UT MARA Debating Society

On Friday 15th January 2010, in Cloth and Clef located somewhere in Jalan Changkat, Bukit Bintang a Rap Battle Tournament called Think You Got Skills(TYGS) The Qualifier organized by TheMoveMint, was held to seek the four best Malaysian Battle Rapper to represent Malaysia and compete with Singaporian emcees’ soon.

Eventhough it had nothing to do with debate, but it was still a battle of words, logic and wits therefore counts as a debate (street style). The UT MARA Debate Society did not officially directly sent a representative but 2 of our members competed in this tournament; they were Mohd Syafiq (MC Stifler), an Engineering student and also Mohd Ashaari (MC Ash) from the Business Faculty.

Each emcees will draw numbers to decide who they will meet at the first stage. The battle will consist of two contestent,two songs(compose on the stage in their mind), each given 60 seconds alternately to put words to poems, rhyme them, and it has to be logical or you loose crowd support(it’s no easy task) escorted by HIP- HOp Genra music. There is not preparation time, the host will flip a coin to determine who goes first. Since its a Death Match you only get one shot to make it to the next round(highly competative),therefore winner of a round will proceed to meet the winner of another battle while the loosers gets abusive words and their walk of shame. The winner for each round will be determine by the crowd, base on how much  noise they make, the amount of noise equates to how amazing the emcees ryme’s was.

There were 8 emcees competing to reach to the finals as well as the 4 spot to go agains Singapore Battle Rapper. In the first round both our members manage to win their respective rounds each receiving  support from the majority of the people in the vanue. Sadly in the second round MC Ash did not manage to go through, but on the other hand Mc Stifler manage to reach the final.

In the final round he had to meet face to face with MC Afro Jam from Kelana Jaya, at the end of each contestant rhyme the host was not able to determine who was the champion of the TYGS qualifier, because both MC had almost equal amount of support, therefore they had to go to an additional round whereby in this round they will not be given any music to escort their rhyme, purely A cappella. Both contestant gave a good fight but because A cappella was MC Stifler’s specialty he emrge the Champion, therefore entitle to merchandise sponsored by TheMoveMint as well as RM300 worth of cash prize. At the end of the day both MC Ash and MC Stifler will be representing Malaysia to compete against Singapore top Battle rapper.

We hope that in the future there will be more tournaments like this, for our youth generation to speak up  their ideas may it be in a form of songs, parliamentary style debate or even Rap Battle, and UT MARA is proud to have our very own Malaysian Freestyle Rapper, MC Stiff to be with us.