In Manhattan, and its true on some level till this day; its a whole different mentality from the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, which I didn't know at the time - because you basically just know your neighborhood.
A lot of the old-school artists didn’t even respect what’s being called freestyle now... any emcee coming off the top of the head wasn’t really respected. The sentiment was emcees only did that if they couldn’t write. The coming off the top of the head rhymer had a built-in excuse to not be critiqued as hard