YouTube videos of freestyle rap battles to teach them what to do.

7. The reason to have other acts perform during your battle is to break up the repetition of non-stop battles, and to entertain an audience that might not eat battle raps for breakfast.

8. If everything is working fine, this is the greatest problem you'll have to deal with: You need to keep the battling and rapping clean.
   
   Make sure all the rappers know the rules, and that they'll lose if they break them.
   
   Don't allow major expletives , racism, sexism, homophobia, and references to violence, guns, or drugs. If someone gets explicit, you'll have to make them lose the battle they are in. Stress to the rappers that this will be a "positive" event.