Hot 97's own Funkmaster Flex has had a number of rappers come through to Ciroc Studios to get their freestyle on: everyone from Vic Mensa to Iman Shumpert spazzed out this year. And no diss to anyone who's done it, but there's an upper echelon of emcee that doesn't seem to hit the booth...until now.
Before Black Thought, the resident spitter for the mighty Roots crew (who are also Jimmy Fallon's house band), stepped up to the mic, Flex let it be known: "I like to answer people's demands, I like to come through with what they ask me for." Sounds like heads have been itching for Thought to bless the mic, and bless it he does...for like 10 minutes over Mobb Deep's fuego "Burn" instrumental.
It's almost too much to be like "here's the hottest quotables" in this freestyle; Thought's entire rhyme book should be thrown into a museum. He's an OG these days, but makes it perfectly clear that he's "not one of y'all peers," he is in fact "the sum of y'all fears." It's also interesting to see Flex got ballistic at the end about rappers who have to do "50 takes" of their freestyles.
If you've only seen the Roots being funky and funny on NBC, and didn't think Black Thought really had bars, I'd say stop whatever you're doing for the next 10 minutes and listen to the griot spit. Then go back and watch Black Thought and Method Man murder Sirius XM's studio.
