[Certain]

Pinot Grij: I have never seen someone take such a constricting topical league assignment and do something more creative with it. It's not even close, frankly. Your approach alone was enough to earn serious props. On top of that, you carried that approach through really well. I didn't think the interplay would stay effective, but if anything it got better as you went. The line about the mom was genius. Plus, your actual writing was very strong. Your rhymes were crisp and flow was smooth, and the story never lost momentum for even a second. Look, I'm fucking gushing but need to give you some sort of real feedback here, right? A few of the sections were maybe two lines longer than they needed to be. that might sound petty, but this verse was ridiculously long. Cutting down on, say, the section that started "Yes baby" (after oats' "diamond ring" line) and a few others would have made this more manageable. The sex talk wasn't really the funny part, after all. But that's me being picky. This was terrific, memorably so.

Pent uP: Your verse leading into oats' verse would have made for a really nice collaboration, but I thought going into the week that turning your verse into a simple complementary piece was a bit of an easy approach. Of course, the choices of verses made it difficult. Your rhymes were fluid, and there were a lot of really strong sections. It didn't help, though, that your verse wasn't as original or interesting as oats'. Obviously, he's one of the best writers on the site, so matching him was going to be difficult. Your verse was strong though. I liked the "while I use 'we' as 'I' in hopes that others will relate" line, which was a nice, quickly explained breakdown of how we write these types of verses. You probably would have beaten almost anyone in this league who had taken as direct an approach to your challenge. But you were facing a beast of a verse and concept.

Vote: Pinot Grij