With every passing second, the ultimate chess battle approaches, and chess fans worldwide can’t wait to see what will happen in the 2021 FIDE World Championship. Now, even before the first moves are played, freestyle rap extraordinaire Harry Mack has brought his unique skills to Chess.com to lead us into the single most important chess match of the last three years.

Famous for his unparalleled improvisation skills, Harry Mack is arguably the world’s best freestyle rapper. With over 1.5 million followers on his YouTube Channel, he was already a sensation before the chess world got to know his work through Samay Raina’s video of a chess rap… based on five words:

Being inspired by his incredible work, Chess.com invited Harry Mack to PogChamps 4 where he was one of the highlights. He dropped many mind-bending freestyles during this event, which are collected here:

Chess.com couldn’t miss the opportunity to work with Harry Mack for the biggest chess event there is, the World Championship, so we reached out to him to create a new sound. Today we are excited to unveil two new raps, both performed in one live take—no re-recordings or edits were done. All he was given were some keywords and facts about the players and World Championship history, and he delivered the rest. 

Completely improvised and done in a single sublime take, the freestyle sensation rhymes about the careers, styles, and achievements of champion GM Magnus Carlsen and challenger GM Ian Nepomniachtchi. 

Enjoy Harry Mack’s slick rhymes about the current World Champion. There may be only one person on the planet who can condense Magnus’s positional style, previous world championship victories, peak rating, and more into two minutes as entertainingly as this:

Then comes the time for Harry Mack to spit fire about the Russian challenger. Ian’s amazing personal score against Carlsen, his two Russian championships, and his dynamic style are only a few of the facts Harry brings to the light in equally quickfire fashion.

Do you want more freestyle chess raps? Tune in live for game one of the 2021 FIDE World Championship broadcast on November 26 to see the debut of his next video!