BATTLE DESCRIPTION.
Alright? Been a while, hasn’t it? My bad. I’ve got 4 weeks until my wife bears our first child, so there’s a shitload of shit going on. Planning, prepping, nesting, the works. It’s weird, because it’s made me feel sort of inactive. I’m so hyped for the kid to actually arrive that I keep wanting to put off anything that isn’t that, if that makes sense? Which is why I haven’t done an update in so long.
Anyway. I’m doing one now on an off day as I need to stop being so lazy.
I recently battled Harold Baker, AKA Harry Baker, AKA the Sunshine kid. It was really fun. Shuffle T vs Harry Baker has been on the cards for a very long time. Back since when I first took the piss out of him vs Soweto Kinch, people have been suggesting it as a match up. And when I think about it, it is surprising it hasn’t happened sooner. We get compared to each other a lot, and I’m not always sure why (aside from the whole middle-class rapper thing).
I think our styles are pretty different, unless I’m doing bad bars… then there’s a huge crossover, as shown in our battle, with him having lines such as “so catch me trawling though a shuffle verse like crawling through some plumbing works, when all the poo above has burst, in other words, I’m undeterred/under turd”. But in our regular styles, I’d say we’re pretty separate. Our opinions on battle rap are probably quite similar. I think we both see it as a lot of fun, an opportunity to entertain a crowd and aren’t all that concerned about winning or losing, we both put humour in as much as we can, but I think that’s where the similarities stop, for me. Unless I’m missing something.
Harry’s a really clever guy, he knows exactly what the crowd expect from him and always manages to live up to the expectation as well as over-delivering. In our battle he had some great moments of genuine barbed and direct attacks that made the audience react in a particular way that doesn’t always work on me, but this, I think was effective.
He is acutely aware of his own strengths in writing and delivery, and manages to eke those elements out in a very astute and self-aware way. This means that no matter what you think of his writing, it’s difficult to use it against him in a mocking way, because he owns it. It’s like punching someone in their titanium hip: it should be a week point, but it’ll only end up hurting the attacker.
Harry also has, in buckets, some other qualities that makes him hard to beat. Qualities that I sincerely believe are rare in the battle rap world: likeability and humility. Even when he’s bragging about himself or his achievements, it doesn’t feel crass, it feels earned and charming. He has a way of painting a picture of himself and his success in a modest, yet confident way that allows an audience to get 100% behind him without feeling like you’re rooting for the villain. In fact, his opponent becomes more villainous in the eyes of the watcher because of that modesty.
The annoying thing being that I don’t think that’s even a technique. I think he’s just naturally like that.
Wanker.
Our battle was really fun. It had been on the cards, originally, back in 2020 for the 2nd part of the Pete Cashmore/Mind event: Battling Demons, but when Covid hit that got, sadly, abandoned. We weren’t sure the battle would happen at all, but then Harry reached out to put it back on with Premier Battles and that’s where it now lives.
I wasn’t at my best in this battle, I don’t think. I wrote some stuff I was ecstatic with and proud of myself for, but the delivery suffered at times. I had prepped as much as I usually do, but some of the elements just weren’t sticking for this performance and I don’t really know why. Maybe because of the proximity to Edinburgh Fringe, which I had just come back from, the weekend prior. Whilst there, I didn’t learn my rounds because I wanted to focus, completely, on Sounds Like (which went fantastically!), so maybe that was a factor.
Also, I think there was a certain idea, in the writing process, that I had just written my best material against Shotty Horroh and so I knew this one wouldn’t live up to that. Perhaps that hindered my creativity, when writing. I don’t know. It’s hard to know how happy I am with this one. It’s a sort of suspended animation battle, a floating, middle-ground, fuzzy question mark in the long list of 40-whatever battles I’ve done.
All I know is that it was hugely fun to write some anti-Christianity bars. Not even because I’m anti-religion in my own life, I’m certainly not. I think most religions are mad, don’t get me wrong, and I think they do more harm than good in the grand scheme of things, but I’ll never be one of those people who approaches a Christian and challenges them on it or scoffs at the idea that people find peace or joy in it. I’m all for that, who cares, we all believe in stupid stuff. I believed that Jim wanted to fix it for me, that Rolf Harris was a talented multi-instrumentalist and that my parents loved me. We’re all equally gullible.
Anyway, this isn’t necessarily the usual breakdown of a battle, round by round (perhaps I’ll do that another time), this is more of a look at it from a bird’s eye view. Overall, I thought Harry won on the day, on watch back (especially with a couple of stumbles edited out (which PB just does, by the way, battlers don’t ask for that)), I think I could’ve taken it. It’s certainly a hard call, nobody thrashed anyone, I don’t think. It was a fun knockabout battle with a few stings, but overall, very enjoyable. I hope enough people watch it to deem it worthy.
I love Harry.