[oats]

Black:

this verse was smooth on the outside, rough ion the inside. What I mean is, it took a while for me to feel like I cracked the shell of it and caught a glimpse of any real meaning to it, though the writing was smooth and well-crafted as ever. What I garnered from it was a heroin addict who is basically accepting the fact that one day, and one day soon, he's gonna overdose, and he's en route to resigning to that reality. Hard to tell, though, and I'd be interested to hear your comments on this verse. At any rate, there were some really great individual lines (not the ham and potatoes one, however), particularly the stop myself from sleeping or staying awake - that hits close to home for me. I have a bigger gripe with this than I usually do with your verses; it's just too vaguely unaccessible. Even if it is what I think it is, there are too many unanswered questions - is there someone else with him? Is he having out-of-body experiences? I just don't quite get "it." Though you tend to stray from having a concrete, singular meaning in your verses (at least, as far as I can tell), in this case there was too much room for interpretation, and the shining moments were dulled a bit by the overall haze I experienced.

NYC:
Such a completely different way of writing than your opponent, which is smart; nobody is gonna out-Black Black in that style. Your straightforward narrative isn't as straightforward as it seems, how I took it. The whole descent into personal hell and battling demons and centaurs etc was a mental preparation to be a stone-cold killer in the real world, laying to rest his role as a hero and good guy to become a villain, which appears to be a more natural fit now that his wife is dead. It was dope. The actual writing was shaky to me, though. A lot of "...and then THIS!!! and then THAT!!!" kinda stuff, as well as superfluous adverbs: "painfully gauged his heart out," etc. Other than that, the ending felt a bit abrupt as well. I get why - too much foreshadowing of what these battles really were and it ruins the plot twist. But at the same time, I can see a lot of people reading over the Jungian phase hint, which is crucial to understanding the transformation into his own devilry. Overall, the story was dope, but the writing felt a bit shallow.

Vote: This is such a contrast that it's hard for me to arrive at an easy decision. to put this as a simple dichotomy, Black outwrote NYC by a wide margin, whereas NYC's verse was a much more engrossing story. I like tough verses that are open to multiple interpretations, but Black's confused me in a negative way. Then again, NYC's verse was hindered by his word choice and general phrasing. A head-scratch vs. an eye-roll. If this were a free topic, or a battle of OM's, I would edge it to Black since I ultimately liked his verse a bit more, but given the nature that this is topic-driven, and I readily grasped NYC's take on the topic, I feel compelled to vote for NYC. Hard to call it, and overall both came dope in a way that is worthy of a season champ match. Awesome match to both gentlemen.