For the sake of the public, it is important to note that for EVERY competition; official or otherwise, there are rules; written or unwritten and the battle is no exception. Even the world has unwritten rules, else it would all be chaos.
Now first all, before we go any deeper it is important to recognize and applaud the fact that whatever his reasons were
9ice went on record to take things further, just as it is important to recognize the fact that whatever his reasons were,
Ruggedman responded. It is considered ‘unhiphop’ to ignore a diss record, except you’re bigger than the art (as in cases of players like
Jay-Z &
P. Diddy for example). Now let us proceed.
If you’re going to battle someone it was be clear from the get go that every part of your armaments must be on point. You don’t go for war wearing an agbada/dashiki; you go loaded for bear! As a result, on production/choice of beats, the
9ice camp wins hands down. The
‘Talk I Am Listening’ beat sounds like
‘Ether’…a rousing beat, heavy horns interjected with the sound of a bottle breaking. The
‘9ice The Ingrate’ beat on the other hand sounds like a party/club joint; one of those ‘dance tracks’
Ruggedman is so famous for. Trying to kill two birds (battle and make people dance) with one stone does not always work, as Rugged should have learned on that his 'Banging' track. And besides, the beat sounds curiously like the beat of that old diss record from Ruggedman himself; ‘Big Bros’. What happened? Did they run out of producers?
Another minus for the
Ingrate track is the fact that
Chinaydu sounds muffled and unclear; in other words it would be difficult for a layman to hear or make sense of what he is saying. Add that to the fact that
Seriki spits in Yoruba, and that he states his case clearly and succinctly in a verse of 16bars while it takes Chinaydu three verses to get it all off his chest, it’s clear who the mass appeal is with.
The first thing to know about a battle is; no matter how dirty it gets it should be kept clean i.e., it is between the contenders, no family members or friends are normally mentioned or brought in play unless it is done in a way to cast the opponent in a bad light (listen to
Canibus’ LL Cool J battle track,
Second Round Knockout). Such a thing could have far reaching consequences, e.g.
Eminem getting involved in the
G-Unit/Murder Inc. beef because
Ja Rule mentioned his daughter
Hallie’s name on a record (
‘your mother’s a crackhead/your wife is a nut/what do you think Hallie’s gonna be/when she grows up?’), or Jay-Z’s mum telling him to apologise to
Nas for bringing up his baby mama’s name in a disrespectful manner, even though he had an affair with her, thereby embarrassing himself. Even some freestyle battles even have rules of no cursing; in other words, you use foul language you’re disqualified and the other guy wins by default.
Therefore, it must be said that Chinaydu’s repeated hammering of
Toni Payne and
Zion (9ice’s estranged wife and son respectively) is in bad taste. For the record, 9ice did not say anything disrespectful about Rugged BEFORE he leaked their phone conversation, and despite all her constant Facebook and now tweet rants; he never bothered to respond to Toni either. So one must wonder; is the Ruggedy camp trying to curry favor from Toni and her son?
Unfortunately Chinaydu does not stop there. He also goes as far as suggesting that 9ice’s mum abandoned him when he was just eight months old and his father sent him off to leave with his grandma because he suspected her of infidelity. That was obviously in response to 9ice’s calling Ruggedman a bastard on the outro of the ‘Talk I am Listening’ record, so maybe all’s fair in love and war, but to actually mention his father, mother and grandma…is taking it too far. Even
MODE9, in his lyrical assassination of Rugged never mentioned his (Rugged’s) parentage or family ties.
Another thing about battles is facts; you
JUST HAVE TO GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT. On the opening bars of his verse, Seriki spits
‘Seriki bu Rugged/e le ni pe ko nice/awon kan lo oun na bo/to fi rise/I’m a gentleman/I’m a gangster/I no be Ruggedman/wey dey straff im dancers/’ meaning
‘Seriki disses Rugged/you might think it’s not nice/he also dissed some people to rise/I’m a gentleman/I’m a gangster/I am not Ruggedman/who sleeps with his dancers/’, alluding to the aforementioned
‘Ehen’ track that unquestionably shot Ruggedman to fame, and his reputation for sleeping with his dancers.
Even Chinaydu agrees with the statement, shown in his spitting in response
‘Rugged straffs dancers/perhaps/but im na single chap/you try am too/your marriage collapse/’. Maybe Rugged’s affairs with his dancers are not a big deal as Chinaydu says, but he's supposed to be a professional. And besides, could anyone tell me, on or off record, where they heard Toni Payne accuse 9ice of infidelity?
Before that, Chinaydu states
‘Hey 9ice, you must be out of your mind to think Ruggedy baba, the man that brought you up in this industry would stoop low to exchange childish words with you. For what? Stop being a coward. Say what your problem is or shut up. Face your music, try and fix your broken marriage.’
Hm. I know of no record, private or otherwise, that says that 9ice owes his meteoric rise in the music industry to Ruggedman, neither would I go as far as to call 9ice (who actually spoke on his diss record for Ruggedman as opposed to Rugged who did not say a word) a coward. And why would 9ice want to fix his former marriage when he moved for separation? Bad advice.
On the other hand, it is common knowledge that Ruggedman’s arguably largest hit record,
Ruggedy Baba owes its success to the presence of 9ice on the hook, the same way it is common knowledge that for someone who champions rapping in the mother tongue, Ruggedman hardly does it but for a smattering of pidgin every now and then in his lyrics, and since when did pidgin English become ‘the mother tongue’?
Anyways, Seriki mentions this in the lines ‘
kilode to bite/finger to feed e/the same person/to bless beat e/eni tio je oun lo tun ko chorus hit e.’ meaning
‘why did you bite the finger that fed you/the same person/who blessed your beat/and also sang the chorus to your hit/’. Now, that’s on point.
No to sound like a hater; Chinaydu does have his points as well. On the third and fourth bars of the second verse he spits,
‘your so-called street credibility’s a scam/you used up all the Yoruba adages you can/’. That remains to be seen, as the
Tradition album does sound like 9ice was trying hard to put down those lyrics that had us feening for
Gongo Aso. Chinaydu goes on to lash out;
‘you couldn’t spell your name right/you need to get a life/you couldn’t keep it tight/you couldn’t even keep your wife’/ alluding to the fact that the ‘9ice’ name should actually be pronounced ‘
N-I-N-E-I-C-E’ and not
‘N-I-C-E’, and the ‘couldn’t keep it tight’ probably refers to the fact that there would indeed seem to be a steady decline in the quality of 9ice’s music. But the last line ‘you couldn’t even keep your wife’ spoils everything, in that 9ice allegedly asked to be free from the marriage, so why would he want to keep his wife?
Finally Chinaydu; in a direct response to 9ice asking about
T-Boy, an artist(?) who was with Ruggedman back in the day; asks; ‘where is
Cabasa? Where is
Ajasa?
Jahbless?
2Phat?’ and other members of the
Coded Tunes clique after saying at the beginning all those guys had been used and dumped by 9ice. Cabasa still handled the bulk of the production on ‘Tradition’; he sang the hook to Ajasa's largest hit till date;
Le Fe Nu So; worked on a song with 2phat (unconfirmed), so what does Chinaydu mean with ‘used and dumped’?
I have to admit though, I like the ending. After
Chinaydu’s rant, a comical voice comes on and sings ‘
Abolore my son/I sent you to school/you don’t know how to spell your name/’ That one had me in stitches for minutes, because as mentioned above,
NICE is not spelt ‘
9ice’. That’s
NINE-ICE.
And the end of the day, it’s still clear who is on top of the verbal battle so far. Streets cannot wait for the ‘
Alapomeji’ response…and one wonders, with the Ruggedy camp seemingly having used up all their ammo in their first salvo and still coming short despite all that, what will they do when the Alapomeji general decides to respond?
Time will tell.
