Review: End Of The Weak UK (@eodub) | Heat 5

The final heat of End of the Weak 2017 emcee chal­lenge went down on the 31^st August, as Mas Law and DJ Snuff’s search for a UK cham­pi­on moved closer to its end. The last oppor­tun­ity to com­plete in the UK Final to rep the UK in the World Finals in Prague in Octo­ber up for grabs, the com­pet­i­tion was fierce. With a last minute drop out, we had three dope emcees ready to take that spot…

A Princz

Rep­res­ent­ing the Hen Daddy Whirl crew, the NW LDN emcee is a stu­dent of the art form. After hav­ing been inspired to touch mic by pir­ate radio and raves of the Gar­age scene, A Princz went back and stud­ied his pre­de­cessors and hails Rakim “the fath­er of lyr­i­cism”, Big L, Big Pun, Big­gie, Nas and Jay Z among his influ­ences, he sets his stand­ards high. He’s also inspired by post-apo­ca­lyptic sci-fi and in his own words likes to talk about “how the world is going to shit”.

Aynzli Jones

An inter­na­tion­ally estab­lished artist, Aynzli Jones’ own work and his col­lab­or­a­tions with some of the biggest names in music are far reach­ing, and once you meet him you see why. This broth­er came through with more energy than any­one I’ve ever inter­viewed, rhym­ing his way through the con­ver­sa­tion. He trans­fers that energy onto the stage and through the mic when he per­forms with his Hip Hop/Ragga tech­nique that’s been cul­tiv­ated between King­ston, LA and Lon­don and taken him around the world.

Watusi88

 A sol­id, proven fig­ure of the UK Hip Hop scene and bey­ond, RU1 Fam’s Watusi88 is a true lyr­i­cist that mani­fests his bars into his life­style. A com­munity act­iv­ist and a self-described “seed of Hip Hop”, he truly loves the cul­ture and art form and rep­res­ents the com­bin­a­tion of Reg­gae, Jazz and the Roots of the cul­ture. Watusi88 has per­formed along­side and as part of some legendary musi­cians and col­lect­ives through­out the years and brings all that real­ity to the stage.

The first round kicked off with some dope double time bars over a soul­ful grime beat from Watusi88. In line with his style, but at a faster tempo to what I know him for, the broth­er kicked intel­li­gent, refined rhymes with an effort­less sound­ing flow and a real catchy hook, show­ing the flex­ab­il­ity of the word ‘wag­wan’. A Princz came in over Q‑Tip’s clas­sic ‘Breath and Stop’ with some crazy word­play and flow, deliv­er­ing a subtle mes­sage with­in some dope bars. Aynzli Jones came with some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent, rhym­ing to warn people about men and women who ain’t good for them. His flow rolled off his tongue with swag­ger, wit and soul and got the crowd respond­ing to the energy. The round was close as always.

The a cap­pella round took the level up. A Princz came in hard with a power­ful mes­sage about food and the sys­tem, and how it’s used to keep the poor unhealthy and main­tain its imbal­ance. Again, his word­play was dope and got his mes­sage across power­fully. Watusi88 did what he does! Con­scious punch­lines about change, the uni­verse, Hip Hop art, self-respect and tak­ing con­trol of our future. He makes some incred­ibly deep bars sound so easy to say. Aynzli Jones put down some philo­soph­ic­al, intro­spect­ive bars about the road, know­ledge, hope and hope­less­ness and try­ing to keep on the path. He gave him­self a reload, kick­ing the bar of again for max­im­um impact. After the first 2 rounds, like in most of the heats this sea­son, it was too close to call – the free­style rounds would decide the winner.

Aynzli Jones star­ted off the grab bag round. He rolled up with a glass of rum in his hand. Black Santa Kissy K rolled up with his grab bag told him that he needs a spear hand to grab out the bag…so Aynzli star­ted his round rhym­ing about his glass! He kept going and killed it, using a pot, a cheese grater, a hoover and a tam­bour­ine to rhyme about grow­ing ganja and mov­ing up girls! The shit was dope! A Prinz did his thing too, flow­ing about incense, pasta, a hard drive and the high­light — a can of red stripe, that he cracked and backed! Watusi88 got back on the stage and man­aged to even use the grab bag round to drop sense. He pulled out the clas­sic kung fu film The Killer and rhymed it with ‘Man like me not a n..… you know what I was gonna say, but man like don’t like to portay”. He took out a plug (spat about get­ting plugged out the mat­rix) and a sieve. Levels were upheld.

The next round was a change to the nor­mal sched­ule. Instead of the DJ verse emcee, ridicu­lous fin­ger drum­mer and live MPC pro­du­cer Y‑ETizm came through to chal­lenge the emcees to ride over whatever he felt like play­ing. Yeti was not play­ing and fully put the emcees through their paces, speed­ing up and slow­ing down whenev­er he felt like it, chan­ging grooves and styles at will. A Princz came with rap­id flows and almost dic­tated the pace him­self, double time flows and all that. But Watusi killed it. He matched the beats Yeti threw at him with ease, nev­er really brak­ing his flow, at most maybe a split-second pause then back in and kept going a cap­pella for a few seconds. Expertly done. Aynzli Jones got back on the stage and stared down the Yeti say­ing ‘damn, this is a real fight!’, but he was ready. He star­ted say­ing ‘I aint scared no beat’ and proved he wasn’t, he matched the beats, some brief pauses, but he went in, he def­in­itely held it up.

Mov­ing into the last round, the house band reas­sembled and brought some future funk sound­ing beat for the emcees to go in on. The vibe was a bit dif­fer­ent and might have thrown the man off a bit, but it wasn’t always 4 bars. Still, each man brought some­thing dif­fer­ent to the stage and the flows and lyr­ics were dope. A Princz and Aynzli both came singing at times and there was a slight under­tone of a battle brew­ing, but it all stayed pos­it­ive and the con­test was done. It was anoth­er close heat.

While the judges added their scores, we got treat to a stripped back per­form­ance from the phe­nomen­on that is Mrisi. The emcee, sing­er and keys play­er from Brighton graced the stage and most of his per­form­ance with a just his voice and his key­board and through down incred­ibly deep lyr­ics, melod­ies, chords and tones that left every­one in the ven­ue fully locked in. The hon­esty and sin­cer­ity in his music, the blend of influ­ences and the incor­por­a­tion of his envir­on­ment into his words — espe­cially in ‘Walk’, ‘Black Lives Mat­ter’ and ‘Bite My Tongue’ — reminded me of a young Natty but with Hip Hop the dom­in­ant influ­ence instead of reg­gae. Mrisi got the crowd so into his per­form­ance that the drum­mer from the house band jumped up on stage and helped to take one of the keys only tracks into a full per­form­ance, and Mrisi insisted that if that was hap­pen­ing, there had to be a cypher. He pulled a load of emcees and sing­ers from the crowd and onto the stage and took the whole vibe to anoth­er level. It was a prop­erly impress­ive per­form­ance from a young musi­cian with a bright future.

After Mrisi had shut the place down, the judges came back with their decision and again, due largely to con­sist­ency through­out the rounds, the heat 5 win­ner and last entrant into the 2017 EOW UK Final was Watusi88. He will now go on to com­pete for the chance to rep­res­ent the UK in the 2017 World Final in Prague on Octo­ber 28^th. To do that he’ll need to over­come the win­ners of the pre­vi­ous heats Men­ace Men­d­oza, Dr Koul, Emerge MC and Huski87 at the Brix­ton Hootananny on Septem­ber 15^th. It’s gonna be WILD, so make sure you reach.