REVIEW | END OF THE WEAK WORLD FINAL [MAIN EVENT] |PRAGUE 2017

EOW 2017 World Final Poster

After a crazy 5 days in Prague, filled with pure Hip Hop, com­munity, cre­ativ­ity and so much pos­it­iv­ity that there had to be some neg­at­ives, we’d reached the 2017 End of the Weak MC Chal­lenge World Final. Everything lead­ing up to the main event had been impec­cably organ­ized by EOW Prague, so we knew that the final was going to be big. It says a lot about just how much work had been put in by Met­odej, Anna and their team that des­pite know­ing that, every­one involved had their mind blown by the level this world final was taken to. It was acknow­ledged after­wards by every­one involved that this had raised the bar for all future finals and elev­ated the pro­file of EOW as an organ­iz­a­tion; it was THAT dope.

Met­odej Constantine

The found­a­tion for that dope­ness was laid in the selec­tion of the ven­ue. Meet Fact­ory is a world renowned art gal­lery and cre­at­ive space designed and foun­ded by Dav­id Černý one of Czech Republic’s most revered and for­ward think­ing con­tem­por­ary artists. His work can be found all over the city and the Meet Fact­ory is a mani­fest­a­tion of a life’s work and a plat­form to give back to the city and art com­munity. Now housed in a former glass pro­cessing fact­ory, the ori­gin­al Meet Fact­ory was a former abat­toir, hence the name, and the gal­lery toys with that his­tory. One instilla­tion room is mod­elled on a freez­er, com­pletely white, clin­ic­al and full of mist, like it’s still stor­ing beef. I can’t ima­gine a loc­a­tion more fit­ting for a com­pet­i­tion based on instant­an­eous cre­ativ­ity, spon­taneity, impro­visa­tion and word­play than this spot, and it served as a good source of nour­ish­ment to each emcees imagination.
The venue’s poten­tial was max­im­ized by the fact it was com­pletely sold out. 1000+ people rammed out the main room to capa­city, not only to see the EOW World Final but for a full line-up of loc­al and inter­na­tion­al Hip Hop, with the head­line act being Czech Republic’s biggest ever Hip Hop group, some of the pion­eers of Czech Hip Hop, Chaozz.

Our very own legend DJ Snuff kicked off pro­ceed­ings, play­ing a vari­ety of styles, blend­ing dif­fer­ent eras of our cul­ture like it was noth­ing. The vibe was set nicely, and Snuff stayed on stage to back up Rebel Arms and Brook­lyn rep­res­ent­at­ive Pois­on Pen along­side one of the best per­formers I’ve ever seen, Mazzi from S.O.U.L Pur­pose. The 2 com­ple­ment each other’s styles per­fectly, Pen laid back and raw as ever, back­ing drinks, not giv­ing a fuck, with Mazzi bring­ing pure energy, everything pre­cise, from his bars to the way he moved his hat.

Mazzi — S.O.U.L Purpose

The crowd showed mad love, acknow­ledging the skill they’d seen. The level of the night was set and the vibe was kept going by the per­form­ance of anoth­er New York­er, the Gang Starr affil­i­ated Afu-Ra. Now based in Prague, Afu-Ra has clearly been cul­tiv­at­ing his rep in the Czech Repub­lic, judging from how the crowd respon­ded to him. He worked through Premo pro­duced Boom Bap clas­sics and new mater­i­al, bring­ing in dif­fer­ent styles and genres. The crowd was fully hyped and Czech DJ Cut Dem kept the vibes going, car­ry­ing us into the 2017 EOW World Final.

Afu-Ra

Keep­ing up the pro­fes­sion­al­ism, every aspect of present­a­tion was taken care of thanks to the tal­ents of art dir­ect­or Vilém Kabz­an. There was a ser­i­ous dis­play behind the per­formers, fully logo’d up, that detailed each per­former and every round of the chal­lenge. Met­odej and his co-host Dozer were announ­cing in Czech and Eng­lish and the judges had spe­cial cus­tom­ised seats made out of dump­sters, which is linked to anoth­er part of the show (you’ll see soon!).

Judges — Anna and Mas Law

To top it off, the event was live streamed across the world through the EOW Prague Face­book page with a state of the art, TV qual­ity stream filmed from mul­tiple angles. The stage was fully set, and there could’ve been noth­ing more to motiv­ate all the emcees to bring their best to the table; a sold out capa­city crowd, view­ers locked in around the world and a plat­form worthy of nation­al champions.

The plat­form matched the qual­ity of the tal­ent brought by these emcees and the line-up for the final con­sisted of incred­ible cham­pi­ons from 8 countries:

Basics; EOW Montréal

An emcee and sing­er from outta Que­bec with a clear social con­science, Basics had nev­er left Canada before this trip. Hip Hop had lit­er­ally widened his world and he was rid­ing the wave.

DzonAss; EOW Prague

Hail­ing from a town near Havířov in the Czech north­east, DzonAss organ­ises region­al EOW events. He has a dope flow and tech­nique and had the home crowd advantage.

Osyr­is Antham; EOW New York

Osyr­is is a mas­ter free­styler from Brook­lyn; it’s lit­er­ally his day job. In addi­tion, he’s a deep broth­er with a sol­id per­spect­ive of his­tory and consciousness.

Res Turn­er; EOW France

The 2x EOW World Cham­pi­on and 3x EOW France Cham­pi­on, Res Turn­er is a mil­it­ant com­munity organ­iser and vegan with a glob­al repu­ta­tion as an emcee and activist.

Low G; EOW Belgium

The young­est cham­pi­on at 20 years old, Low G has only been rap­ping for 2 years but can do it in mul­tiple lan­guages. He stud­ies at De Stroate, an insti­tu­tion cre­ated to guide the next gen­er­a­tion of Bel­gian Hip Hop.

McGyver; EOW Holland

Built like The Rock with just as much energy, McGyver, the Dutch emcee with Cana­dian her­it­age has a power­ful, relent­less flow for his mul­ti­lin­gual bars.

Gee Bag; EOW UK

The 2x UK champ, Gee Bag is a witty lyr­i­cist with an effort­less flow. His unpre­dict­ab­il­ity earned him his ali­as Good­ie Bag and he lives up to that title on stage.

Rox; EOW Switzerland 

A deep thinker with a con­front­a­tion­al style, Rox has a rough, unique voice that cap­tures and holds the listener’s attention.

EOW World Final 2017 Finalists

Tak­ing the range of lan­guages on dis­play, the 4 judges were Anna from EOW Prague (Czech/English), DJ Pro­ceed from EOW Bel­gi­um (Flemish/French/English/Dutch), Delta from EOW Mon­tréal (French/English), and our very own Mas Law from EOW UK (Eng­lish – but import­antly he gets US, UK and Cana­dian slang).

Round 1 — Written

Basics — EOW Montréal

Each emcee really needed to make an early impact with their first appear­ance and they all came out strong. Backed by Czech DJ Back, Basics led the way, singing his intro before rhym­ing about his time in Prague, end­ing each line with a word he’d picked up in Czech and the crowd were feel­ing his efforts. DzonAss came out second to a big recep­tion from his home crowd. He went in over a hard beat with a rap­id flow before slow­ing it down and mix­ing it up. He flowed right up to the final second and the crowd respon­ded again, clearly feel­ing how he was rep­pin’ the coun­try. Osyr­is came out with one of the hard­est verses of the round. With wild word­play, flow and lyr­ics, he incor­por­ated the names of the dif­fer­ent coun­tries he was com­pet­ing against and rapped in French (he doesn’t speak it) all over a med­ley that star­ted with Lauryn Hill’s Doo Wop (That Thing).

Osyr­is Antham — EOW NYC

He com­pletely killed it. Res Turn­er came next, hold­ing the level up, spit­ting over a mashup of the fam­ous Earl and Bob’s Har­lem Shuffle intro. Res came with a rap­id, machine gun flow, crazy energy and move­ment, all clearly in sync with his words; at one point he was spit­ting without the mic! Unfor­tu­nately, I think he lost points when he seemed to miss his drop at the start and pulled up his track. It was a shame, but he still went in.

Low G stepped up next and bod­ied it, start­ing in Eng­lish and com­ing prop­erly lyr­ic­al – “I rep­res­ent the MC in Einstein’s for­mula” then switched his flow double time in Flem­ish, then between both lan­guages into dif­fer­ent styles, it was crazy. His verse was a bit short­er than the oth­ers, caus­ing some con­fu­sion when he fin­ished. He was told to go back out for the rest of his time, some­thing that I’ve nev­er seen and didn’t think was necessary.

Res Turn­er — EOW France

Dude just took it in his stride though, kick­ing a dope free like it was noth­ing. McGyver fol­lowed, telling the engin­eer to turn the lights out, com­ing out in dark­ness to Shook One’s part 2. He came out at 100% with crazy energy and a sharp, hard­core flow, run­ning around the stage, jump­ing off it in front of the audi­ence. He might have come out a bit too hard at the start and tripped on some­thing, but he recovered well and it didn’t really affect his per­form­ance. UK champ Gee Bag came out second to last and repped hard. Every time he spits it looks so easy and this was the same. He com­manded the stage with con­fid­ence and good move­ment, vibising as he put out his dope word­play and lyr­ics, punch­ing along with the sound effects in his verse – the crowd loved that. He also had a good call and response with the audi­ence that really worked. The last emcee for this round was Rox, who came out ready for war! He warmed up the crowd, speak­ing some Czech, before flow­ing hard over a raw beat, own­ing the stage. He took a 4 bar break to walk past his com­pet­it­ors, look­ing each in the eye; the com­pet­i­tion was on!

Round 2 – A Cappella 

Again, every emcee brought it in the lyricist’s round and there wasn’t much to pick between each of them. Res Turn­er used the plat­form to rep his beliefs, flow­ing in French, Eng­lish and some Span­ish, using mad sound FX and mime to hit points home. He shouted out the struggle in Libya, Congo, Palestine and more and dropped in Eng­lish “I can free­style even without the beat, I am vegan, at the fact­ory I remove the meat”. It was wild, but again, I think he lost points, this time for going over his time lim­it. Still a dope performance.

Low G — EOW Belgium

Low Gee came with a deep verse about his rhymes tran­scend­ing lan­guage and tap­ping into his desire to use music to heal people and improve soci­ety; “I wanna sample the world’s misery and con­struct it piece by piece, till I’ve cre­ated an ima­gin­ary build­ing made from music and inner peace”. One of many crazy lines, also spat in Flem­ish. McGuyver came with a crazy range of flows, con­stantly chan­ging the tempo and rhythm, packed full of multi’s and again in two lan­guages. Gee Bag brought a range of flows too, slower but with a lot of swag­ger. He held down the stage again, mov­ing along with his flows, his word­play was sol­id and con­sist­ent. Rox came with an anim­ated per­form­ance, using the space giv­en to him with the beat miss­ing to really stretch his words and max­im­ise his accentuation.

Basics stepped up next and kept up his good rela­tion­ship with the Prague crowd going, really inter­act­ing with them well. Using some beat­box FX to get atten­tion, he put it down with melod­ic, multi-toned flows about the con­tem­por­ary nature of the struggle we face and remain­ing hope­ful and focused. He cut it right on the last second of his count with the line “what is this shit called cit­izen­ship” and then when his time was called moved to the crowd and said “make some noise for your pres­ence here quick” – he killed it and the crowd knew it, again show­ing him mad love.

DzonAss came with some nice flows, with mul­tiple lay­ers of rhyme with­in lines and vary­ing tem­pos. He clearly did well but he didn’t get as big a response from a crowd that speaks his lan­guage as some oth­ers did, so I don’t know if he went in that deep.

DzonAss — EOW Prague

The best verse of the round was by Osyr­is, show­ing exactly how this round should be done, espe­cially in a world final, giv­ing him a clear early lead. He must have writ­ten the verse the night before, because he men­tioned things that had happened on every night of that week in Prague, the oth­er nations and emcees in the com­pet­i­tion and ref­er­enced Czech his­tory, all tied up with­in some ridicu­lous wordplay.

“I gotta lotta fire, I can make some­thing outa noth­ing, I’m Hip Hop’s McGyver

Talk­ing about some­thing outta noth­ing, peace France,

The cops locked up Sammy Jack­ets over a trois [3] plus huit [8] grams of weed plants,

Locked my man up over an 11g(ee) bag,

That’s why I feel like the hom­ies helpless,

And I’m shout­ing ‘Free Jack­ets’ like a Christ­mas at a home­less shelter”

MAD­NESS!!

Round 3 – Grab Bag

McGyver — EOW Holland

Going with the theme that had turned the judges’ seats into dump­sters, the grab bag had turned into a wheel­ie bin! I don’t know if who­ever came up with this was prop­er Eng­lish or if this is a thing in Prague too, either way, it worked! With DJ Schock’O lay­ing the tracks, every emcee went in, nobody choked or stopped and all the flows were con­sist­ent. Of course, with me not under­stand­ing all the lan­guages, I’m kinda biased here and there’s def­in­itely things I missed, but 3 emcees really stood out for me. First was McGuyver who, again, was mad ener­get­ic. His flow didn’t break at any point and even though he spoke mostly in Dutch, what he said in Eng­lish was on point. He kept the crowd enter­tained through­out too. Instead of going for an item right away he moved the bin around and rhymed about that, before pulling out a gui­tar and spit­ting about heavy met­al, then pulling out an iron and flow­ing ‘Iron like a Lion in Zion’ between two oth­er rhymes in Dutch. He also picked up the bin when he couldn’t reach an item and star­ted spit­ting about its weight! He killed it.

Next was Osyr­is, who just kept bring­ing crazy word­play and punch­lines, all on the spot. He pulled out an apple and said it aint as big as the one he comes from – New York’s the big apple if you don’t know – then said “I’m gonna give this to the DJ, you can eat that when you’re done, keep that on replay”. His best line was when he pulled out a scuba diving mask and snorkel that fell apart when he picked them up. While he was put­ting them back togeth­er he spat “I gotta do some con­struc­tion while I snorkel…kinda like Aqua­man work­ing on his house, that’s what I’m about”. That’s a dope line, espe­cially off the top while try­ing to pick up things that you’ve dropped and are broken.

Rox — EOW Geneva

Hands down though, our boy Gee Bag took this round. He fully lived up to his Good­ie Bag alter ego and came with pure antics on the stage. He put a card­board box on his head and star­ted mov­ing like a robot – the crowd loved that – and then when Met­odej tipped the bin for him to reach in he asked “what you want me to get inside of it? I can’t do that I aint that equipt”!! He kept going too, he put the bin on it’s side, went for an item, and then when an orange rolled out he grabbed it, and it went down like this:

“Oranges…mmm I’d love to have a little bit” [takes a bite, spits it out] “Spit it out, I’m on the stage [throws the orange into the crowd] you can get it now”

And that wasn’t even the best part. He pulled out some kebab shop ketch­up, put it between his legs and squir­ted it all over the stage spit­ting “who want’s to taste my ketchup…aaaaaaargh….I come all over the place, I bus it in your face and you don’t wanna waste”. The broth­er killed the round and got a ridicu­lous reac­tion from the Prague fans.

Round 4 – DJ vs MC

Gee Bag kept the tricks up into this round too. With DJ Back return­ing for this round, Gee Bag approached it like a full on battle with the DJ. Before he was even announced, Gee was doing a com­ic book vil­lain laugh over the mic, then came out in a dark side Phantom of the Opera style mask, cov­er­ing his eyes but leav­ing his mouth free to spit. The crowd was feel­ing it, and he went in, telling the DJ he was gonna kill him, mock­ing his selec­tion and most import­antly, flow­ing eas­ily over everything that got thrown at him, espe­cially the DnB track that came last, going double time and going in. With rounds 3 and 4 Gee had def­in­itely put him­self in the run­ning to take the title.

Rox came out on a sim­il­ar tip, mess­ing with the DJs mix­er, try­ing to throw him off. It was a good idea, but the DJ took his revenge, really mak­ing it tough for the Swiss emcee with cuts and switches in crazy places. Rox held it up though, even adding in some dance moves when the beat went into old­skool Elec­tro style.

Basics came out with a whole out­fit change – to match the switches the DJ makes – and with a GoPro attached to his mic, so the view­ers online could get a mic-eye view. They got a good show too because Basics murdered it, flow­ing over some Boom Bap, then get­ting in full party mode over Base­ment Jacks’ Red Alert and then com­ing with some wavy flows and singing on some dark news­kool dance shit. DzonAss kept the level up too over some Boom Bap, then House and them some more Elec­tro, barely break­ing his stride, except for some call and response that didn’t quite work at the speed he was going, but he recovered and kept hit­ting right to the last count.

Next came Osyr­is, who star­ted off on an uptempo, uprock Boom Bap beat. He was in his ele­ment, dan­cing, free­styl­ing at a fast pace. The organ­isers had taken the cam­era off the mic, and he dropped the killer line “they took that shit off my mic so I guess I’ll nev­er GoPro”!! He went over and star­ted talk­ing to the judges when the DJ upped the tempo to ¹³⁰⁄₁₄₀ bpm and my man just switched with it, going double time effort­lessly, still free­ing. When the DJ switched it to DnB, Osyr­is took 1 beat breath and then kept going in up to the last count. The crowd went wild, giv­ing the broth­er the props he deserved.

If any­one could fol­low that it was Res Turn­er, and he did. He came in spit­ting rap­id flows over some laid back Neo-Soul then star­ted clown­ing the DJ, mess­ing with his fader. He upped the tempo of his flows even more before the beat switched into the clas­sic French House track Flat Beat (you’ll remem­ber it from the old advert with Flat Eric) and Res caught it per­fectly, flow­ing between the beats and switch­ing his flow mid track. He kept it going flaw­lessly over some 140 bpm break beat shit, with his free so dope it soun­ded writ­ten. I don’t know what the lyr­ics were, but the flow was flaw­less through­out. Both these broth­ers killed this round.

Low Gee came out hard on some dark Hip Hop, and switched nicely into some more funky Boom Bap, free­styl­ing in Flem­ish, doub­ling his flow up at will. He did well with it, all his tracks were sim­il­ar tempo, so he wasn’t pushed that hard and didn’t get to go all out, but I think he did well to add vari­ations to his flow in the beats he was giv­en. McGyver also held it down, start­ing off on some half time 140 shit, he came with a nice flow. He man­aged to get behind the second set of decks on stage and motioned for the beat to switch just as the DJ did it, it was dope. He kept his flow sol­id over some and some Elec­tro, get­ting up close to the crowd, keep­ing his stage pres­ence up.

Round 5 – Cypher

In most situ­ations, for an emcee of a cer­tain level this round is usu­ally pretty simple, 4 bars and try and link it to the last emcee, but throw in dif­fer­ent lan­guages and that shit becomes a harder test. For the final there were 2 cyphers of 4 emcees spit­ting 4 bars 4 times. The first cypher was McGyver, Gee Bag, DzonAss and Res Turn­er. Every man went in, doing their thing but there were bits where the changeovers were broken. Dur­ing one of Gee’s turns, the DJ brought in The Next Epis­ode on a dif­fer­ent bar to the beat before, and when Gee fin­ished his verse, Res needed to break to catch the beat. It wasn’t really his fault, and if any­thing he brought the whole thing back on track, but he might have lost points again for not com­ing straight in. The same beat caught out McGyver a bit too, at the break down he kept going but not as smoothly as it could have been. On the next time round Gee star­ted a call and response but it fin­ished on his last bar, so he didn’t fin­ish it. Res tried to take it up, but it wasn’t that sol­id, I think they both might have lost some points there. Des­pite those slipups, the level was still crazy high, with mad flows, and nobody ser­i­ously dropped the ball.

The 2^nd cypher was with Low G, Osyr­is, Basics and Rox and there were no breaks, with more inter­ac­tion in the verses. It might have been easi­er because there was more over­lap in the lan­guages – they all speak Eng­lish well and 3 speak French – but that’s the luck of the draw. All the emcees went in. Osyr­is threw his coat into the crowd and said ‘Free Jack­ets’, both Rox and Basics man­aged to ref­er­ence the oth­er 4 emcees in 4 bars. When they fin­ished the fourth cycle, nobody came out to stop them, so Low Gee kept going. When Met­odej came to stop it, Osyr­is cut him, say­ing that he knew they were break­ing the rules but that it was dope so it should keep going, then Basics stepped up and non­chal­antly dropped:

“This was only sup­posed to be four, but I guess that the whole crowd wants more,

I feel like I just left on a tour, oh my God, make some noise, let’s get sore”.

The crowd went crazy and the vibe was wild. Rox brought it home, got every­one throw­ing their hands up and the 2017 EOW World Final was complete.

Every emcee had killed it. It seemed mad close to me between a few heads for 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place, but I don’t speak all the lan­guages. The judges did between them and they went to cal­cu­late the final scores.

Pio Squad

Whilst the judges put in their work, the vibe kept going, as the Prague crowd were blessed with a per­form­ance from one of the biggest groups in Czech Hip Hop right now, Pio Squad. They moved between dif­fer­ent grooves, from Boom Bap to Trap and kept the crowd enter­tained. They clearly have a big fol­low­ing and some ded­ic­ated, hard­code fans, and some mosh­pits broke out through­out their set.

Met­odej called every­one back to the stage to announce the win­ner, but the way it was intro­duced took every­one by sur­prise. A Czech artist called Dow­is put on a spec­tac­u­lar show, draw­ing with light on a huge can­vas to cre­ate a mov­ing, chan­ging, lumin­es­cent ded­ic­a­tion to Hip Hop cul­ture, EOW and their influ­ence in the Czech Repub­lic and around the world. It was incred­ible. Dow­is is one of only a hand­ful of artists in the world util­ising this tech­nique for per­form­ance art – check out the full show here:

With the hype and ten­sion brought up to its height, each emcee was presen­ted with a small can­vas with their name graffed on it. There was only the announce­ment left to make. In 3^rd place was our boy Gee Bag, who’d done what he set out to achieve and improve on his 4^th place spot from last year. In 2^nd was Basics, writ­ing a nearly per­fect end­ing to his first inter­na­tion­al jour­ney. In 1^st place, the deserving 2017 End of the Weak World Cham­pi­on was New York’s Osyr­is Antham.

Osyr­is Antham — 2017 EOW World Champion

Like always, con­sist­ency is key in this com­pet­i­tion, and the broth­er had been dope in every round, clearly win­ning some and being in the top 3 of most of them. He’d shown through­out the week and this com­pet­i­tion the cal­ibre of lyr­i­cist, enter­tain­er and ver­sat­ile emcee that he is and he fully earned the world title. Osyr­is was presen­ted with a glass micro­phone trophy as well as a real one made by Lewitt that the trophy was mod­elled on. Glass­ware is 1 of the 2 major cul­tur­al exports that the Czech Repub­lic is fam­ous for, along­side it’s beer, so the trophy held some real mean­ing, espe­cially in this arena of cul­tur­al exchange. It was anoth­er nice touch and a great end as Osyr­is went into his rap of hon­our sur­roun­ded by EOW fam from around the globe.

Chaozz

The event fin­ished with the head­line per­form­ance from Chaozz, and their sig­ni­fic­ance and pop­ular­ity could be seen in the enthu­si­asm emit­ted by all the Czech fans inside. They rapped along to all the old­sckool, funky vibes that these trend­set­ters put down and the per­form­ance clearly meant a lot to their sup­port­ers. It was a fit­ting end­ing to an amaz­ing event and an incred­ible week. End of the Weak is clearly going from strength to strength and the EOW Prague team have played a major, major role in that. As we move for­ward to the next sea­son of the EOW MC Chal­lenge in 2018, keep your eyes out for future devel­op­ments, more coun­tries being brought in and the emer­gence more tal­en­ted Hip Hop heads.

To see the whole show in full head to the EOW Prague FB Page on this link:

https://www.facebook.com/EOWPrague2017/

Pho­tos: Chuck Diesal Pho­to­graphy / Foto­graf Mil­an Seps

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Apex Zero

An emcee, beat­maker, film­maker and writer from Lon­don with Gren­adian roots, Apex Zero has spent his life learn­ing and liv­ing Hip Hop cul­ture, using it to inspire and affect change. Based in Beijing for a few years and reg­u­larly tour­ing the globe, Apex is well trav­elled, and uses the les­sons this provides to inform his art and out­look. He is a mem­ber of the Glob­al­Fac­tion digit­al pro­duc­tion house and the inter­na­tion­al Hip Hop col­lect­ive End of the Weak.

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