Diana Taylor describes Augustin Boal’s “spect-actor” concept as “people capable of acting and interrupting the performance, or changing the roles they’ve been assigned.” (Taylor p. 80). Rap battles embody the concept of the spect-actor in a big way, for each battle rapper literally switches from the rapper-role, to a rapper-spectator role, meaning that each rapper in the battle switches between modes of spectatorship and performance; and without ever really completely leaving either.
These two rappers, "Hollow Da Don" and "Loaded Lux" face off against each other in a U DUBB battle rap league competition. Each rapper will take turns rapping, and listening to the other rapper spit, embodying spectator and performer roles in turn.
The rap battle provides a focused lens into the concept of the spect-actor, even as each rap competitor lets their opponent spit, still they deploy performatives in reaction to their opponent's bars. A common performative is for the spectating rapper to either look their opponent in the eyes as he/she/they are addressed or to look away indifferently as their opponent attempts to address them as seen here:
Battle Rapper "Loaded Lux" looks away from his opponent "Hollow Da Don" as Hollow addresses him. The strategy signals that his opponent hasn't said anything interesting to Lux. The strategy is often alternated with the strategy of looking your opponent in the eyes as they address you, indicating fearlessness, daring, or honesty.
Battle rappers then are literally "spect-actors", embodying both spectatorship and performance along a spectrum, with each concept at separate ends with neither concept ever reaching a point where it is completely divorced from the other. Spect-actor-ship is important to the competition as the battle doesn't stop for a competitor just because they aren't rapping. Body language such as the strategies described before are used in tandem with word-play to achieve not only an effective rap delivery, but also to communicate with an audience listening to your opponent or to critique, or comment on your opponents bars. View a few minutes of the rap battle here:
In this video body language is used by the battlers throughout the competition.
Facial expression, gestures, arm movement, and body movement, are all performatives, used as weapons to either bolster the delivery of the rap, communicate in reaction to their opponents bars, or even to communicate with the hosts, officials, or the audience. Loaded Lux deploys body language in this screen shot.
In this picture battle rapper “Loaded Lux” can be seen gesticulating with his hand to accent his delivery of his bars.
The emphasis of his speech shows in his mouth and his furrowed eyebrows, and squinted eyes also work to enhance the delivery of his bars. The hand signals “YOU”, to emphasize that in his bars he is criticizing the person in front of him, and not just the person’s body, but the person’s actions as well. The facial expression works to say “I’m critical of you”, “I’m skeptical”, “I’m in disbelief at your actions”, and also “i’m targeting you”. The audience is also a target in the competition:
Hollow gestures to the audience to get them to listen to his bars, also acknowledging their appreciation of the bars he just spit, and indicating that he wants the audience to understand something about his opponent.
Jazz addresses the host Smack, bringing him into the competition and performance.
No one is completely outside of the rap battle, and the rap battle itself functions as real-performance; "personals" rap bars, and outside beef enter the competition, bringing real life into the word-play battle. Spect-actor-ship is a fundamental part of rap battling, everyone is part of the battle, whether a spectator, battler, host, friend, outside beef, and everyone can not only be brought into the battle to target the opponent, but can also be targeted themselves as when battler "Charlie Clips" addressed the crowd for booing him after his competitor exposed Clip's father as a snitch, and also exposed Clips for failing to pay a debt.
Everyone is part of the battle, as in this battle when rapper "Loaded Lux" brought a man to the stage whom rapper "Charlie Clips" owed money to. Lux proceeded to hand proof of his statements to the crowd. Charlie Clips addresses the audience in this screenshot for booing him for what his father did. Real life follows these competitors into the battle, and categories such as real and performance, and spectator and performer, are conflated, mixed, (con)fused and intersecting.
Taylor quotes Louis Althusser in For Marx: “Performance is fundamentally the occasion for a cultural and ideological recognition” (Taylor p. 80). Recognition frames performance as mutual, it is up to those involved, all spect-actors, to do the recognizing, whether member of the audience, rapper battling on stage, or rapper spectating his opponent. The rap battle puts forth a theory: spect-actor-ship is theorized, and spectator/performer roles are complicated without a word of theory written or uttered. There is a saying in rap - "real recognize real" - rap battle spect-actors are engaged in mutual realness where no one is completely divorced from the performance, a struggle for the real ensues where each rapper's realness is up for question. Their bodies come under attack, and anyone is a weapon, an opponent, an enemy, an ally, or a friend. Power and victory is achieved by undermining your opponent, and pointing to their flaws. If an audience spect-actor feels the critique they whoop, or holler, if they do not feel a bar, they may boo or remain silent. The end of a rap battle is a foreclosure of possibility, a casting of roles, loser and winner. The stakes are money, pride, respect, and realness. Black cultural codes are invoked, and a struggle for who has a claim to these codes, realness, and authenticity under these codes ensues and ends. Women and men are separated in competition, and the rap battle culture, is male-dominated, violently capitalist, racist, and misogynoir-ist. As a spect-actor, your role is assured and everyone has one, their is no real division between seeing and doing. The battle for space in this place is the rap battle, and only the winners are real.
