[Certain]

I'm not sure why this battle was so neglected, but I'll vote here even though it's not tied and I said I would only vote as a tiebreaker. I'm not going to go full-scale breakdown, though.

Split: This verse felt like a diversion from your traditional style in the opposite direction from last week. While last week, you told an unusually fleshed-out story and perhaps went a bit light on the lyricism, here you went all-in on rhymes. The verse was very good, with a couple small things I didn't like as much. I wish you had ended a bit stronger. A few of your turns of phrase were remarkable (the standout: "I cancel my evenings to manage my demons, and plan to confide in the handful I don't."), but you didn't consistently bring together your message and your rhymes and your images into a clear picture. The nostalgia factor also seemed like the easy approach here.

Darth Yoda: Your approach was even more direct than Split's, though I'm not sure it was as obvious because it was so direct. This verse felt sticky, dripping unique phrase turns. It's tough to envision some of your verses in a vacuum because you have such a specific tone to your writing and particularly to your grammatical choices, but at this point, I've read enough to know them well. Split is pretty much the same way, and you two might be the most unique writers on this site for that reason. Here you bounced from concept to concept as a way of forming a whole, and the second half of the verse was outstanding. (I've only heard of smoked butter in the context of a wood smoker used to flavor butter, but I imagined a different context in this case.) The rhyming and assonance/consonance mix were outstanding and made this verse feel lush. I really loved it. This is the best way to handle a straight-on interpretation of a topic, to simply write more beautifully than your opponent, even a particularly strong one.

Vote: Darth Yoda