King Los is not just my favorite rapper. He might be the only rapper. At least the only one that freestyles. And it's all because of YouTube. I once read that Jay-Z watches every rap battle he comes across. Recently I've been watching every video w/ King Los (Baltimore rapper, affiliated w/Diddy, not yet famous). I think he's one of the most talented rappers out. But what really sets him apart is that you can find MULTIPLE videos of him actually freestyling (improvising rhymes spontaneously). Freestyling is one of the things I love most about rap. It's unpredictable. In a group ("cypher"), it's collaborative, and requires patience, listening, and being in the moment. It's verbal jazz. Despite these things (or perhaps because of them) seeing a rapper actually freestyle these days is extremely rare. As in, it virtually don't exist. I think that if you went through every YouTube video of Jay-Z's 20+ year career you would find only a handful of real freestyles, if any. Eminem sort of freestyled in his battling days, but even those were mostly pre-written. Radio "freestyles" from Big L to Fabolous to Cassidy are awesome, but they were never really freestyles.
The thing about freestyles is that they are rarer in the art than they are in real life. Many rappers become great through freestyles/cyphers (Nas: "Back in eighty-three I was an MC sparkin/ But I was too scared to grab the mic's in the park and/ kick my little raps cuz I thought niggas wouldn't understand/ now in every jam I'm the fuckin man." Or see this video of B.I.G.). Then why is there such sparse documentation, and so little practice among established artists? Because freestyling makes you vulnerable in many ways. First, there's the fact that you don't know what you're going to say until you say it. it's all improvised. you can say something whack. or embarrassing. Or that makes you sound gay. Or all of the above. And that's scary to some people. The other thing is that it humanizes you. And in a genre that is literally built off bragging and hyperbole there can seem to be little advantage to exposing your talent through improvisation. That's why established rappers don't battle (only those trying to make a name for themselves do). JayZ has nothing to gain by defeating some dude in a battle. But he has a LOT to lose.
In college, my friends and I loved "Rap City Freestyles," where big names would come on the show and rap with the host Big Tig (who I think is also from MD?!). It says something about how rare genuine freestyles are that the word has almost entirely reversed its meaning. In my mind, it originally meant "spontaneous, on-the-spot rhyming." it now means "a pre-written verse that won't make the album." And that's what Rap City was. But we loved it, in part (at least for me) because it was as close to the real thing as you could get. Watching Kanye kick a verse in a cypher setting--even if it was written--was different than the polished final product you get from a carefully crafted album cut. And Big Tig really did freestyle. He was pretty bad, but he was so sincere about it and it was so obvious that he loved it that we didn't care.
Which brings me to King Los. He is the closest thing that exists today to a mainstream rapper that freestyles (Lupe does too, but less often). Sure, Sage Francis and Brother Ali freestyle. But these people are unknown to most rap fans. To have someone with a Diddy co-sign freestlye is another level. And King Los really does it. I've seen Sway give him words to rhyme off. After a show in Boston, King Los organized a cypher of his (apparently high school-age) fans and freestyled with them, encouraging them and helping them improve their skills. Can you imagine if you went to see your favorite band, and after the show they were like, "ok, we're gonna have a jam session now with anyone who wants to sit in, and then we'll give everybody some helpful feedback and pointers." I mean, did the Rolling Stones ever do that?
Maybe the best thing about King Los is that he doesn't just freestyle with high schoolers. In another video, he's freestyling with Meek Mill, an established, actually popular rapper. If this is how it's gonna be, I want more rappers to start hanging out with King Los. Because now that he is pre-fame, he has an incentive to show and prove, and YouTube is recording that process in a way that was never possible before. When Biggie and JayZ were honing their skills through freestyles video was neither as common nor as accessible as it is today. We live in a different kind of hip hop golden age.
