By Larry Nager
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The adversaries stand under the spotlight, face-to-face in a haze of smoke and sweat. The referee quickly sets the rules and steps aside. The fight is on.

Armed only with their minds, their mouths and their rap skills, they take turns at the microphone, firing off barrages of rhymes, as the crowd cheers its favorite and boos the weaker rapper.

It's a scene that's repeated throughout Eminem's hit film, 8 Mile, which arrives on DVD today.

But long before 8 Mile brought battling rappers out of inner-city clubs and into suburban multiplexes, it was a familiar scene to local hip-hop fans in the weekly MC battles at Top Cat's.

"It reminded me a lot of Wednesday nights," Tony Heitz, one of the organizers of Top Cat's hip-hop nights, says of 8 Mile.

Heitz, 30, is the promoter/manager of Animal Crackers, the hip-hop collective that started the Wednesday night shows four years ago at Shaky Pudding, a now-defunct Clifton club. When their nights of turntable spinning, break-dancing and rapping outgrew the tiny spot, they moved to Top Cat's, where the shows have drawn several hundred people every week for the past three years.

IF YOU GO

• What: Animal Crackers' Hip-Hop Night •Where: Top Cat's, 2820 Vine St., Corryville; 281-2005 •When: 10 p.m. Wednesdays •How much: $5

"Lot of clubs have what they call a hip-hop night, where they just play urban music," says rapper/producer Skandal, 27, who referees the MC battles. "But Top Cat's is like the essence of hip-hop, where you got the breakin', the real DJs, the freestyle MC battles."

It's a mixed crowd, drawn from the 'burbs, downtown and the University of Cincinnati campus. That can be a volatile combination, but although the rapping gets pretty intense, there's never any trouble.

"It's really positive as far as hip-hop goes," says Kraal Wiggins, 31, whose nom de rap is Lyrical Misfit.

"A lot of other quote-unquote hip-hop clubs that open around here are shut down almost instantly, just because it brings a lot of fights and violence. People associate hip-hop with the whole thug mentality, and those are the type of people that show up."

But referee Skandal, a smiling, genial bear of a man, keeps things cool. "At these events you hear a lot of insults, a lot of bragging, a lot of cocky and brash ways of talking and being," he explains. "But at the end of the battle, it's all recess; it's all playtime. Nobody turns it into an incident."

It's a late starter

The show is listed as starting at 10 p.m., but the club is empty until 11, when people start trickling in. By midnight, the five Animal Cracker DJs are working their turntables, intricately weaving a tapestry of beats like a futuristic drum circle.

As the DJs spin onstage, break-dancers take turns spinning on the dance floor. Ambitious hip-hop producers bring CDs of their newest beats for Skandal to play on his segment of the show called "Beat Corner."

"They wanna hear their music on something this big," he says of the Top Cat's sound system.

Finally, at 1:15 a.m., it's time for the main event. The half-dozen scheduled battles feature a dozen rappers, some of them certified "heavyweights" - repeat winners such as Jack Frost, Blueprint (from the group Atmosphere) and Dirty Red.

"This is a way-above-average evening, as far as the quality of the battles," says Animal Cracker Mike B., 27. "There's a couple heavyweights that haven't been around in a long time."

For the first bout, Wes Blizzy and Lyrical Misfit face off. Each bout is divided into three rounds. Each rapper gets 45 seconds per round. The crowd decides the winner.

Blizzy is the more aggressive rapper, insulting Misfit's hair, glasses and worst of all, his mama. Misfit's approach is kinder and gentler and, although sprinkled with expletives, he raps about how he doesn't have to sink to Blizzy's level. But, like WWE Smackdown, the crowd shows its love to the guy with the biggest swagger. Blizzy wins.

His only prize is bragging rights until the next battle. There are no material awards.

That doesn't stop the MCs from lining up to do battle. After 8 Mile hit the theaters, the rap battles at Top Cat's escalated. Dozens of new, Eminem-inspired battlers are joining the fray.

"Since the movie came out, they've been coming out of the woodwork," says Skandal. Today's hotly anticipated, expanded DVD release is expected to further increase the rap population.

Although 8 Mile is based in Eminem's hometown of Detroit, a Cincinnati battle was pivotal to Eminem's career.

Heitz, a skateboarder whose day job is team manager for Alien Workshop, a Dayton-based skateboard company, is an organizer of Scribble Jam, a major national hip-hop festival held at Annie's Riverside Saloon each summer. Scribble Jam 2003 is set for Aug. 7-10.

"Eminem kind of got his big start at Scribble Jam '97," Heitz says.

He says the then-unknown rapper only took second prize in the battles. "But the rapper that beat him, Juice, was in the Hip-Hop Olympics, and Juice invited him to be on his team. They ended up winning, and that's kind of where Eminem got noticed."

It's stories like that that keep the MCs coming back to Top Cat's Wednesday night battles, sharpening their skills for Scribble Jam and, they hope, bigger things.

Not all are ready for prime time, Skandal warns with a deep chuckle.

"Man, you'd be amazed at some of the people that come up here and try to rap. Everybody thinks they can do it, and everybody can't."

`It's all love'

Last Wednesday, only one of the dozen battlers was a stammering rookie, a kid calling himself Intense. He fell to a rapper named Clips, who didn't even break a sweat.

The most exciting bout of the night pitted Dirty Red, a skinny, light-skinned African-American from downtown, against Boot, a husky white kid from Price Hill.

Race was never mentioned, but the raps played off the Price Hill/downtown rivalry, as Dirty Red and Boot each insulted the other's 'hood.

The bout was the closest of the evening, and after three rounds, there was no clear winner. They went on to Round Four, as Dirty Red heated it up, spitting out rhymes as the crowd cheered. He edged out Boot to win.

At the end of the bout, Skandal quickly stepped in to chill any residual hostilities.

"You might have heard a lot of downtown/Price Hill talk, but remember that downtown and Price Hill are right next to each other, and it's all one people."

The black and white rappers stand onstage and shake hands, grinning. The battle is over.

"That's hip-hop, man," Skandal says afterward. "It's all love."

E-mail lnager@enquirer.com

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