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Scribble Jam

Hip-Hop music festival

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
3 min read
Source updated December 5, 2025
Image credit is listed at the end of this article.

Scribble Jam was an annual hip hop music festival hosted in Cincinnati, Ohio. Dubbed "America's largest hip hop festival", sort of like Woodstock. It was co-founded in 1996 by "Fat" Nick Accurso, and Jason Brunson, founders of graffiti magazine Scribble, and DJ Mr Dibbs, in the parking lot of a local nightclub. The following year's event benefitted from better publicity, and included MC, DJ and breakdance battles for the first time.

In 2000, with the addition of new partners Tony Heitz and Pase Rock, the festival grew in popularity, as tens of thousands of hip hop fans flocked to its grounds in early August. It has been known to attract up to 20,000 fans. In early April 2010, Scribble Jam organizer Kevin Beacham confirmed the persistent rumors that the event would no longer continue, citing the struggling economy and difficulty in securing funding as reasons.

For most of its existence, Scribble Jam refused corporate sponsorship, which Accurso explained as an attempt to keep the festival from being run by "those who don't understand [hip hop] culture", adding that outside marketing or promotion would "defeat the purpose" of the festival. By 2003, however, the festival had started accepting some corporate sponsors; that year's event was backed by Toyota/Scion.

01Competition

The centerpieces of the Scribble Jam festival are the five competitions, four of which are designed to highlight the main aspects of hip hop culture. They include the emcee competition or freestyle battle, the DJ battle or scratching competition, the B-boy battle or breakdancing competition, the graff-writer or graffiti competition, and the beatbox competition. Historically, the most popular of the competitions has been the freestyle battle, although all aspects of hip hop culture are well represented. The festival expanded its initial 1996 emcee and b-boy competitions to include the DJ competition in 1998. In 2003 the beatbox competition was added to the line-up. In the last five years of the festival a Production competition was added to the festival line-up, and there were performances by guests including KRS-One, Eminem, Sage Francis, Atmosphere, Blueprint, Eyedea, Mr Dibbs, Little Brother and Living Legends which greatly increased the festival's popularity.

Eyedea at Scribble Jam 1999.
Eyedea at Scribble Jam 1999.

02Past winners

As of Scribble Jam's conclusion in 2008 there have been thirteen emcee champions, eleven DJ champions, thirteen B-Boy champions, and six beatbox champions.

Emcee battle

DJ competition

  • 1998 - DJ Precyse
  • 1999 - DJ Abilities
  • 2000 - DJ Precyse
  • 2001 - DJ Sprite
  • 2002 - DJ Skwint
  • 2003 - Skratch Bastid
  • 2004 - Skratch Bastid
  • 2005 - Spare Change
  • 2006 - I-Dee
  • 2007 - Skratch Bastid
  • 2008 - DJ T-Lo

B-boy competition

  • 1996 - Forrest Getemgump (individual)
  • 1997 - Self-Explanatory
  • 1998 - Phase II
  • 1999 - Midwest Junkie Cats (group with members of the Junkwartz and the Battlecats)
  • 2000 - Junkwartz
  • 2001 - Motion Disorderz
  • 2002 - Motion Disorderz
  • 2003 - Motion Disorderz
  • 2004 - Motion Disorderz
  • 2005 - Brickheadz
  • 2006 - Brickheadz
  • 2007 - Motion Disorderz
  • 2008 - Brickheadz

Beatbox battle

  • 2003 - A Train
  • 2004 - A Train
  • 2005 - J.Beetz (from SICK.SOUND.SYNDROME)
  • 2006 - DJ Snuggles
  • 2007 - Poizunus
  • 2008 - Scott Jackson

There are only two production champions listed on the official Scribble Jam website:

  • 2008 - Optiks
  • 2007 - X:144
Watch videos about Scribble JamExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Scribble Jam”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

Images, from Wikimedia Commons:

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Related topics

List of hip-hop festivals

The following is an incomplete list of hip-hop festivals, which encapsulates music festivals focused on hip hop music or other elements of hip-hop culture. Hip-hop, also called rap music, is a music genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhymin speech that is chanted.

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Hip-hop culture is an art movement that emerged in New York City, in the borough of the Bronx, primarily within the black community. Hip-hop as an art form and culture has been heavily influenced by both male and female artists.

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