What is FlipTop?
I finally found an article in wikipedia about FlipTop, but it was jus one of the many examples of battle leagues mentioned under the article Battle rap and it was not even connoted with Philippine music (or literature).
According to asianrapworldwide.blogspot.com the first rap battle in the Philippines is Flip Top; they even posted a video of the one of the first ever fights played by Fuego versus Protege (I don’t even know how to pronounce them correctly).
The battle were described by the blogger as quoted “...they are sick with their brains like mad scientist, At the end of the video all I can do is throw up my fist.”
The video was also posted in tumblr by username ribbie and the Flip Top also appeared in an article of Philstar.com with an interesting title “Rhyme and lots of reason at Flip Top” by Saab Magalona, where there is an interview with Aric Yuson, who appears to be the founder of Flip Top, he said in the interview.
“One thing FlipTop aims to do is to educate the masses both on a hip-hop cultural level on a commonsensical level.”
When he was asked regarding the future of FlipTop, he told in the article,
“All in all, complete advancement for hip-hop as we hope to get more acts to perform here and there.”
Since, the death of Francis Magalona in March 6, 2009, I have not appreciated hip-hop more. Thanks to his apprentice who continued what he started. I guessed Rap Battles in the Philippines didn’t really begin in FlipTop, it must have started with the aid of foreign culture and basically the extension of our very own Balagtasan plus the music of Francis M..
Rap music has been highly criticized and discriminated as a genre in music and poetry in literature, but looking at the 60 million hits of the official channel of FlipTop in youtube, i guessed FlipTop is becoming it’s own environment suited the kind of entertainment it offers.
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