This one-hour documentary takes listeners inside Baltimore?s pre-eminent underground MC competition, Style Warz, a Baltimore hip hop event where up-and-coming rappers go toe-to-toe in front of a live audience, competing one-on-one in a battle royal, with cash and bragging rights on the line.
During the hour, listeners will meet seven contenders: Gatasheist, Abrock, Symphony, Haz, Fire Armz, Midas, and EJ. Listeners will also hear from Style Warz co-organizers, host C Love and DJ P Funk, as well as celebrity judge Bilal Bahar of the hip hop promotions organization Krushforce.
(PROGRAM DIRECTORS: This is a 48-minute-and-30-second talk-clock-formatted program:
billboard: 1:00
segment a: 21:10
segment b: 11:20
segment c: 16:00
It took me a solid month of editing to put this juggernaut together. I started out with more than 15 hours of raw audio and interviews, and I ended up with a story that's pretty much unlike anything most public radio listeners have ever heard before. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you might consider sharing it with your listeners.)
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Piece Description
This one-hour documentary takes listeners inside Baltimore?s pre-eminent underground MC competition, Style Warz, a Baltimore hip hop event where up-and-coming rappers go toe-to-toe in front of a live audience, competing one-on-one in a battle royal, with cash and bragging rights on the line. During the hour, listeners will meet seven contenders: Gatasheist, Abrock, Symphony, Haz, Fire Armz, Midas, and EJ. Listeners will also hear from Style Warz co-organizers, host C Love and DJ P Funk, as well as celebrity judge Bilal Bahar of the hip hop promotions organization Krushforce. (PROGRAM DIRECTORS: This is a 48-minute-and-30-second talk-clock-formatted program: billboard: 1:00 segment a: 21:10 segment b: 11:20 segment c: 16:00 It took me a solid month of editing to put this juggernaut together. I started out with more than 15 hours of raw audio and interviews, and I ended up with a story that's pretty much unlike anything most public radio listeners have ever heard before. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you might consider sharing it with your listeners.)
Broadcast History
This program aired originally on WYPR's weekly radio arts journal, The Signal
Timing and Cues
This special is a self-contained, talk-clock-formatted show.
Billboard: 1:00
Segment A: 21:10
Segment B: 11:20
Segment C 16:00
Musical Works
All music used in this program was created by Baltimore hip hop producers, and their work was shared with the program through Pete Lynch (AKA DJ P Funk).
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Steve Yasko
Posted on April 27, 2006 at 01:41 PM | Permalink
Review of Style Warz: an underground M.C. battle from the inside out
You know, I am not sure how I feel about this piece. But I do know it takes a long time to figure out.
This is a very interesting piece that I am not sure how to review. On the one hand, I love the subject. In public radio we have a propensity to dive down into the neighborhoods that many of our members would never visit. How can I say this politely....Public Radio often takes the junior leaguers into the 'hood for a field trip. This, with varying degrees of success, "is a good thing."
But it takes a ton of compassion and intellect to get the uptowners engaged and prevent the downtowners from feeling exploited. This piece does a good job with the latter, but not the former. I just didn't feel like I cared enough about the topic or the people telling the story to sit through the whole thing...but I am reviewing the piece so I did.
The producer chose a first person construction with little reporter narration. This is not what I think the piece calls for. At an hour, the listener needs someone to provide context and analysis as well as someone to reset the characters. There are so many voices in this piece that you quickly loose track of several individuals and the piece becomes muddled.
I had to rewind the piece several times to keep the stories straight. This is not an option in for in-car listeners.
Also, there are, frankly, too many f-bombs edited out.
The story is wonderful though, combining American Idol-ish reality talent competition with no nonsense events management and a desire to create change for the artists? professionally and their city as well.