This weekend my buddy Vlad & I ventured down to Atlanta to watch Gurp City O.G. TopR Holiday battle Baltimore’s Richard Cranium for Grind Time’s “Nuclear Winter 2” event. Currently Cranium has been on a tear, earning stripes & a reputation as one of the up & coming young beasts in the league. TopR a grizzled vet, had at least a decade on just about all the competitors & the demeanor of Buttermaker, head coach of the Bad News Bears. The club was situated in a markedly turfed out section of the ATL, right behind Turner field which seemed appropriate for the days events. After a short parking lot cypher with rappers Real Talk & Manifest Destiny we were ushered inside by club owner & comedic genius Sam Stone, informing us that it was time to come in or be locked out for the remainder. That probably should have sent up a red flag. What kind of club locks several hundred patrons inside at the start of the party, at 3:30 in the afternoon no less? Answer; the kind who is worried less about the monster fire hazard it’s just created than the non-patrons outside the club.
As the crowd gathered & the competition was about to commence the unmistakeable sound of gun play rang out from just in front of the building. Not just the casual pop-pop your of run-of-the-mill fuckery. But the distinct & repeated report of dueling calibers of small arms. Looking incredulously to Vlad I asked with a silent eye brow twitch if I had just heard what I thought I had. And nodding with the easy assurance of a cynical bastard he confirmed that I had. Looking around it seemed that either no one else had heard the shots, or that this club was even more hood than previously suspected, and nobody gave a fuck. It turned out to be the former when moments later there was a pounding at the door & an unsuspecting Sam Stone, thinking it was a late battle entry unlocked & opened it. In stumbles a man with a dreadlocked mohawk hunched over & bleeding with a fully discharged glock in hand, makes it halfway across the room & collapses in the corner. For a brief minute there I thought we were watching this human take his last breath. Luckily, depending on how you look at it I guess, the guy had only had about half his index finger blown off. In the words of Sam Stone at that moment “Wow, this guy just came in & changed the whole feng shui of everything”. Quite an auspicious beginning to the rap battle… personally I blame hip hop music.
Following a brief interlude with the police, but surprisingly no ambulance the competition was resumed. As they say the show must go on. All of the battles that day were considerably entertaining and the 3rd match on the card was the one I came to see. Cranium came out with a strong showing referring to the Ogre as “Bi-furious” amongst other things. But the old man had the juice… and about a foot plus sixty pounds on the guy, not to mention 8 shots of Jack Daniels. Besides bringing size into it like a school yard bully, the 15 plus years of stage experience on how to command a room gave TopR a decisive edge, which he used to repeatedly reign flurries of punchlines on Cranium’s…um head (which only feels redundant), that he couldn’t recover from. TopR won a unanimous decision from all 5 judges in 3 rounds… Gurp City South, flawless victory.
Unfortunately we couldn’t record any video of the event, since that is the exclusive purview of Grind Time & their associates. But they will be posting it soon & when they do I will be sure to post the link here. Congratulations to the Ogre, TopR & to my man with the Dread Mohawk, I hope you find your finger. The irony of being shot in the trigger finger was not lost on me, sir.
