The compliment battle.
This is one of my favourite battles I’ve been involved in. I mean they all are, except the ones wherein I’m shit. Those are my LEAST favourite ones I’ve ever been involved in.
That means that I don’t think I was shit in this one, doesn’t it? Bit cocky. Bit arrogant.
Listen, the humble compliment battle is a very interesting style of clash. I’m unsure how it looks to the outside world, but I know how it feels to write and perform one.
So, whilst this blog is, in essence, about the Big J and Left compliment battle, it is more broadly about compliment battles in general.
How is the writing process different? What is the balance you need to strike? And how do you make yourself look good whilst downplaying your abilities and deifying your opposition?
Great questions, me, let’s look at them.
A compliment battle means making your opponent a figure of awe, but saying it in such a way that your skill also shines through. This isn’t necessarily the easiest thing in the world to do. It means using those brags you’d usually save for yourself and ladling them onto your opponent, but hoping that the way in which you say it makes the crowd appreciate your ability.
You might think that means you can just change any “I” or “Me” to a “you”, but, it doesn’t really work like that. You must still write with venom in your inkwell. It should still feel like a battle to an audience, with the same aggressive delivery you’d expect from a traditional one. This means that your compliments need to be ‘barbed’.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are backhanded compliments, in fact, the opposite, they must be genuine and almost exclusively complimentary. It’s more about how you frame them. You can pay compliments to people in real life in an aggressive way.
Think about someone who’s telling you they’re worthless, or they don’t deserve their lot in life. Someone who’s at the brink of giving up. If you love them, then you’re going to tell them all the reasons they shouldn’t give in to their own self-image issues and that, in fact, they should see the myriad of strengths they have. And in fact, the more impassioned you become about this situation, the more you see them as the IDIOT for not seeing their own shining qualities.
The way that you would deliver that well-meaning barrage of positivity, coated in frustration, exhaustion and desperation is the best way to deliver a compliment battle, if you want it to feel genuine and meaningful.
I really think you should be aiming to make your “opponent” feel great and bullied at the same time. Like they know how much they’re appreciated, but it took them getting beaten up to realise it.
This is the perfect mood for a compliment clash in my opinion and it’s when it means the most. Both sides of a compliment battle should come away feeling 10 feet tall and stupid, coyly smiling at a golden statue of themselves unveiled in their hometown shopping centre. Imagine! So proud and so bashful.
And as the creator, you still have to write like your life depends on it. The more you build tension, develop punchlines, rhyme effectively, paint imagery, the more the audience will react, just like any other battle. The rules are still effectively the same.
The advantage of the compliment battle comes from the inherent humour built in to the aggression and seriousness of the delivery contrasting with the levity and feel-good nature of the content. You can’t really go overboard with that, it is a joke that will basically always hit throughout the performance as long as your writing is of a high quality. The joke doesn’t really run out, so always be building on it.
In order to heighten the compliments that you make for your opponent, it feels only natural to put yourself down and that instinct is largely correct. The bigger the discrepancy between yourself and them, the better they will look.
As with the difference between boasting and complimenting, you will not necessarily get the desired results just from a self-deprecating approach. You need to insult yourself as if you’re bragging. Like Yoshimitsu committing seppuku, hurt yourself, but make it look cool as fuck.
This is one of those fine balances that you just have to work at for a while until it feels right, but when you get it, you’ll know.
Compliment battles aren’t as easy as they appear. They’re tricky to navigate and it can be fiddly to strike a balance between being genuinely complimentary or snarky and sarcastic. But they can be as hard-hitting (if not more so) than regular rap battles and can have a more long-lasting effect on the person on the receiving end of your niceties. So, if you’re going to do one, make sure you treat it with the respect the format deserves.
Love Compliment Battles?
Check out these great compliment battles you might not have seen.