Battle rap is a type of rapping performed between two or more performers that incorporates boasts, insults, wordplay and disses. Battle rap is often performed, or freestyled, spontaneously in live battles known as Rap battles, where participants will compete on the same stage to see who has the better verses.
1979 Bronx rap battle flier. Design: Buddy Esquire. Image courtesy of Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Rapping is an artistic form of vocal delivery and emotive expression that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and [commonly] street vernacular". It is usually performed over a backing beat or musical accompaniment. The components of rap include "content", "flow", and "delivery". Rap differs from spoken-word poetry in that it is usually performed off-time to musical accompaniment. It also differs from singing, which varies in pitch and does not always include words. Because they do not rely on pitch inflection, some rap artists may play with timbre or other vocal qualities. Rap is a primary ingredient of hip hop music, and so commonly associated with that genre that it is sometimes called "rap music".
American rapper 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson) sporting a hip-hop look at Warfield Theatre, San Francisco, June 3, 2010
Ekow, part of The Megaphone State rap duo, performing at the Sello Library in Espoo, Finland, in 2011
Nicki Minaj, a female rapper, is sometimes regarded as the “Queen of Rap”.
Russian rapper Oxxxymiron is one of the most viewed battle rappers in the world.
