Aussie Battlers

For anyone unfamiliar with the concept, emcee battling is probably best described as a verbal boxing match. Emcees take turns tearing their opponents to shreds using only their powers of quick-thinking and an arsenal of rhymes.

In 2005, Australia’s own MC Justice showed up the Americans and won the emcee battle component of the highest profile hip-hop competition in the world, Scribble Jam. The following year, all eyes were on the Australian battling scene – including the eyes of first-time documentary filmmaker Martin Taylor. His doco, Aussie Battlers, screens tonight on ABC1 – and it couldn’t be farther from the Los Angeles gangland. It looks at the lives of five of Australia’s most devoted wordsmiths as they prepare for the competition, including Melbourne’s Fevapres. We talked to Fevapres ahead of tonight’s screening.

So how do you get good at laying down rhymes on the spot?

It’s like getting good at anything, really: you have to practise constantly, every single day. Even if your vocab is limited, you have to get the smarts to use your words to their full potential. I started battling at about 16. I only got to a sort of world-class level by the time I hit 20 or 21, and that was doing it every day. I didn’t even have a job at the time. It wasn’t even ‘practising’ – I was just living it.

Some pretty brutal things are said on stage. Do you take any of it to heart?

You’re not going to get off the stage and hate somebody. It’s good to be competitive, but it shouldn’t be taken to the point where you hate that person. You’ve got to have the attitude that the person on the microphone is just out to do what you’re doing, or is out to do what you’ve already done.

You come across as a character of contradictions in the doco – warm and friendly offstage, pretty vicious onstage…

It’s not as if I’m playing some bullshit character that’s not me on stage – I’m doing it because my competitor wants to ruin my career and make theirs. If someone wants to ruin me, I’m going to defend myself. I’m sure if you followed Kanye West or 50 Cent or the Hilltop Hoods around, they’re not going to take their personal lives with them on that stage.

It’s especially the case with battling, because battling is all about being nasty to each other. So it really only gives people that perspective of you, even though I go home and I’m with my family or my friends and all that.

Where does battling fit in with your ambitions as an MC?

In hip-hop, battling is usually the first stepping stone. You might say it’s an apprenticeship. And it’s something that can only get you so far. Originally I just wanted to make music, but I wasn’t at the level to be happy with putting music out. A couple of friends of mine were into the battling, so I entered a couple of competitions, went pretty well, and went from there.

You’ve since retired gracefully from battling. Do you miss it?

Oh, certainly. Every time there’s a comp on. When you’re battling in front of 4000 people and you have a line pop into your head during the round, and you’re like, that’s it, game over. That feeling that you’re about to assassinate what your opponent just said… It’s a good feeling. And once you drop the line, and the crowd erupts – there’s no better feeling than that.

Aussie Battlers screens on ABC1 at 9.30pm Thursday 4 December

www.myspace.com/fevapres

Darryn King