After accepting Flex’s challenge to rap backwards, the Massachusetts-bred MC performed on Hot 97 on Tuesday (September 6).
Joyner Lucas Has a History of Rapping Backwards
In reference to Joyner Lucas’ 2015 song backwards, Flex said, “I saw something seven years ago. I saw you rhyming backwards. I seen it — might I say — cranking, hard. I’m into challenges; I’m gonna challenge you to do that again. ‘Backwords Part 2,’ that sounds like where we’re going with this.”
Over Nas’ “Nas Is Like” instrumental, Lucas delivered a punishing freestyle. After rapping as normal, he hit the rewind button and repeated the same bars backwards.
Joyner spit, “N-ggas’ll drag you under, grab the boat and then have you suffer / A million ways to kill you, fold you up ’til your back is ruptured / Rupture your back, pussy, needles heroin acupuncture / When I’m packing punches, rap in reverse ’til I’m back to frontwards”.
Astonished, Funk Flex slapped the table and scrunched his face throughout Lucas’ performance to 50 Cent and Biggie’s 2003 collaboration, “Realest N-ggas.” “HARD!” he proclaimed at one point.
The Inspiration Behind Backwards
Joyner Lucas explained his original “Backwords” song’s inspiration and process to DJBooth in 2015.
He said, “I write all my lyrics on my iPad. For the backwards, I copy and pasted the same verse and then made another paragraph underneath and went all the way from the ending to the beginning and then figured out how to make it work.”
Lucas continued saying: “I didn’t try to get a point across like, ‘I’m an MC, I’m super lyrical and I’m gonna prove it.’ It was more so for me; I wanted to see if I could pull it off. I wasn’t thinking about if other people are gonna like it or not … I’m always looking to do something different that somebody else isn’t doing.”
Nas was the first rapper to spit backwards in his 2001 Stillmatic track, “Rewind” where he told an entire story in reverse. Although Joyner Lucas was not the first to rap backwards this performance was wildly impressive
