2004 DMC World Championships @ Hammersmith Apollo - 4th and 5th of September

It seems that now more then ever it's cool to be a DJ. But even better then being a DJ, is being a scratch DJ or turntablist. Yet beyond the mainstream's appropriation of the imagery of turntablism and scratching you can dig deeper and find a quintessential post-modern artform, which for the last 20 years has steadily been growing and maturing. And as with most artforms you can always find two sides to their development and consumption: the mainstream and the underground. In the case of the turntablist artform, the general differences today seem to be that the underground is represented by a more musical drive and push to use the turntable as a rightful instrument whilst the mainstream is exemplified by the countless DJs propping up nu-metal and pop acts and mime-scratching in the back. Sitting (un)easily in between both is the DJ battle scene, a descendent of the DJ battles that took place in the early days of hiphop and which has now become a platform for DJs worldwide to showcase their skills and compete against each other for fame and prizes. DJ battles are held on a local level to start with, proceeding to national and international levels much like most sports. They act as a great way for DJs to network and help each other but on the other hand have in recent years been the subjects of attacks claiming that it has become nothing more than an extreme sport far removed from the early musicality and pioneering that made it into what it is today. Whilst there is strength to both sides of the argument, DJ battles are undeniably here to stay, even if year on year their future seems to become more and more undecided. The most famous of those DJ battles is the DMC, which started nearly 20 years ago in Britain as a DJ mixing competition before being quickly hijacked by the burgeoning scratch artform and becoming the flagship competition for turntablists and scratch DJs.

Every year thousands of aficionados and hundreds of DJs converge in one spot for the world finals, which have been held in London since the turn of the century. And this year was no different with the Hammersmith Apollo becoming the center of all things turntablists for the space of a hot and sunny weekend. The competition is split over three different categories: teams (2 to 4 DJs playing together) and supremacy (one on one 90 seconds elimination battles) on the Saturday and solos (6 minutes judged showcases) on the Sunday, with the weekend's festivities also including live PAs from the world of hiphop and DJing with the Jungle Brothers, the X-Ecutioners (ex-DMC champions), P-Money & Scribe and the Spit Kingdom all taking to the stage. This year both the reigning team and solo champions, namely C2C and DJ Dopey, were defending their titles whilst UK prodigy Tigerstyles who held the supremacy title chose not to defend.

The supremacy battle held the first, and only, real surprise of the weekend as Japan's Akakabe took the title after a six years battling hiatus and in the process beat two of the favourites, the UK's Silk Kuts and USA's I-Emerge, who both came out deserving of their reputation as world class turntablists. The only other real threat was France's Pfel, who lost to I-Emerge in the quarterfinals but finished on a high note with a very original and musical routine. Overall the supremacy event was nowhere near the level it has been in recent or past years, further reinforcing the beliefs of many that the battling scene is getting increasingly stale as each competitor's technical level is so high that the only real way for them to stick out is to be original, something which has seemingly got lost over the years. Ironically Akakabe was more original than most this year, relying on old school records to gain the crowd's support and showing a more versatile approach to the short and fairly rigid supremacy format, both factors which are probably responsible for his win (that and the fact that he was also really enjoyable to watch and listen to). An honourable mention should also go to the Canadian Drastic who put on a very good show, reaching the semis, considering he had been on the tipple all day!

During the break between the supremacy and teams event, I had the chance to speak with France's Birdy Nam Nam crew, winners of the 2002 team event and who are currently putting the finishing touches to their first album, an all-scratched musical excursion which will hopefully help to further highlight the versatility of the turntable as an instrument. You will be able to catch the album in March 05 (at the latest), with the first single already available and a second one coming out in early October. Having been able to listen to most of it, I can easily say that this will be one album to keep an eye and ear out for! Much like other past battle winners I have spoken to recently they all agreed that the standard of battles today was so high technically and skills-wise that it made for a less enjoyable show as DJs became more like each other and less original in their approach of the different battle formats. This constant gripe between high technical skills and a lack of originality seems to really be the main obstacle that DJ battles need to overcome as a format and DJs as competitors. (you can see the BNN interview in question in our archive)