Student's beats are ready for battle

Rap battles came out of the underground and into pop culture's mainstream with stories like the film "8 Mile." But somebody has to make the beats for the rappers, and that scene has fights of its own.

Beat battles for producers are popping up around the country, and in one of these battles, a Seattle University sophomore has come out victorious. Marcus Marino, known as Marcus D, won the Seattle Red Bull Big Tune beat battle in July and is headed for national competition in Atlanta Nov. 3.

"I didn't expect [to win] at all," Marino said. "I went in hoping that I would get second so I could at least go to Atlanta."

But the crowd hollering in July wasn't surprised.

"Any great rapper would love to have rapped on it," blogged Seattle Times music writer Andrew Matson after the local contest in July. "Any mediocre rapper would have been dead scared. I could tell right away he would win."

Soon Marino will be up against the first and second place beatmakers from seven other cities. The national competition will be filmed for B.E.T., and the winner will be flown to Los Angeles to work with an emcee of his or her choice. Previous winners have worked with Nas and Young Buck.

In a beat battle, producers come prepared with an arsenal of their hottest beats: intense, 60-second storms of kick drum thumps and old-school samples and any tricks that'll bring the judges to their knees.

"You can't just have a four-second loop that goes for the whole 60 seconds," Marino said. "People get bored. People want to hear something new. It really is just like talking to someone and trying not to have that awkward silence."

Competition is set up bracket-style, with producers going head-to-head and taking turns to play their stuff. Some producers dance. Some wave their hands. Others just press play and wait anxiously for cheers or boos from the audience.

Even though competitors can't change their beats onstage the way rappers can improvise, the battles are anything but predictable.

"You can play something in Seattle, and it's not going to be felt as hard as something that you play in Atlanta," Marino said. "There's different people. There's a different type of popular music down there and all kinds of factors."

Soon, Marino will also be finding out how his beats will be felt in Japan. Not only has he proved himself at Big Tune, but his debut album is being re-released in Japan through Elevation Records imprint Tamashie Creations.

Recorded his senior year of high school, Marino never expected the album to be so well received.

"I didn't expect to do anything with it except just hand it out in my high school," he said. "Once the label picked me up, they pushed it to another label, and they said it was the sound they were looking for."

On the album, Marino worked with high-profile local rappers like Geologic of Blue Scholars, Grynch and Substantial. The re-release will also feature some new tracks.

"If I was in Detroit, I'm sure I'd have a bit harder of a time being a white, 20-year-old making hip-hop music," he said. "Everybody around Seattle has been really cool."

He said the album's name, "Revival of the Fittest," expresses his hope that hip-hop can bring back "artistry in the lyrics and the rhythms."

"Mainstream hip-hop back in the '90s was definitely more about just the art of rhyming, instead of all of the necklaces, peaces and everything, the pop culture of it," he said. "I think we should always be working forward, not necessarily just the styles but as far as progressing as human beings."

Marino also hopes to see some revival in rap battles and beat battles around Seattle and has helped host and judge some local battles himself.

"It's good to have producers judging beat battles because we know the technique that goes into making that snare hit or the kick bump," Marino said. "Constructive criticism is the best way to help somebody out."

But Marino isn't anxious to be facing the judges himself next week.

"I think that if I just focus on making what I know how to do, then people will see that it's genuine," he said.