[oats]

YDK: This was a really strong showing imo. it's obvious you took much more time writing this. I may not be the most familiar with every one of your verses, but this stands out as the best I've read from you fairly easily. Good shit, you stepped it up for the champ match.

as always you had the rhyme schemes down, and you tightened up your language to make it sound better; there were very few slips at all in your wording, and the ones that were there were minor. Overall your actual writing was really good.


that isn't to say this was perfect. I think my biggest gripe was the concept/angle you took. the car metaphor was done well, but it was still a car metaphor lol. not to sound like a dick, but it's just a common representative vehicle, which makes it a little less interesting off the bat. it's almost like a defeat/da feet line in battling - even with a nice, fresh flip, it's still a defeat/da feet line. But beyond that, I didn't feel like you shed any new light on the subject matter. Life/death are such grandiose topics that it's difficult to posit any new insight or meaning on them. I think where you stumbled in this regard was how vague you chose to keep it. This allowed better metaphoric connection with the car, but kept me at arms-length from it all. So it never had much of an impact on me.

Overall, this was a good verse. Very thorough. But it wasn't great. It lacked the riskiness and ambition that mark great verses, where you challenge the reader a bit, but successfully get through to them. I wasn't challenged here, though I was impressed.



Certain: I think you did a lot with a short length (heyo!). The humor was great, and the rhyming was really tight. I could personally connect with the deconstruction, even though I know nothing of photography (or the finer points to it).

My only complaint was that you dove into the shallows I felt - towards the end you start to comment on the state of art nowadays, but it was so brief compared to the rest. I would have liked to see more down that road, maybe another 8-12 tbh.

Overall: Strong showing from both imo, but I think Certain pulled it off here. Not a complete blowout by any means, it was decently close, but after multiple re-reads I think Certain's lead only grew. His verse just had more to it. Good match to both