2Pac battlin' MC Smooth... here's the story
2Pac battlin' MC Smooth... here's the story...
One of the realest moments from that second trip wasn’t on no schedule. Nobody set it up. Nobody said, “We finna have a battle.” It just happened, and back then, that was usually when the best shit happened.
Atron Gregory brought a female rapper through named MC Smooth. They called her the Female Mac, and she could spit. For real. This wasn’t no chick somebody put a look on, gave a record to, and told everybody she was dope. Smooth had bars. You knew it as soon as she opened her mouth. She wasn’t in there trying to be cute, and she damn sure wasn’t trying to be the “female rapper” in a room full of men. She came in there like a rapper. Period.
Now Atron was Pac’s manager, head of TNT, and one of the main people behind everything moving around there. So when Atron brought somebody through, people paid attention. And I ain’t gonna sit here thirty-something years later acting like I knew everybody’s personal business, because I didn’t. But I always felt like there might’ve been something going on between him and MC Smooth besides music. Nobody told me that. I never asked. It was just something about how they moved around each other that made me think, Hmm… okay. I had a pretty good read on people back then, but whatever it was, if it was anything at all, that was their business. I stayed out of grown folks’ shit. I was there to make music.
And that’s when the music took over.
Somehow Pac and MC Smooth started freestyling at each other.
At first it was just bars. Somebody say something, the other one come back. Then somebody land one a little harder, now the other person gotta answer it. Next thing you know, it ain’t no casual freestyle no more. They battling.
And I’m talking about a real battle.
Pac going at her. Smooth going right back. Nobody giving up shit.
Everybody know Pac could rap, so that part wasn’t shocking. What caught me was Smooth didn’t shrink at all. She wasn’t standing there starstruck because it was 2Pac. She wasn’t trying to laugh everything off or play nice because she was in the studio around his people. She went straight at that nigga.
And she was holding her own. That got everybody’s attention.
People stopped whatever they was doing. You know how it gets in the studio when somebody says some shit and the whole room reacts at once. Heads turn. Somebody holler. Somebody make that ugly face like, Ooooh, that was cold. Then the other rapper gotta come right back because now everybody looking at them.
That was the energy in there. And Pac loved that kind of shit.
If you could really rap, he wanted to hear it. He wasn’t one of them dudes who needed everybody around him to be weak so he could feel like the best rapper in the room. If you came with something, he came harder. Competition woke something up in him. You could see it.
Smooth kept pressing him, and Pac kept answering.
She’d throw something. Pac would come back. Pac would hit her with something. She’d come right back at him.
And after a while, you could tell this shit had moved past just having fun. Now pride was in it. Neither one of them wanted to be the one that got quiet.
Smooth was competitive as hell, and I respected that about her. She wasn’t backing off just because of who Pac was. Matter of fact, I think the fact that it was Pac made her want to go even harder. She had something to prove, and she was proving it right there in front of everybody.
But eventually Pac had enough. He had traded his bars. He had done what he wanted to do. In his mind, the shit was over.
He told her he was through. Smooth kept going. Pac said he was done. She still kept coming.
Now I’m watching him, and I can already see his mood changing. Anybody who knew Pac knew there was a difference between him joking around and him being finished. Once that switch flipped, all that smiling and playing was over.
Pac walked over, grabbed his weed, and started rolling a blunt.
That was his way of saying, This shit is done.
He ain’t storm out. Ain’t make no big scene. He just started rolling up like the battle wasn’t even happening anymore.
Smooth still wouldn’t let it go. She kept throwing bars at him. Pac kept rolling. Then without even giving her much attention, he hit her with it.
“I’m through, bitch.”
That was it. Battle over. Everybody in the room knew it too.
There wasn’t no confusion about whether they was finna do another round. Pac had already moved on in his head, and once Pac decided something was over, most of the time that motherfucker was over.
But I’ll say this about MC Smooth: she was nice. Real nice.
I’m not taking nothing away from her because of how it ended. She stood in there and went bar for bar with 2Pac, in his environment, around his people, and never acted scared of the moment. A lot of rappers wouldn’t have done that. Male or female. She believed in her shit, and she had every right to.
Pac was just Pac. And Pac being Pac, he was always gonna make damn sure he got that last word.
I sat there watching the whole thing the same way I watched everything on those trips. I was soaking it up. I knew I was around something special, even if I didn’t fully understand yet how special some of those moments would become later.
There wasn’t no camera crew there documenting it. No phones out recording every damn thing like today. Nobody was thinking about content. Nobody was thinking about what was gonna go viral.
It was just a studio full of people, two rappers with something to prove, and hip-hop doing what hip-hop did back then.
That’s what made those rooms different.
The shit you remembered most wasn’t always the song that got recorded or the famous person who walked through the door. Sometimes it was something that came out of nowhere. Somebody talking shit. Somebody jumping on a beat. Somebody freestyling. Somebody getting mad. Something happening that nobody planned, but everybody in the room knew they had just witnessed some real shit.
That battle between Pac and MC Smooth was one of those moments.
It got competitive. Then it got personal enough for Pac to be done with it. And when he was done, he let everybody know. No big ending. No handshake. No “good battle.”
Just Pac rolling his blunt and saying, “I’m through, bitch.” That was Pac.
And I was right there in the room watching the whole damn thing.