Harry Mack - The Greatest Freestyle Rapper

Freestyle rapping is when the rapper doesn’t have materials prepared/memorised, and simply starts rapping (to a beat, or not) based on what they see in front of them, or a random subject.

The lyrics are improvised on the spot, where the rapper would rap about any subject that comes to mind; the rapper would sometimes pick out things from around them to add to their rap. In the 90s, freestyle rap changed a little to where the lyrics would often be pre-written, but we won’t get into that for now.

The beauty of freestyle rap (true freestyle rap I mean, or “off the top of the dome”) is that the rapper has to basically create a verse on the spot and make it rhyme, which is quite difficult in itself, and then when they go and add verses about things around them into the mix, that just elevates the difficulty multiple times. They have to make lyrics, make them rhyme, stick to the beat (if there is one) AND think about how to add new things while they’re rapping.

The level of difficulty and almost inhuman ability of some freestyle rappers is what draws people to freestyle rapping.

Most freestyle rapping is slower in tempo when compared to regular rap songs, and that’s simply because the rapper needs time to think of the new thing to say, which is understandable, however, there are some true freestyle rappers that can rap in a way that would make you believe the rap was pre-written; their flow, tempo, rhythm, and succinctness of the lyrics are on such a high level that it seems like just a normal song that was pre-written. I am here to introduce to you (if you haven’t come across him before) one of these rappers.

Harry Mack is arguably the best freestyle rapper to ever exist. This of course is my opinion, but I (along with many people) believe that he is objectively the most capable freestyle rapper to ever do it.

Freestyle rap was technically a dying art for decades. Freestyle rap would mostly only feature in rap battles and, even then, it wouldn’t be true freestyle in most cases (most would be pre-written). Until Harry Mack appeared that is.

I came across Harry Mack years ago when he was doing videos where he would stand on the beach and freestyle rap about the people walking by (or standing watching him of course). After watching a few of his videos I knew he was a great freestyle rapper, and I knew how hard what he did was, even if I wasn’t a rapper, because freestyle rapping is objectively a difficult thing to do.

Years later, when lock down happened to most people around the world (most relevantly in America, where Harry Mack is from), he had to shift the way he did freestyle rapping, as people were not going to beaches anymore. Harry Mack started to go on Omegle, which is an online video chatting website where you can chat to random strangers.

I’m going to share some videos of these “Omegle Bars”, as well as other short videos that I found amazing. My hope is that these videos would show how great Harry Mack’s freestyling is. These clips are in no particular order.

Please watch the video first, before reading my part (so that the surprise not ruined):

Harry Mack Octagon Scheme

This video is just 1 segment of one of his early Omegle bars videos. I wanted to share it because it contained one of the craziest, most mind-blowing rap schemes I’ve ever heard from Harry Mack. I didn’t expect much from the last word, Octagon, as it’s just a shape, but then he mentioned the stop sign (which is an octagon shape) and I thought yeah, that is a great way to go with it, specially within the context he had there… and then, he goes into a whole other gear and talks about 8 sides (like the octagon) of his personality. This blew my mind. How can he think of such a concept while rapping, and go on to actually describe 8 sides of his personality so succinctly! That is just insane!

Please don’t forget that this was a freestyle! The words were given to him literally seconds before he started rapping!

Segment from Omegle Bars 45

This one was insane as well. The words given were generally okay, but not the greatest (compared to what he usually gets), so he just decided to take words that he heard while talking to them before the rap started… just that alone is a great feat if you think about it; he didn’t set out to use those words but he remembered them, and he even remembered the name of the guy in the back (that probably freaked him out, as Harry says in the rap), and he even mentioned some of the things they talked about (he does that quite often and usually it’s a shock factor for the audience, especially if they aren’t able to follow the other lyrics he raps).

The highlight of this video, of course, is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (technically not a real word) and how he used it. He said the word perfectly in a rap, which is surprising on its own, but what I loved about it was how he said it, and how he set the rhyming scheme with it for the following words.

Then afterwards, he goes through some of the other words they previously mentioned and one of them was “tampon”. He took that word and created a whole menstrual cycle scheme that actually made sense. HOW!

Segment from Omegle Bars 42

Here he went crazy with the words “sublet” and “citizenship” and used them to brag about how he was better than other rappers (a staple in the rap cuisine of course), and then flipped the script and started to talk about citizenship and struggles of immigrants which was great.

Rapping to Busta Rhymes’s ‘Break Ya Neck’ Beat

Now I’m sure a lot of us heard of “Break Ya Neck”. This is a very fast rap song (as is Busta Rhymes’s rap style). This song is generally very difficult to rap, even if you knew the lyrics! That’s how fast it is… so imagine freestyling to this beat?

This clip is from one of Harry Mack’s live session on Twitch where people give him words to rap about while the beats are just cycling (he does this for hours at a time by the way). You can see from the video that he is reading the words on the screen and adding them to the rap, while rapping at an insane speed! He's not only reading, but actually understanding what he is reading while rapping this fast! In one part of the video, someone asks his to go into a sing-song flow and he actually does it, which shows he is actually understanding what he is reading, and not simply reading unconsciously.

Harry Mack Breaking down His Own Rap, While Rapping

This one is a nice video that shows Harry Mack’s grasp on his techniques. He began giving lessons on rhyming while rapping at the same time. Just how does his mind work!!

Harry Mack Gets A Rhyme Scheme To Follow

Here someone gave Harry Mack a specific rhyme scheme (AABB, ABAB, ABBA, BBAA) and harry mack handled it beautifully.

Harry Mack often uses these live sessions, and Omegle bars, as practice for his freestyling and it clearly shows in his growth. If you compare his first Omegle bars to the latest one (which I believe is 92!), you can clearly see improvement upon improvement. He has definitely brought freestyle rapping into the limelight again.

Harry Mack actually began to do tours in America and Europe! I believe he does some pre-written songs in his shows, but the main concept is that people would give words as they enter the venue, and they are then displayed on a big screen for everyone while Harry Mack uses them to rap. That is an insane concept for a live show!

The above is just a glimpse of what Harry Mack can do when freestyle rapping, because truthfully, if I wanted to go in depth this would probably be a 40-minutes read. I just wanted to introduce him to those who may not have come across him before, and I hope to have done that here.