[Certain]

As stated earlier, I am casting tiebreaker votes this season. This was a very good battle, and it's fitting that it comes down to the end.

YDK: Your writing was cleaner here than I have seen from you in the past. You showed good concentration and put a focus on your rhymes without forcing many. The flow was great. But you took a cliché topic and made it more cliché, and the vague images never really moved beyond the expected. The ending was strong, and I liked the bit about the occipital lobe because it was one turn that actually surprised me. You didn't really take a position here, and the take on the topic was exceedingly direct. So while this was one of the better-written verses I've seen from you, a deeper concentration on unique content was required.

Ink: I liked the concept you came with here, that the myth of the American dream itself causes the corruption of souls. And your writing was pretty polished. Spending half your verse on that plane felt like a bit of a red herring to me, and topical verses generally are not long enough for extended red herrings. But you pulled it back together and unified the verse with that last line. I do think there were a few issues where you could have polished the verse more, but mostly the issue was that you didn't develop that second stanza as fully as it could have been. Still, I appreciate the effort to do something deeper with the topic. Both you and YDK wrote your verses well and impressed me on that front, but while YDK chose a safe route, you went with the tougher task and executed it pretty well. The hitches were made up for by the originality.

Vote: Ink