Professor Green is an enigmatic proponent of the every more popular North London rap scene. In line with the genre itself, his musical career has gone from local obscurity to global perspicuity (Not many can say their pen has crafted an Olympic anthem).
Wikipedia tells me his career started in rap battling with his friends.
For those who don’t know what a rap battle is, think of poetry in it’s rawest and most agressive form, one-on-one, improvised in front of a baying crowd with no hesitations allowed. The aim being to simply out speak your opponent.
Each rapper takes their turn, no subject seems off-limits, in fact repetition or preparation of material is frowned on more than almost anything else.
It’s fascinating to watch, although well-worded attacks are cheered by the crowd (the reaction of whom is the only real indicator of success) what really wins the day is humour, in a deprecating manner of course.
Why am I going on about this? Especially when the image was for a Network Rail safety message (see accompanying video – not by me).
Well the answer is, I’m at home with a broken ankle (thanks to a White Van Myosis) so have decided to update my site a little and whereas I usually am rushing to do something else, today I have this or Cash In The Attic to entertain me.
And its National Poetry Day
I think rap-battle is an art form so pure (there often isn’t even a backing track) and timeless (it’s easy to imagine a Shakespearian rap-battle!) that it’s only a matter of time until it becomes way more mainstream.
I’ve stemmed away from Professor Green somewhat here. Not to worry, the chance of him (or indeed any more than 3 people) reading this is very slim.
Interesting fact about this photo though. We arrived at the beginning of the day, before filming started (we were slotting the photo-session into the filming session, but quite where wasn’t decided) waited all day as they filmed (shot the ‘at-mic’ shot during filming) then took about 29 seconds to get the shot.
That’s the way it goes sometimes. Nice bloke though.