BC News|September 26, 2014 03:29 EDT
KJ-52 Sets Guinness World Record with His Crew for Longest Team Freestyle; 13 Straight Hours Rap Made Him 'Mental' [VIDEOS]
Here's an interesting fact about KJ-52! Did you know he is part owner of a World Guinness Record for Hip-Hop? The veteran rapper chatted with BreatheCast about a wide array of topics including a legendary 13 hour team freestyle performance earlier this year.
"It was a team effort. Initially it started with my man DJ Official being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer so I thought, 'How can I help him raise money for his operation'?" he explained to us on how the idea of the record came about.
He continued, "So I thought, 'What if I did a freestyle marathon and people sponsored by the minute?' Well in the process of that he got all his funds raised, but I had liked the idea."
KJ said he sent in all the applications to Guinness on a whim and the approved turnaround time was very quick.
"I knew a couple of guys I thought I could pull it off with. The record was ten hours so I thought it was pretty doable. I talked to my man Urban Disciple and Urban D over at Crossover and said why don't we do it at your church because its a hip-hop church," he said, "13 hours later we had broken the record but it didn't get approved until six months later."
KJ feels safe about other emcees coming for his hip-hop freestyle crown because he does not think it will be broken anytime soon. "The reason why, I don't think rappers can get along with each other. It was so funny when I looked at the record because the individual record has been broken like 10 or 12 times. So people keep one upping the individual record where I think it's up to around 17 hours," he said.
"I think the team record had never even been attempted except for one time. It made me think that most rappers are so out for self that they are not going to want to work or share the glory with other emcees. In this case no one emcee can take the credit. The other thing is we all work for another purpose."
The "Tonight" rapper said they had mapped out the process on how they would each send their time rapping. The goal was everyone would do one hour themselves and one hour as a team, and they would switch back and forth.
"So it was a core of myself and four other people. You had to keep going. The rules are very specific. You can't babble words, you can't pause more than three seconds. You could have an unlimited amount of people in it," KJ explained.
One of the main problems he said was there were a lot of guys who thought they could freestyle, but really could not.
"I had tons of emcees who were down and then I'd tell them to send me a video of you going for an hour. And that's when I'd never hear from them again," he laughed.
The whole process "...was hands down mentally the hardest thing I'd ever done. I had rap tourette syndrome for 24 hours. I couldn't stop rapping sentences in my head."
Watch KJ-52's hour long part of the freestyle below:
Here is one of the group freestyle games:
KJ-52's Mental will be out on October 21 and it can be pre-ordered on iTunes here.
The album features KB, Soul Glo Activatur, Lecrae, Tedashii, and others.
"Gameface [1st Half Edition]" can be heard below:
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