Is FlipTop the modern-day Balagtasan?

Published March 1, 2014 11:51pm

By MARK ANGELES

Filipino rap battle league FlipTop has acquired many fans, mostly from the youth sector. Its Youtube
account already has over 1.2 million subscribers.

With almost 400 uploaded videos—the most popular being the Loonie/Abra versus Shehyee/Smugglaz
tag team bout in the Dos Por Dos Tournament held at the FlipTop bastion, B-Side at The Collective in
Makati City, with over 17 million views—it has surpassed the leagues in the United States that sired the
format.

FlipTop and rap battle

The phenomenon of FlipTop has grown as the number of Internet users in the Philippines has. It is
popular in every part of the country that the Internet can reach, and where there is a culture of
“collectivism” such as inside a computer shop.

In freestyle rap, hurling the insult back at your opponent is called a “flip”.

The group FlipTop held the very first Filipino Rap Battle League in the country on February 6, 2010 at
Quantum Café in Makati where rappers (also known as MCs) Fuego, Protégé, Datu, and Cameltoe
battled onstage.

FlipTop is an events and artist managing organization led by Alaric Riam Yuson, more popularly known as
Anygma.

Anygma gave honor to our nation when the Tectonics battle rap was held at Katips Bar and Grillery in
Quezon City in December 2010. Dirtbag Dan led the MCs from Grind Time Now, a US-based group that
set the international standards of rap battle.

All the three battles that day were won by Filipino MCs. And on that day, FlipTop gained worldwide
recognition.
A growing phenomenon

At present, FlipTop has thriving divisions in the NCR, CALABARZON, Central Luzon, the Visayas, and
Mindanao, where battle events are held at least once a year.

FlipTop has gained traction not just in social networking sites like Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter.
Independent inter-barangay and inter-collegiate tournaments—among students and out of school youth
—have sprung up. FlipTop has even become a subject in classes on popular culture and a topic of theses.

The celebration of Linggo ng Wika has never been the same, after universities and secondary schools in
different parts of the country included FlipTop in their roster of competitions related to the celebration
of our native language.

As such, some academics have called Fliptop the modern Balagtasan—to the dismay of some battle
rappers.

Balagtas and the Balagtasan

Most of us are familiar with Francisco Balagtas because his metrical romance "Florante at Laura."

Balagtas was so popular and well-respected that even Jose Rizal and Emilio Jacinto quoted him in their
writings. The commemoration of his birth anniversary every April 2 has been a practice even before the
early years of American occupation.

According to poet and literary critic Virgilio Almario, it was in the afternoon of March 28, 1924, at a
meeting set in preparation for Balagtas Day, that the Balagtasan was born.

Some attendees proposed an alternative for that year’s celebration, something fresh and exciting. And
so Balagtasan was created, a variation of duplo, a native form of verbal joust played at funeral wakes.
The first Balagtasan was staged on April 2, 1924. Three pairs performed, but the crowd favorites were
Jose Corazon de Jesus and Florentino Collantes. De Jesus, whose nom de plume was Huseng Batute, was
already a popular poet even before the event. Amado V. Hernandez was also among those who
participated.

The bout between Huseng Batute and Collantes had a repeat on October 18, 1925, where the
declamation was “freestyle”—spontaneous or free-flowing. It was where Huseng Batute earned the title
Hari ng Balagtasan.

Versions of the Balagtasan also sprang up in different provinces, like the Bukanegan in Ilocos (named
after Ilocano epic poet Pedro Bukaneg) and Crisotan in Pampanga (named after the Pampango poet-
dramatist Juan Crisostomo Soto).

Battle rap and the slave trade

The long history of hip hop and alternative rap can be traced back to West Africa, in a group called
griots, according to BBC news correspondent Lawrence Pollard.

Griots were used in the Mali Empire (1245-1468) as professional storytellers and praise-singers. They
can be compared to chanters of folk epics in our country whose practice started even before colonial
times.

The griots’ tradition was spread by the African people who were captured and brought to the US as
slaves.

During the slave trade in the US, slaves were also placed on auction blocks and slave owners would hurl
insults at the one in the “hot seat,” making disparaging remarks about the slaves so they wouldn’t get
sold.

With this history, battle rap followers will be able to see the nationalist potentials of the competition. In
staging the slave trade, MCs warn us about the nasty history of colonialism.
It could also be the reason academics connect it with Balagtasan. Literary critic Bienvenido Lumbera had
observed that even Marcelo del Pilar used the duplo and turned it against the colonizers.

Balagtasan, FlipTop, and rap

It is easy for someone who doesn’t have any knowledge of hip hop and alternative rap to pick up FlipTop
as the modern-day Balagtasan, mainly because of the two elements present: verbal jousts and the
seeming rhyme and meter when the rappers, emcees or MCs drop their bars or verses.

Some Filipino MCs assume the title of being a “makata”—not just a “mambeberso” who writes poetry,
but someone approaching the rank of poet laureate.

A “makata” knows his rules when it comes to rhyme and meter—at least, the basics of Filipino poetry
like the first rank tugmaang karaniwan (general rhyme), rhyme schemes, and caesura. In Filipino poetry,
words that end with the same vowel do not necessarily rhyme. Glottal stress matters.

There are liberal rules set in hip hop rap called internal and off-beat rhymes. There is a style called
multisyllabic rhyme which Eminem employs. In our country, it is popularly known as “multi” and a lot of
MCs are already skilled with it.

The verse lines are called “bars", adapted from "music bar" or the musical duration. For a typical hip hop
beat (4/4 time signature), a bar ranges from the first kick drum up to the second snare drum.

Though battle rap is a verbal joust, it is far from being the modern Balagtasan. As Almario had noted,
Balagtasan poets are “expected to entertain their audience with bits of humor, with witticisms, with the
spice of sarcasm, and moreover, with theatrics like actors in dramatic presentations.”

Prominent FlipTop rapper BLKD (pronounced Balakid) said in an interview that “though both feature the
nuances of poetry, there is a distinction between their sensitivities. They belong to different historical
and cultural channels, and we have to recognize those attributes.”
The below-the-belt insults that imply drug use and having sexual relations with the opponent’s mother is
a long shot from Balagtasan, or even its progenitor, the duplo.

Yet there is a native form of Filipino poetry that closely resembles this attribute: a theatrical form of
poetry in the Visayas region called bikal, a verbal game where the opponents (a male and a female, but
sometimes pairs of two males versus two females) hurl insults at each other that lasts for an hour or
two. It was a traditional game of mudslinging.

A Jesuit missionary named Francisco Ignacio Alcina, who was sent to Cebu, Leyte, and Samar was the
first to have recorded this poetic form among the early locals of Samar and Leyte.

BLKD thinks that FlipTop has a significant role in Filipino culture. “Many FlipTop followers watch to be
entertained. FlipTop shows them that one can take pleasure in poetry, one can take pleasure in playing
with words,” he said.

He also noted that battle rap is an art form—that while insulting and poking fun at the opponent is part
of the battle, "the audience is aware that the entertainment they gain from it comes from the skill of the
emcee of choosing words, weaving lines, and rhyming them."

At the very least, he said, "it influences the youth to study language, music, and stage performance."

Surpassing the fame of Balagtasan, FlipTop is breeding more frontliners and followers, acquiring an
esteemed spot in our country’s oral literature and as a performance art. — JDS/BM, GMA News

Source: http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/lifestyle/artandculture/350760/is-fliptop-the-modern-day-
balagtasan/story/
Fliptop: the modern ‘balagtasan’

An updated version of rap, fliptop serves as a medium through which Filipino youth can make their
voices heard

By: Karina Isabel M. YapPhilippine Daily Inquirer / 12:28 AM October 12, 2012

Nelland, 18, stuck her tongue out at the end of her repartee. Her head bobbed as she rapidly delivered
her lines. Her hands pumped the air in the space between us to the beat of her repartee. She smiled
quickly in the end, partly congratulating herself for her successful delivery, and partly to ease the sting
of her last line. She just performed her fliptop routine in front of me.

Viral

A few years back, fliptop rap battles gained recognition in the Philippines quickly after several videos of
such went viral on YouTube. Millions of Filipinos trouped to the popular video sharing website to watch
two men test each other’s wit with rhythmic and clever lines delivered in an impressive tongue-twisting
manner. The men also test each other’s tolerance for insults.

Tongue twisters and rhymes have a special place in the childhood of every Filipino. However, most are
taught in English like “Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers.” One could argue that fliptop battles
are, in essence, a reclamation of childhood and its transliteration to the native tongue.

Anygma, one of the more famous faces in the fliptop scene, attributed the success of fliptop rap battles
to the typical experience of Filipino male telling each other all types of bull in the parking lot “from
grade school to high school.” Somehow, remnants of afternoons spent hanging out with my classmates,
in grade school and high school, outside our school flashed in my mind. The memories are hazy, but it
made me smile thinking of the crap we told each other.

Fliptop rap battles do not feature your usual nursery rhymes. It’s common for colorful language to find
its way in the prose of participants. Derogatory remarks occasionally pepper their prose. The constraints
of rhythmic flow free participants from the burden of being politically correct. Words you wouldn’t dare
say in front of your mother are spitted out in fliptop rap battles, without hesitation and without a blink
of an eye from the participants.
Ejo vs W-Beat

For this article, I watched the fliptop rap battle between Ejo and W-Beat, for the First Filipino Rap Battle
League, uploaded on YouTube a few weeks ago. It’s everything a typical fliptop battle should be.
Perhaps, the tamest line from the battle came from Ejo: “Sana marami kang ininom na tubig bago
makipagbuno sa tulad ko. Sa sobrang init ng aking linya baka matuyo ang utak mo.” There’s a lot of
reference to popular culture. Spongebob was not spared. Nothing seems sacred. Plants vs Zombies was
mentioned by Ejo, saying W-Beat was spared by zombies hungry for brains, simply because he has none.

Allegation that one of the participants was brainless had each man showcase his wit in a fliptop rap
battle. Participants Ejo and W-Beat intertwined their prose with trite social commentaries and
observation of the locals.

Poverty and prison were mentioned, just in passing, but it showed awareness of socioeconomic issues
that dogs the youth engaged in fliptop rap battle. These two issues, afflicting American youth in
depressed communities, are popular subjects of rap, even among rappers that broke into mainstream
media. One can say fliptop rap battles serve as a medium through which Filipino youths decry their
condition.

“Nang dahil sa maling paniniwala ng kabataan, tuluyan nilang nawasak ang ating kinabukasan. Nang
dahil sa kahinaan tulad ng kayabangan,” rapped W-Beat, who is older than Ejo.

‘Jejemons’

Dr. Ricardo Ma. Nolasco, in a 2009 commentary, “Intellectualizing A Language,” claimed “We will never
be able to develop our languages for higher thinking unless we begin basic literacy and education in
them.” A year later, the same commentary had been cited by Harvey Marcoleta in “Jejemons: The new
‘jologs,’” wherein he explores the effect of the prevalence of “jejemons” to the development of the
Filipino language. He argues that such is dependent to the leniency toward practitioners of “jejenese.” A
female friend, the only “jejemon” I know, had since migrated to the United Kingdom. She now speaks
with an acquired British accent. I have not received a single “jejemon” text since then.

That same year, fliptop rap battles first broke into mainstream consciousness after becoming such a hit
on YouTube. Anygma was interviewed by a popular men’s magazine, which decreed fliptop battles as
one of the sensation of the year. Today, his YouTube channel “FlipTop Battle League” has 141,143
subscribers and 192,570,918 likes. The fliptop rap battle between Ejo and W-Beat I watched has almost
100,000 views.
Mainstream acceptance

Fliptop rap battles had gained a wider mainstream acceptance since 2010. A comedy show had a
segment resembling such, replacing the rap with “pickup lines.” In YouTube, a casual search will reveal
tons of videos of Filipino youngsters engaged in fliptop battles. It cuts through social classes and ages.

In the US, rap is so developed that occasionally, you read critics raving on the literary significance of the
genre. Jay-Z and Lupe Fiasco are both noted for their literary techniques, similes and metaphors of life in
America. In the Philippines, the same level of development could be attained. It’s not too far-fetched.
We already have balagtasan to build on. Fliptop rap battles, especially one in Filipino, resemble a more
musically updated version of the form. Indeed, one can claim fliptop rap battles are balagtasan on
steroids.

Participants in fliptop rap battles display an awareness of Filipino popular culture in their prose. Though
interjected with colorful language, rappers often have a clear grasp of the conversational, if not formal,
form of the Filipino language. It’s a healthy development in a country where local music is fast
vanquished by imported tunes.

It’s easy to dismiss fliptop rap battles as a fad that will soon fade. But one must remember that
Shakespeare broke new ground in English literature by weaving the language of the common with the
formal language of the aristocracy within the rigors of poetry. The same case can be made in favor of
fliptop rap battles. It affords innovation—which leads to development—in the Filipino language through
the experimentation and exploration of rappers. This isn’t “jejenese” fueled by technology. In fliptop
rap battles, technology merely enables the genre to find an audience, and attain a critical mass to
sustain development of the form.

At first glance, you will not mistake Nelland as an avid fan of fliptop rap battles. She has wholesomeness
about her, with her soft voice and cute smile. Another friend begins tapping the table for a beat.
Nelland bobs her head, her arms frantically parting the space around her.

Source: http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/70820/fliptop-the-modern-balagtasan/#ixzz56gvmGJYK
Is FlipTop the modern-day Balagtasan?

March 15, 2014 Mark Angeles

Since its inception, FlipTop has reached a magnitude of Filipino fans, mostly from the youth sector. Its
Youtube account, FlipTop Battle League (http://www.youtube.com/user/fliptopbattles) already has over
1.2 million subscribers.

With almost 400 uploaded videos, the most popular being the Loonie/Abra versus Shehyee/Smugglaz
tag team bout in the Dos Por Dos Tournament held at the FlipTop bastion, B-Side at The Collective in
Makati City, with over 17 million views, clearly it has surpassed the leagues in the United States that
sired its format.

FLIPTOP AND BATTLE RAP

The phenomenon of FlipTop was catapulted by the growing internet users in the Philippines hitting 33
million in 2013. It is popular in every part of the country that internet can reach and where there is a
culture of “collectivism” inside a computer shop.

It has already become a household name that young people has called “fliptop” what, in essence, is a
battle rap event.

FlipTop (FlipTop Kru Inc .) is the group’s name which held the very first Filipino Rap Battle League in the
country. It happened on February 6, 2010 at Quantun Café, Makati where rappers (also known as
emcees or MCs) Fuego, Protégé, Datu, and Cameltoe battled onstage.

According to their Facebook page, FlipTop is an events and artist managing organization. The group is
currently lead by Alaric Riam Yuson, more popularly known as Anygma. He came from A.M.P.O.N., an
alternative rap guild prominent in underground circles.

Anygma gave honor to our nation when the Tectonics battle rap was held at Katips Bar and Grillery,
Katipunan Extension, Quezon City in December 2010. Dirtbag Dan lead the MCs from Grind Time Now,
U.S.-based group that set the international standards of rap battle.
All the three battles that day were won by Filipino MCs. And so, on that day, FlipTop gained worldwide
recognition.

At present, FlipTop has thriving divisions in NCR (Metro Manila), CALABARZON (Southern Tagalog
Mainland), Central Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao where battle events are held at least once a year.

In freestyle rap, hurling the insult back to your opponent is called “flip”.

Due to its electrifying prominence, FlipTop has been regarded not just in social networking sites like
Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter but also by mass media. It spawned into independent inter-barangay
and inter-collegiate tournaments.

Students and out-of-school youth have battled among themselves whose verse is strong enough to
instigate a nuclear war. FlipTop has also been a subject matter of popular culture and thesis classes.

The celebration of Linggo ng Wika have never been the same after universities and secondary schools in
different parts of the country included FlipTop in their roster of competitions related to the celebration
of our native language. As such, academicians have haphazardly dubbed it as “the modern Balagtasan”
to the dismay of some battle rappers. To set the record straight, is it really the Balagtasan of the 21st
century?

BALAGTAS AND THE BALAGTASAN

Most of us are familiar with Francisco Balagtas because his metrical romance Florante at Laura is a part
of the high school curriculum for decades.

Balagtas, whose real name was Francisco dela Cruz Baltazar, was often mistaken as Hari ng mga Makata
(“King of the Poets”) and the one who wrote the 18th century corrido Ibong Adarna. His mentor Jose
dela Cruz or Huseng Sisiw held the title and was also also credited to have written the corrido about the
eponymous magical bird but it was never proven. Then again, early Tagalog critics Julian Cruz Balmaceda
and Hermenegildo Cruz called him Hari ng Makatang Tagalog (“King of Tagalog Poetry”).
We study the life of Balagtas like Jose Rizal’s whose two novels Noli me tangere and El Filibusterismo we
also study in high school. It is necessary to do so because part of it is the dedication in metrical poem of
Balagtas to his muse, his inspiration for writing, which he referred to as “Celia” and “MAR”.

Balagtas was so popular and well-respected even after his time that even Jose Rizal and Emilio Jacinto
had quoted him in their writings. The commemoration of his birth anniversary every April 2 has been a
practice even before the early years of American occupation.

Poet and literary critic Virgilio Almario claimed that it was in the afternoon of March 28, 1924, at a
meeting set in preparation for Balagtas Day, where “Balagtasan” was born.

According to his research, some attendees proposed an alternative for that year’s celebration of
Balagtas Day. It had to be fresh and exciting. Someone suggested that they make a redux of duplo, a
native form of verbal joust which were played at funeral wakes. No one objected. Thus, the literary
match which they coined Balagtasan was born.

In order to divert from duplo, the organizers changed the mechanics where only three sets of two will
carry out the Balagtasan and they shortened the whole performance to an hour.

The first Balagtasan was staged on April 2, 1924. Three pairs performed but the crowd favorites were
Jose Corazon de Jesus and Florentino Collantes. De Jesus, whose nom de plume was Huseng Batute, was
already a popular poet even before the event. Amado V. Hernandez was also among those who
participated.

The bout between Huseng Batute and Collantes had a repeat on October 18, 1925 where the
declamation was already “freestyle”—spontaneous or free-flowing. It was where Huseng Batute earned
the title Hari ng Balagtasan (“King of Balagtasan”).

There are other versions of Balagtasan that had sprung in different provinces like the Bukanegan in
Ilocos (named after Ilocano epic poet Pedro Bukaneg) and Crisotan in Pampanga (named after the
Pampango poet-dramatist Juan Crisostomo Soto).
BALAGTASAN, FLIPTOP, AND RAP

It is easy for someone who doesn’t have any knowledge of hip hop and alternative rap to pick up FlipTop
as “the modern Balagtasan” mainly because of the two elements present: verbal joust and the seeming
rhyme and meter when the rappers battling (called emcees or MCs) drop their bars or verses.

Some Filipino MCs assume the title of being a “makata”. A makata is to local poetry what a Jedi master is
to the Star Wars universe. He/she is not just writing poetry or “mambeberso”, but who deserves the title
of a poet laureate.

That is why Balagtas was always depicted with a crown of laurel just like what honored poets and heroes
wore in ancient Greece.

A “makata” knows his rules when it comes to rhyme and meter—at least, the basics of Filipino poetry
like the first rank tugmaang karaniwan (general rhyme), rhyme schemes, and caesura. In Filipino poetry,
words that end with the same vowel does not necessarily rhyme. Glottal stress matters.

There are liberal rules set in hip hop rap called internal and offbeat rhymes. There is a style called
multisyllabic rhyme which Eminem employs. In our country, it is popularly known as “multi” and a lot of
MCs are already skilled with it.

The verse lines are called “bars”, adapted from “music bar” or the musical duration. For a typical hip hop
beat (4/4 time signature), a bar ranges from the first kick drum up to the second snare drum.

MCs could memorize their bars even for the rebuttals. Lines shot could also be freestyle. But in the ‘80s,
freestyle rap is also pre-written.

Rapping are also usually accompanied by instrumental beats which makes it different from spoken word
poetry. Popular rappers in the U.S. who also did battle rap include LL Cool J, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and
MC Hammer.

Though battle rap is a verbal joust, it is far from being the modern Balagtasan. As Almario had noted,
Balagtasan poets are “expected to entertain their audience with bits of humor, with witticisms, with the
spice of sarcasm, and moreover, with theatrics like actors in dramatic presentations.”
Prominent FlipTop rapper BLKD said in an interview, “Bagama’t parehong nagtatampok ng tunggalian ng
pagtula, magkaiba ang sensitivities ng dalawa. May magkaiba silang pinagmulang kasaysayan,
kinabibilangang kultura, at mahalagang kilalanin natin ‘yon.” (“Though both feature the nuances of
poetry, there is a distinction between their sensitivities. They belong to different historical and cultural
channels, and we have to recognize those attributes.”)

The below-the-belt insults that thrash out on drugs and having sexual relations with the opponent’s
mother is a long shot from Balagtasan, or even its progenitor, the duplo.

Yet, there is a native form of Filipino poetry that closely resembles this attribute—a theatrical form of
poetry in the Visayas region called bikal.

A Jesuit missionary named Francisco Ignacio Alcina, who was sent to Cebu, Leyte, and Samar was the
first to have recorded this poetic form among the early locals of Samar and Leyte.

Bikal is a verbal game where the opponents (one pair of male and female; but sometimes a pair of two
males and two females) hurl insults to each other that lasts for an hour or two. It was a traditional game
of mudslinging.

BATTLE RAP AND THE SLAVE TRADE

The long history of hip hop and alternative rap can be traced back to West Africa, in a group called
griots, according to BBC news correspondent Lawrence Pollard.

Griots were used in the Mali Empire (1245-1468) as professional storytellers and praise-singers. They
can be compared to chanters of folk epics in our country whose practice started even before the pre-
Spanish colonial time.

Like the precursor of blues or jazz music, the griots’ tradition was spread by the African people who
were brought to the U.S. during the slave trade.

Researchers link the history of battle rap to hip hop as a form of alternative rap, a subgenre of hiphop.
Its mode of dissing is related to Muhammad Ali’s style of trash talking his opponents.
There is, however, a clear evidence that links battle rapping to an old custom by colonialists Britons in
the U.S., which was adapted to Yo Momma jokes. This form of verbal joust had no literary merits but
had historical significance. Yo Momma jokes are prominent in contemporary American culture. This
method is used in the spoken word game called the dozens, common in African-American communities,
where the players hurl insults at each other until one gives up.

During the slave trade in the U.S., African slaves were sold like crops and poultry. They were placed in
“slave auction blocks” and the owner of the other slave would start to hurl insults to the one in the “hot
seat”. They made disparaging remarks to the slaves’ physical deformities and other weaknesses so they
won’t get sold.

With this approach, battle rap followers will be able to see the nationalist potentials of the competition.
In staging the slave trade, MCs warn us about the nasty history of colonialism.

It could also be the reason why academicians connect it with Balagtasan. Literary critic Bienvenido
Lumbera had observed that even Marcelo del Pilar used the duplo and turned it against the colonizers.

For the rapper BLKD, battle rap has a very significant role in influencing Filipino culture. “Many FlipTop
followers watch to be entertained. FlipTop shows them that one can take pleasure in poetry, one can
take pleasure in playing with words,” he said.

He also supported the relevance of FlipTop to contemporary Philippine literature, saying, “Bagama’t mas
natatampok sa FlipTop ang laitan at katatawanan, malay ang mga manonood na ang entertainment na
nakukuha nila rito ay mula sa husay ng mga emcee sa pagpili ng mga salita, sa paghabi ng mga linya, sa
pagtutugma. Kahit papaano, nakakaimpluwensya ito sa ilang mga kabataang mag-aral sa wika, sa
musika, sa pagtatanghal.” (“Though insulting and poking fun of your opponent draw more attention in
FlipTop, the audience is aware that the entertainment they gain from it comes from the skill of the
emcee of choosing words, weaving lines, and rhyming them. As a minimum, it influences the youth to
study language, music, and stage performance.”)

Surpassing the fame of Balagtasan, FlipTop is breeding more frontliners and followers, acquiring an
esteemed spot in our country’s oral literature and as a performance art.

Source : https://makoydakuykoy.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/is-fliptop-the-modern-day-balagtasan/
Flip Top

 Mark Angeles wrote on gmanetwork.com: “Filipino rap battle league FlipTop has acquired many
fans, mostly from the youth sector. Its Youtube account already has over 1.2 million
subscribers. With almost 400 uploaded videos—the most popular being the Loonie/Abra versus
Shehyee/Smugglaz tag team bout in the Dos Por Dos Tournament held at the FlipTop bastion, B-
Side at The Collective in Makati City, with over 17 million views—it has surpassed the leagues in
the United States that sired the format. [Source: Mark Angeles, gmanetwork.com, March 1,
2014]
 “The phenomenon of FlipTop has grown as the number of Internet users in the Philippines has.
It is popular in every part of the country that the Internet can reach, and where there is a
culture of “collectivism” such as inside a computer shop. In freestyle rap, hurling the insult back
at your opponent is called a “flip”. The group FlipTop held the very first Filipino Rap Battle
League in the country on February 6, 2010 at Quantum Café in Makati where rappers (also
known as MCs) Fuego, Protégé, Datu, and Cameltoe battled onstage.
 “FlipTop is an events and artist managing organization led by Alaric Riam Yuson, more
popularly known as Anygma. Anygma gave honor to our nation when the Tectonics battle rap
was held at Katips Bar and Grillery in Quezon City in December 2010. Dirtbag Dan led the MCs
from Grind Time Now, a US-based group that set the international standards of rap battle. All
the three battles that day were won by Filipino MCs. And on that day, FlipTop gained worldwide
recognition.
 “At present, FlipTop has thriving divisions in the NCR, CALABARZON, Central Luzon, the Visayas,
and Mindanao, where battle events are held at least once a year. FlipTop has gained traction
not just in social networking sites like Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. Independent inter-
barangay and inter-collegiate tournaments—among students and out of school youth—have
sprung up. FlipTop has even become a subject in classes on popular culture and a topic of
theses. The celebration of Linggo ng Wika has never been the same, after universities and
secondary schools in different parts of the country included FlipTop in their roster of
competitions related to the celebration of our native language.

FlipTop: Modern-day Balagtasan?

 Mark Angeles wrote on gmanetwork.com: “Some academics have called Fliptop the modern
Balagtasan—to the dismay of some battle rappers. Literary critic Bienvenido Lumbera had
observed that even Marcelo del Pilar used the duplo and turned it against the colonizers. It is
easy for someone who doesn’t have any knowledge of hip hop and alternative rap to pick up
FlipTop as the modern-day Balagtasan, mainly because of the two elements present: verbal
jousts and the seeming rhyme and meter when the rappers, emcees or MCs drop their bars or
verses. [Source: Mark Angeles, gmanetwork.com, March 1, 2014]
  “Some Filipino MCs assume the title of being a “makata”—not just a “mambeberso” who
writes poetry, but someone approaching the rank of poet laureate. A “makata” knows his rules
when it comes to rhyme and meter—at least, the basics of Filipino poetry like the first rank
tugmaang karaniwan (general rhyme), rhyme schemes, and caesura. In Filipino poetry, words
that end with the same vowel do not necessarily rhyme. Glottal stress matters.
 “There are liberal rules set in hip hop rap called internal and off-beat rhymes. There is a style
called multisyllabic rhyme which Eminem employs. In our country, it is popularly known as
“multi” and a lot of MCs are already skilled with it. The verse lines are called “bars", adapted
from "music bar" or the musical duration. For a typical hip hop beat (4/4 time signature), a bar
ranges from the first kick drum up to the second snare drum.
 “Though battle rap is a verbal joust, it is far from being the modern Balagtasan. As Almario had
noted, Balagtasan poets are “expected to entertain their audience with bits of humor, with
witticisms, with the spice of sarcasm, and moreover, with theatrics like actors in dramatic
presentations.” Prominent FlipTop rapper BLKD (pronounced Balakid) said in an interview that
“though both feature the nuances of poetry, there is a distinction between their sensitivities.
They belong to different historical and cultural channels, and we have to recognize those
attributes.”
 “The below-the-belt insults that imply drug use and having sexual relations with the
opponent’s mother is a long shot from Balagtasan, or even its progenitor, the duplo. Yet there is
a native form of Filipino poetry that closely resembles this attribute: a theatrical form of poetry
in the Visayas region called bikal, a verbal game where the opponents (a male and a female, but
sometimes pairs of two males versus two females) hurl insults at each other that lasts for an
hour or two. It was a traditional game of mudslinging.
 “A Jesuit missionary named Francisco Ignacio Alcina, who was sent to Cebu, Leyte, and Samar
was the first to have recorded this poetic form among the early locals of Samar and Leyte. BLKD
thinks that FlipTop has a significant role in Filipino culture. “Many FlipTop followers watch to be
entertained. FlipTop shows them that one can take pleasure in poetry, one can take pleasure in
playing with words,” he said. He also noted that battle rap is an art form—that while insulting
and poking fun at the opponent is part of the battle, "the audience is aware that the
entertainment they gain from it comes from the skill of the emcee of choosing words, weaving
lines, and rhyming them." At the very least, he said, "it influences the youth to study language,
music, and stage performance." Surpassing the fame of Balagtasan, FlipTop is breeding more
frontliners and followers, acquiring an esteemed spot in our country’s oral literature and as a
performance art.

Source: http://factsanddetails.com/southeast-asia/Philippines/sub5_6e/entry-3897.html
FLIPTOP: Modern Day Poetry

10 OCT 2013 katlynysabelle

Poetry had long since been considered as a form of classical art. It is a literary endeavor than purposely
uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language. The fullness of each line’s meaning is not dependent
on the linguistic and grammatical completeness of the sentence, but rather on the deeper thought
buried underneath the statements that were used. The totality of the poem could not be grasped by
merely reading; it entails a more intricate understanding of the matter at hand. It is usually sublime, so
those without the keen intellect and right perspective were bound to fail in trying to make sense of each
piece. Poems serve as an effective vehicle to convey emotions, beliefs and principles. During the old
times up until now, even the criticisms regarding social issues were creatively hidden behind flowers and
flattery. Here in the Philippines, who would ever forget our precious literary pieces? We have an
abundant collection of awit, korido, and epics, all written in poetry. And of course, the ever famous
Balagtasan by Baltazar tops our list. These forms provided a large part of our indigenous history; the
elements of these works reflected the social structure and condition of our forefathers. The stories itself
portray the experiences the earlier Filipinos had during their time.

Even after knowing how majestic poetry is, we couldn’t deny the fact that at present, it wasn’t as well-
viewed as before. You wouldn’t see a random person who would sit under a tree with a paper and pen,
silently absorbing the aura of his surroundings and taking inspiration for his literature. You couldn’t
make students write poems without hearing them complain about how this activity would make their
heads ache and their noses bleed. You wouldn’t even have friends who would rather read poems than
Wattpad stories, or blogs for that matter. Unlike in the earlier times when it was considered as a past
time, poetry nowadays was removed from the everyday activities, so less and less are being inclined to
it. However, we also cannot say that it doesn’t exist anymore. Truth is, as time went by, as society and
leading ideologies changed, poetry was also transformed into another form.

Who says balagtasan is already dead? Make way for Fliptop, our contemporary Pinoy poetry.

Often coined as the “modern day balagtasan”, it is a battle between two people using words as their
weapon. They use the balagtasan-style of debate, the art of publicly arguing in an extemporaneous,
scaled and rhymed format. It is a form incorporated with rap, and as we all know, rap was also a huge
artistic phenomenon before. As a combination of rap and balagtasan, Fliptop easily entered the Filipino
culture. It was founded as an organized movement by Aric ‘Anygma’ Yuson in 2010, and it steered a
huge crowd in Youtube. It was a big hit for people of all ages, especially for the teenagers. However, as
its popularity and influence shoot up, criticisms arose as well. Some people take fault in its comparison
to Balagtasan. For them, Fliptop is nothing but a street smart’s game, senseless and vulgar. Apparently,
the lines used in Fliptop could be very offensive, seemingly attacking the opponent in a rather personal
level. There were even times when the physical aspect of the player, more so his upbringing, was being
put into the center of ridicule. If this is so, why do we consider Fliptop as something similar to
balagtasan, particularly as a literary art?
What other people fail to see is the real essence of Fliptop. Yes, the statements could be harsh. Yes, it is
very informal and uses tons of taboo words. One might even think that it’s not actually a mean of
entertainment open to everyone, but must rather be considered as an unrelenting material bound to be
censored. Bad influence, illogical and absurd. But behind all these prickly façade lies a more conducive
purpose. It could be considered as the poetry of the 21st century. One might ask, if this is poetry, why
wasn’t it written or delivered in the same way as our classical poems? Let’s face it, we live in a
generation that is more inclined to technological advancements than art and literature. The
incorporation of rap and street qualities in this modern balagtasan makes Fliptop interesting, different
and more enjoyable to many. Poetry was simply put through a medium that would make it cohesive
with our pop culture. Fliptop’s similarity to this classical art does not end on having rhythm and scale.
The connection goes beyond the physical aspect, and delves into a more concealed link. The biggest
likeness of Fliptop to poetry is its role as a literary medium of expression. It is a way in which a person
could actually speak his mind, release his inner thoughts and strategically impart his deep well of ideas.
Fliptop is an art in a different sense, because it is a complex of concepts that was derived from the
immediate surroundings of a person. It could be called a product of society, since the ruling ideologies of
this society greatly affects or even shapes not just the manner of delivery, but also the content of each
piece. The theme of each battle can vary from one to another, it can be any topic known to man. A
single battle may even have changing subjects, depending on what kind of message the players want to
impart to their audience. This quality of a Fliptop battle goes to show than more than the angst, intellect
and spontaneity also plays a huge part in this kind of activity. It is not enough that a person knows how
to rap, or to throw poetic lines for that matter. Fliptop requires a sense of awareness of various topics in
our environment. A pool of knowledge is needed if you want to outsmart the other. Similarly, for the
audience to understand it, they must also have the wits to dissect each thrown line.

And what could be the best source of wit? EXPERIENCE. Experience, after all, is the best teacher one
could possibly have. We learn from it better than we learn from books. This is the very reason why
Fliptop is shaped by society, since our interaction with other people taint our own perspective. And this
changed view in life creates a difference in how we tend to express our thoughts. Fliptop, again, as an
effective means of communication, gives us this chance to air our ideas in a manner that corresponds to
our present popular culture.

Source: https://everythingaboutpopculture.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/fliptop-the-art-battle-begins/