“It caught me off guard”: A$AP Rocky reveals he lost a rap battle to Denzel Washington while filming ‘Highest 2 Lowest’

In the upcoming Spike Lee film Highest 2 Lowest, A$AP Rocky found himself outmatched in a rap battle against Denzel Washington. The moment wasn’t scripted. Midway through filming, Washington jumped into a spur-of-the-moment freestyle, weaving lines from icons like Nas, Tupac, and DMX into his performance.

Rocky, accustomed to dominating in the studio, was stunned. He later admitted that he “lost a rap battle to this man,” though in real life, his craft lies firmly in music. Highest 2 Lowest becomes much more than a crime thriller - it becomes an unexpected place where the worlds of hip-hop and acting collide, and where the real winner of a rap battle might not be who you expect.

How A$AP Rocky ended up conceding a rap battle to Denzel Washington in Highest 2 Lowest

In Highest 2 Lowest, Spike Lee reimagines Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low as a crime thriller set in modern-day New York. Denzel Washington plays David King, a powerful music executive embroiled in a kidnapping crisis. A$AP Rocky portrays “Yung Felon,” an ambitious rapper whose actions propel the narrative. During one pivotal studio scene, the two characters exchange bars, but what ensued was far less staged than expected.

Rocky revealed in an interview on the Million Dollaz Worth Of Game podcast that Washington surprised him on set with an impromptu freestyle. “Denzel was such a great actor, he did something that wasn't even in the script,” Spike Lee recalled. Washington launched into lyrical references from Illmatic by Nas, Moneybagg Yo, NLE Choppa, DMX, and others, delivering them with such ease that Rocky, a professional rapper, was thrown off. “It caught me off guard,” he admitted. “I lost a battle to Denzel.”

The moment packs a unique kind of dramatic weight—Rocky, confident in his rhythm and flow, found himself scrambling to keep pace as Washington pierced through with nostalgic grit. Still, Rocky recognizes what happened wasn’t a slight—it was a testament to craft.

“You’ve got to realize this guy’s a pro. He’s a wordsmith for real,” Rocky said, acknowledging Washington’s formidable presence. “I lost a rap battle to this man. And I’m a professional rapper.”

This unscripted lyrical exchange was more than a fleeting highlight: it became a defining moment in the film’s promotion. The juxtaposition of an Oscar-winning actor holding his own in a freestyle rap battle with one of hip-hop’s prominent voices was as unexpected as it was memorable. Critics have pointed to the scene as one of the film’s electric standouts, as a collision of worlds, charged with authenticity.

Highest 2 Lowest, which will be released in U.S. theaters on August 15 and streaming on Apple TV+ beginning September 5, has already generated buzz for this sequence.