« Orukusaki interviewed for the East Bay Express »

Some people remember their first schoolyard fight. Orukusaki remembers his first rap battle. It's been a long day — his car broke down five minutes from work, and is in a shop in El Sobrante — but Orukusaki summons every detail:

"[A friend] showed me a flyer to a show," recalls Orukusaki. "It had Souls of Mischief, Tone Loc, Rahzel, this whole hip-hop line-up. At the top, in graphic, electronic letters, I thought it said 'Breakfest,' [like] hip-hop and break-dancing. We drive all the way out to Mountain View, and we get there and I'm [seeing] the people and the styles, and I'm like, 'This kind of looks like a rave.' Then it dawned on me that it wasn't called 'Breakfest,' it was called 'Freakfest.'"

Nevertheless, Orukusaki found his way to the hip-hop stage. He wound up battling, and easily dispensing with, four amateurs, before winning a hundred bucks from judge Tone Loc.

Read the full article by David MacFadden-Elliot here.