Crowds - The Psychology of Battle Rap

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Battle rap crowds. A huge part of battle rap. Without them - battle rap wouldn’t be possible. If somebody wins a rap battle and nobody saw it - it doesn’t matter. But we’ve rarely looked at crowds in battle rap - and the interworkings between them and battle rap. Today we do that.


Whats up everybody Minnesota Luke here - today discussing battle rap crowds. For those of you who have ever gone to a live event - you are who I’m talking about today.

Crowds in battle rap are vastly different based on time and location. A rap battle in 2006 Detroit may have a very different crowd than 2006 Philadelphia battle. Similarly, time alone also influences type of crowd - a battle event with thousands of people in Midtown Manhattan probably wasn’t a reality a little over a decade ago.

Regardless of differences - crowds certainly change dynamics in a battle… in many different ways.

Imagine Math Hoffa vs T-Rex in a 2017 Summer Madness crowd… a very different battle.

Imagine Hitman Holla vs JJDD in a Quiet Room enviroment…. A very different battle.


But the mere presence of a crowd isn’t the only way that crowds interact with dynamics of a battle - consider distractions and noises in a battle and it’s possible affects on battlers.

Atkinson, R., & Juola, J. (1973). Factors influencing the speed and accuracy of word recognition. In S. Kornblum (Ed.), Attention and performance IV (pp. 583–612). New York: Academic Press

James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York: Henry Holt

Mandler, G. (1980). Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence. Psychological Review, 87, 252–271.

When trying to remember something - you have to focus your cognitive resources on that effort. However, this process can be easily distracted by external stimuli. And this has been studied extensively… and in fact you don’t even need research for this - try rapping battle lyrics a quiet room then try doing it while somebody is talking to you.

Wais, P., Rubens, M., Boccanfuso, J., & Gazzaley, A. (2010). Neural mechanisms underlying the impact of visual distraction on retrieval of long-term memory. Journal of Neuroscience, 30, 8541–8550.

And this isn’t just sound - researcher have found profound impacts on recall of information with the mere presence of irrelevant visual stimuli. Think about for a second all of the irrelevant visual stimuli a battler encounters during his performance. People all around… the battlers crew mean mugging... lights… cameramen…. And certainly all of the faces and actions in the audience.

Gazzaley, A., & Wais, P.E. (2011). The impact of auditory distraction on retrieval of visual memories. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 18 6, 1090-7.

Not surprisingly, hidnering of recall does not end at visual distractions - The presence of increasingly loud and increasingly irrelevant noise has been linked to lower levels of recall of visual information.

But that’s visual information. What about actual data?

Bell, R., & Buchner, A. (2007). Equivalent irrelevant-sound effects for old and young adults. Memory & Cognition, 35, 352–364.

Well, in a study published in memory and cognition in 2007 put experiment participants into two groups - one to recite memorized data in a silent enviroment, and one to recite memorized data in a noisy one. They found that previously memorized data recall is significantly hindered under the presence of auditory distractions.

Bell R, Röer JP, Dentale S, Buchner A (2012) Habituation of the irrelevant speech effect: Evidence for an attentional theory of short-term memory disruption. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 38: 1542–1557.


A huge number of other studies have confirmed this finding, with one published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology explaining it as -

“auditory distractors elicit attentional orienting that draws processing resources away from the recall task.”

In plain English this means that noise from an audience can hinder a battler’s ability to recall his lyrics.
#battlerap