The latest edition of DHH Freestyle Fridays feature one of the most notorious emcees and top tier battler – EMF. The Bombay based emcee has, in all of his ways given us a complete off the dome experience in the latest drop. EMF is known for his quick, witty bars and the lyricism he brings to the table. He is deadly with the mic and it shows in whatever he does. Be it shredding up the opponent in Battle Rap or spitting bars in the studio, he never disappoints. EMF is also a part of Tadpatri Talkies, a cult comedy platform. He is the voice of the infamous Gari B sketch that took the scene by storm.
What people don’t know is the intense skill level he brings while going off the dome (a skill which involves rhyming without any previous written bars). This was a topic he brought up in a recent podcast of TBTTE – Three Blocks To The East. The podcast is hosted by Tadpatri Talkies and include interviews with a lot of emcees and other artists in Mumbai city. The topic at hand was the “freestyle vs off the dome” dilemma.
Freestyle vs Off The Top
The two terms “freestyle” and “off the top” or “off the dome” have been confused with their frequent usage throughout the years of Hip-Hop. In the words of Big Daddy Kane – “In the ’80s when we said we wrote a freestyle rap, that meant that it was a rhyme that you wrote that was free of style, meaning that it’s not [on] a [particular] subject matter—it’s not a story about a woman, it’s not a story about poverty, it’s basically a rhyme just bragging about yourself, so it’s basically free of style…. That’s really what a freestyle is. Off-the-top-of-the head [rapping], we just called that “off the dome”—when you don’t write it and [you] say whatever comes to mind.”
But time ran its course, and the meaning of the word set forth in both its definitions. In this freestyle friday series we have seen a few emcees go off the dome. The emcee aims to keep that portion of the game alive with this session.
EMF Speaks
We caught up with the rapper and asks what he had to say about the recent release. He put it this way “A line about this verse – It was written in the stars. I’m glad I got to do what I wanted to with this. Even though the verse is bad DHH let me go ahead with it. All I wanted to do was make people go off the dome when they freestyle and even if it’s bad it’s alright. It’s just a freestyle. I’m happy Poetik let me say what I had to say and didn’t shut it down under the label of quality control. I hope this inspires people to go off the dome more often and of course, do better than what I did cause this shit was wack as fuck.”