'Stylers Spit to 'Outwit'

Harvard student groups have come up with many different ways to garner publicity and make money, but Tuesday Magazine decided to take an unconventional route when they established their freestyle rap competition, “Outwit.” Tomorrow, “Outwit” will give students a chance to share their art with the Harvard community as well as compete against each other for gift certificates and recognition in the second year of the competition.

The event will feature beatboxing and spoken word performances, followed by the freestyle competition. In addition to the freestylers who have signed up to compete, underground Boston rapper Akrobatik will be appearing, and audience participation is encouraged. Previous winner Darryl W. Finkton ’10 had not signed up prior to the competition but managed to get a lot of laughs going off the cuff, according to Virginia E. Anderson ’08, who organized the initial event last year.

A fair amount of mocking can be expected since “the object is to humiliate your opponent,” according to Lev Shaket ’10, who competed last year and plans to perform again this year. “It is showing how well you can think on your feet and just come up with rhymes, which is very hard to do,” Anderson says. Since freestyle rapping is by definition unplanned, no one knows what type of topics or language will come up, but competitors are warned that offensive subject matter such as sexual violence will be grounds for disqualification. Competitors are judged on their effective employment of language and wit, because, Shaket says, the goal is to “defeat them with your mind.”

By scheduling the event during April visiting weekend, the organizers of “Outwit” hope to show prospective students a different side of Harvard. “We study a lot, but we also have lives and we do things like freestyle rap,” Anderson says. The goal, according to event coordinator Brittney R. Lind ’11, is for people to leave “Outwit” having seen some of the real though sometimes underground talent at Harvard and “give all different types of expression the opportunity to be heard or read or seen.”

Tuesday Magazine, which generally publishes creative pieces, sees a strong correlation between freestyle rap and the poetry that they feature prominently in their publication. Freestyle rap is more accessible, Lind says. “It’s a form of expression that a lot of people like and use. It’s a combination of performance and words, and that’s a really cool thing.”

Shaket believes that freestyling goes beyond poetry. “In freestyle rapping the beat is a big part of the process,” he says. “It gives you a vibe and it inspires the lyrics. That is an element that poetry doesn’t have at its disposal.”