Cyphers

“Is it hard to compose? Na it’s easy as Mozart - Sleazy I flow past dark as a crowbar - blammed in your face – angry today – so the fact is you had best be standing away - when I explode I come to connect those electrodes on fresh flows so you’re best to expect those - fuck man I be rugged as Necro - back in days of the most sadistic…”

-Mr Key

Many people argue that UKHH (after a brief yet sparkling period of acclaim in the late nineties and early noughties) has become a bit of a lame horse and in many respects they have a case. As the ‘dominated by dickheads’ tag gets furiously brushed across the entire scene, rappers in the UK find themselves in a bit of a predicament where options appear limited.

One option is to buy another hat, put out another mixtape and continue giving it the 'deadly serious’ look in the hope that diamonds will shower their doorstep. Another option is to stop taking everything so seriously and have a cypher. The place where it all began.

Cyphers usually begin in one of two ways:

As the inevitable end game of a piss up involving a select few likeminded individuals, or as the result of an SMS invite offered out to a chosen few at silly o'clock in the morning.

They usually take place in the recesses of public space; the back room of a boozer, a dimly lit car park or in the grotty bedroom of a likeminded individual. They usually start slowly but soon take pace and can last for HOURS. They’re mental. There is a tangible sense of etiquette involved; cyphers rely on beatbox soundtracks, various eclectic but most often stalwart subject matter and the copious consumption of alcohol and drugs. Most significantly, it is generally understood that contributing to a collective stream of consciousness is the main aim. As a result, cyphers are often incredibly challenging to fathom, pigeonhole or decipher.

Grime kids call it clashing but they are missing the point. Battle emcees turn up with a catalogue of calculated pre-written punchlines and fallbacks. Open mic nights offer a platform but cannot seem to capture the same soul. I have racked my brain to find an equivalent but there doesn’t seem to be anything out there that embraces the same degree of on-the-spot-driven-by-that-moment-in-time-and-that-moment-only spontaneity as dropping freestyles in hip hop cyphers.

My first cyphers were lonely and rubbish; just me, myself and a cassette player. My brain was untrained and lazy plus my mum and dad (just like the short lived drum kit days) would continually tell me to keep it down by banging on the living room ceiling. I didn’t know what to say because I wasn’t saying anything to anyone. I would rap about things I knew nothing about, record them and play the tapes back to myself and myself alone.

Those first tapes were stolen (along with my car) a few years later and with them went an entire chapter of my cyphering past - a chapter that was almost certainly laughed at by a gang of joyriders before being torched in a distant lay-by. Unperturbed, I took my new found passion and showcased it to my closest friends; I began kicking freestyles at any given opportunity and they too were quick to tell me to ‘shut the fuck up’.

It wasn’t until a few months later at a house party that I stumbled upon two likeminded local rappers - swigging bottles of white wine and freestyling in a mutual friend’s kitchen that I realised there was a tangible scene beyond the four walls of my bedroom. I was invited to join the cypher and even though I was petrified I accepted the invitation with a level of enthusiasm you only ever see from someone who has been waiting for an opportunity for a very long time - an opportunity to bash heads with someone other than myself.

It is almost funny to think that chance house party encounter kick started a healthy and regular series of late night rendezvous between a roster of likeminded individuals who shared an almost primal urge to originate bars on the very spot that they stood / stand.

The true beauty of cyphering is that they remain largely undocumented. Articulating whatever your brain tells you to articulate lasts for that moment in time alone, blink and you’ll probably miss it. Cyphers happen, incredible content surfaces and then it disappears. The fact that the results count for next to nothing only makes the communion stronger but also keeps the cypher (rightfully) underground.