Best Hip-Hop Night

An open area at the Mother's Pub becomes a launch pad each week for creative hip-hop music-making. A middle-age guy wails on a harmonica and guitar, to the rapping of an MC, who's rhyming to scratching and cuts of a turntablist. Jams like these can be found at "For Those Who Listen," a grassroots open-mic showcase of lyricism, poetry, and MC and DJ battles. Among the throng of hip-hop lyricists who come to square off, a guy challenges another, and they step up to shoot rhymes back and forth in a showdown. The night was created by members of the Fader Ballistix turntablist band: Immortal, Reakt, K-razor, Spytek, I-emerge, and SPS, and by 7th Direction band members Colossus, Choppa D-vize, Immortal, and Mordechai. The musicians wanted a way to perform, practice, and promote musical expression. Now that word's gotten out, battle lines have been drawn -- at least 25 MCs come in hopes of prime rhyming time to compete in rapping throwdowns. Hip-hop enthusiasts from Orlando to Miami trek to Broward for the musical improv night.