[Vulgar]

PancakeBrah - This was like a cross between Burn After Reading and Fight Club. It denoted modern social conventions in favor of the prehistoric. Not completely, but enough to work in the picture. With your style, I feel like you try rhyming more than you have to. You write like a novelist, you've got some extra gears in your functional software, for sure. Sometimes you over-commit to elaborate rhyme schemes that throw some dust on the overall effectiveness of a piece, because as the reader, I think to myself, "okay, that multi was kind of a stretch." The vocabulary use is also a little Split Eight-ish. You and Split lead the site as far as I'm concerned. It can get overboard too, i.e. tumbler to quaff - completely threw me for a loop and had to look it up immediately.

I don't get the title, which takes away from it a bit. It's a vital hint I'm missing. 2025 could be the year, or a play on 'hindsight is 2020' as in the main character is sketchy about the company he's keeping. Spies, nuclear chips, IHop mistresses.

Yeah so the opening sequence reminded me of Fight Club because there's eye catching dialogue, a deadly weapon, and the plot is confronted/set out off the bat.

So hackers give a slam poet a nuclear chip, hoping he destroys the world or something. Some expert wording thrown around in there. Mumblecore sentry was sick. Numb Touch was terrible. Rhyming names or terms is kind of a no-no, IMO. Leslie is a friend of his, maybe his girlfriend, who he's asking to film his talking about everything. Or she's a reporter for Viceland - which reminds me of the topic image, a subject matter their documentaries would cover. David is a domestic terrorist (clue: light his company pays to dim... or obscure him from the rest of the world?) David could also be Harris' dad, but there aren't really any other indicators for this aside from the picture of his son he's hanging over his door.

This verse was very Pancake-ish. Not just because there were pancakes. It sought to be hip and sophisticated, hitting the topic from an interesting angle. The world becoming corporate, everyone concerned with their time-recording devices, a critique of consumerism, a la Palahniuk. He gets captured by rogue assassins/interrogators or just the FBI, and gets axed by one of them. He's wounded and drinking imaginary flasks, trying to cope with the pain. He talks to himself a lot, because he wants to or because it's easier for you to narrate the story that way (lol). The camera isn't filming at the beginning or the end, which is usually when progress is made. Human progress from the ape to the now, yet savage weaponry still trumps atomic blast, somehow, someway.

Harris just sort of struck me as an idiot who liked to hear himself talk. A 'low grade slam poet' doesn't really encompass the capability of someone who can get their hands on a powerful chip, but I think it was a metaphor for a caveman who eventually comes to hold large dominion over the Earth, and possess some hefty weapons in the process too. A very technical, unconventionally structured approach, with conceptual merit. My biggest qualm with it was I wasn't really buying the identity of the character. Creating a believable character using so much dialogue is a challenge because you are filling in the blanks or creating complexity which opens you up for more resistance in terms of that believability. There's a lot here though, I may have missed something - which is a credit to you as a writer.

RichardCorey - I could definitely see this becoming a track, and that's because the voice was really strong in it. The first time I read it I thought it was a bit of a safe approach. The 'Abercrombie' part in particular didn't strike me as hard hitting. On the third read, I realized how thorough you were with this. Great use of the history of the Alexandria slave trade to contrast with the Old Towne shopping area of today, in a protest piece which brings back the relevance of the dark/bizarre history of the colonial weirdos of yesteryear. I didn't know Alexandria used to be a slavetrading hub, but it makes sense. I liked the rhyme scheme in this one, the highlight being the loblolly pine line, pretty exciting momentum. The writing was quality, the references a good touch, and the style of flow itself was a protest of the sing-song antics of slaves who founded gospel to cope with being human property. Something that might've been cool to include (I'm no historian so pardon me) might be how African products would appear on American shores and sold to the public - an ironic import, considering men, women, and children are also on the catalogue too. My critique: the zombies motif is a little played out at this point. I think if you really explained and got into the sociopolitical/economic standing of those shoppers, and ditched the zombie aspect (even though consumerism does usually equate to the undead) I think something less conceptually shallow would greater serve your purpose. Otherwise, aside from that device, great job here.

Vote - Richard Corey

His verse answered more of the questions he posed in a solid protest piece. Pancake's verse had fireplug potential, but I didn't respect it enough to diagnose it as a full circle effort. More like a half-crescent this time, methinks - see feedback for more explanation. BOTW.