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Can you win a hip hop pub quiz by bringing a rapper? Sophy Grimshaw turns up with Lethal Bizzle and ! nds out

We’re cool now. It was a feud about who was the better lyricist, like a Jay-Z and Nas thing. It got out of hand at one time. We used to be cussing each other’s mum and everything.’

Soon Bizzle has written a guess for every mug shot, including the late ODB from Wu-Tang Clan. Is he a fan? ‘I met [Wu-Tang rapper] Raekwon and I felt we had a connection. Listening to Wu-Tang Clan when I was younger changed me. It wasn’t about being perfect or polished, just being real. That made me confi dent, made me who I am,’ says Bizzle. ‘No bouji celebrity b******, just cool as f***. That’s me.’

He whizzes through some rap general

knowledge questions at lightning speed and then we’re on to hip hop in movies. ‘You’ve gotta love Public Enemy, man,’ says Bizzle, when the group is mentioned in a question. ‘They showed people the intellectual side of hip hop. They took a lot of risks, talking about racism and what was going on around them.’

Bizzle is something of an intellectual ambassador for rap himself, having appeared on Newsnight, and written for The Times and the Guardian criticising Tory leader David Cameron MP for confl ating urban music with violent crime. What does he think of fellow grime star Tinchy Stryder accepting fi nancial backing from Liberal

LETHAL

QUIZZLEWHEN HOTLINE LEARNED there was a new hip hop-themed pub quiz at the Three Kings pub in east London, we couldn’t fi nd anything in the rules to say that you couldn’t rock up with a bona fi de hip hop superstar on your team. So we invited Mobo Award-winner Lethal Bizzle, who has collaborated with the likes of Busta Rhymes, Lil’ Jon and Dizzee Rascal, and even has music-quiz experience, having appeared on Never Mind the Buzzcocks. ‘Yeah, I’m up for it, it sounds fun,’ he says when he gets our call. ‘Buzzcocks was hilarious but I’ll have a better chance at this.’

Settling into a booth with a pint as the Hip Hop Pub Quiz is about to begin, Bizzle, as he likes to be called, doesn’t exactly blend seamlessly into the crowd. He is decked out in crystal-encrusted shades and his hoodie is emblazoned with silver skulls, Skullz on My Hoodie being the name of one of the tracks on his new album Go Hard, out this month. ‘The beat is just nuts and the lyrics are about the randomest things, man; Transformers and Power Rangers,’ he says of the track. ‘The whole album is a real party album.’

The quiz, hosted by urban music promoters The Doctor’s Orders, begins with a picture round. Rather than the usual snaps of TV personalities photocopied from the Radio Times, this consists of rappers’ mugshots. Bizzle confi dently scribbles names next to each image. The other teams aren’t going at anything like the same speed – we must be on to a winner.

So who would Bizzle most enjoy beating in a pub quiz? ‘Wiley,’ comes the reply instantly. ‘But then beating Wiley, that’s just normal for me, ha.

Democrat Norman Lamb MP? ‘I didn’t know that. I might go to Gordon Brown and ask for some of my tax money back,’ muses Bizzle. ‘I’d ask him for £100,000.’ That seems almost modest. ‘Per video.’

Next up is hip hop in sport. ‘I’ll be OK as long as there aren’t questions about cricket,’ reckons our man. But not knowing some American stats (about basketball and the Super Bowl) loses us a few points. The next challenge is ‘true or false’. It’s mostly blind guesswork here. This rapper is afraid of horses, that rapper likes bananas for breakfast – it’s usually impossible to know. There’s also a claim that Jay-Z’s image is to appear on a postage stamp. Bizzle is unconvinced. ‘I don’t think he needs that. He’s already got it all – plus Beyoncé.’

We’re clearly in the running for fi rst place and the victors’ spoils of free CDs and T-shirts, with Lethal Bizzle scoring 100% on more than one of the rounds. But it all hangs in the balance with a sudden death fi nal. Bizzle has to circle which names on a sheet of paper are rappers’ real names. If even one answer is incorrect, no points are scored for the round. His own real name, Maxwell Ansah, doesn’t appear. ‘I’ll put it in next time,’ offers our quiz master hastily.

When it’s time to mark the papers, a few wrong moves – the tricky sports round, some wrong guesses for true or false, and losing the sudden death round – have cost us the top spot. Out of 16 teams, we win a respectable third place. Hotline scans the other tables to see if anyone snuck in Kanye West. Bizzle seems happy with the result. ‘That was fun, man. I think I might come back and do it again.’Hip Hop Pub Quiz: 24 Oct The Three Kings, 7 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1, 020 7253 0483 Lethal Bizzle tour: 7 Oct Liverpool Academy, 8 Oct Birmingham Academy, 12 Oct London Islington Academy

We’re in the running for first place, but it all hangs on a sudden death final

Uhh…

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