Spike Lee’s ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ Stuns with Denzel Washington and A$AP Rocky Rap Battle

Denzel Washington stunned A$AP Rocky in an unplanned rap battle while filming Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest, set to open on August 15.

During a vital studio scene, Washington, cast as music exec David King, blindsided the Grammy nominee with sharp freestyle verses. "That was crazy because I did not know that that man was such a fan of hip-hop like that," A$AP Rocky told Spike Lee during their recent appearance on Wallo and Gillie's Million Dollaz Worth f Game podcast.

The magic struck when Washington's King squared off with A$AP Rocky's Yung Felon in the studio. Without warning, Washington unleashed a barrage of verses, mixing hits from Nas, Tupac, DMX, Moneybagg Yo, and NLE Choppa. His co-star stood speechless.

"I presumed he was on some Miles Davis sh*t, maybe some Alice Coltrane. [...]. Yo, your man came on set talking about Moneybagg Yo lyrics, NLE Choppa lyrics, DMX lyrics. So in this scene, he just start freestyling like regular, so it caught me off guard, but I was fanning out the whole time. [...] And just to see him freestyle, he got me up out of there. I lost the battle to Denzel," A$AP Rocky admitted.

"Denzel was such a great actor, he did something that wasn't even in the script," Spike Lee also shared about the iconic actor, while recalling the process of filming Highest 2 Lowest. Apparently, the freestyle lifted the whole film up, and Lee says he didn't even have to offer the stars much direction.

"Cameras rolling, I'm not gonna stop. They were flowing. It was a rap battle! That was gold. That was better than anything written," Lee expressed. The journey bringing the story to life was also exceptional. Denzel first picked the script, penned by Alan Fox, and brought it straight to Lee. This marks their fifth project together.

"Spike Lee has proven excellence over the decades, and there was no question in my mind who I wanted to be at the helm of this film," Washington stated, as reported by Entertainment Weekly. "We've had great success together. It is a New York story. That really became the dominant character, New York. There was no one I knew that could tell the story better than Spike," he stated.

The film draws from Akira Kurosawa's 1963 work High and Low. Lee first watched Kurosawa's films as an NYU grad student. Through George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, Lee met the master filmmaker in the late 1980s.

Stars Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, Aubrey Joseph, Ice Spice, and Wendell Pierce round out the cast. Want to watch Highest 2 Lowest now? The movie started showing in Theaters on August 15 and will be available to stream on Apple TV+ from September 5.