[Certain]

Vividlyvague: This was a tremendous approach to the topic. The cycle-of-life motif really worked in the first three stanzas, but I wasn't sure what you were doing with the fourth aside from getting a little preachy. Then you hit me with that alien stuff, and normally I don't get down with science fiction in rap verses. But when I reread the verse, I realized how well you had set it up through the entire framing. These aliens or gods or whatever they are — you never made clear, but it never was important — were narrating this entire thing, fascinated by the way each of these lifeforms moves. I wanted another layer between the ameoba and the bass. I liked that you included some actual specifics, particularly the line about the bass being cannibalistic, which was nice research unless you're actually this league's official man of the wild, breathless. Your writing still tends to be line for line a bit too often. I never get into a real rhythm reading your verses. A lot of it has to do with the rhyming itself, where your syllable counts are slightly off or you slant a little too hard or your stressed and unstressed syllables aren't quite right. If you could write like this but smooth out the flow, you would hit truly elite territory. You're not far off because you're so creative. Week in and week out, you have good approaches. But this was your best verse of the season because the delivery of a good idea was stronger and more consistent.

Frank: This verse felt a bit out of step with what you've written for this league. It seemed as though you knew Vividlyvague's weakness and tried to turn them up on him, telling a very lucid, straightforward story with an emphasis on flow, via shortening your lines. For the most part, you succeeded at those things. But I didn't find the story particularly interesting. By giving us such a tiny hint of a detail about what might have happened to Rodney in China, you left me hanging on the most important part of the story. And by focusing so much on this Asian rapper angle, you left a good chunk of the verse feeling like an angle already covered. Honestly, my feeling for most of this verse was you were coasting. Either that, or you were posting an old verse (not recycled, just old) that you had. That brings me to the obvious, glaring, biggest issue with this verse: It didn't relate to the topic. I read the topic and the verse a few times and tried to put it together. But I couldn't. Vividlyvague hit it head-on with a verse that encapsulated the quote. You dodged around it at best. And frankly, his verse was better than yours, anyway. I'll see you in the playoffs, Frank.

Vote: Vividlyvague