WEEK TWO: TIMELESS (0-1) vs DOMINATE (1-0) DOM WINS

[Candy]

dom:

dude fire story, im the type of cat that story comes first before any other element of writing a verse.. and this was nice i like the concept but it was they you portrayed it, it came off very clean.. i think structure was tight and vocab but as far as rhyme it was a lil too loose for my style.. all in all cool piece though brah..

time:
very poeticly street orientated the rhyme was off the hook so clean with internals.. the structure was infinitely tighter then doms and just in general was dope.. it had very personal feeling to it as a whole.. it was simple but cool.. story wise not much to it but it def was delivered smoothly so nice nice..

vote = timeless

it came down to what i put before anything else which is story but when it comes down to more elements even though story covered covers more then one piece of need to make a good verse if you get out weighed in general it happens.. gl guys

[Universe]

Dominate:

I have my eye on this guy like the topic pic... Tons of potential... Let's go.

Cool start. The opening bar, although intentionally uneven, actually makes things immediately intriguing and sets the tone nicely. The main thing I love about your writing is how smooth and clean it is; multi's and word choice are spot on and you deliver the message you're trying to convey with crystalike clarity. Each bar is impactful and you have the ability to carry on rhyme schemes for awhile (or sometimes an entire piece like you did last week), which is difficult to do without losing momentum and watering down your piece... but hell, you pull it off nicely.

One negative - I felt the story was sort of... low hanging fruit. I think you went the safe route here and took things at face value and just let your writing ability carry the workload, which was fine...* just, in my opinion, this topic could've been ripped apart and pieced back together again in intriguing ways and I feel an opportunity for something truly different was missed here...

Beyond that, this piece was masterful in almost every way and I loved what you brought to the table.

Highlights:

"They access the key logs. Check my browser history, app use
Who I’m emailing and why, how many times I visit the bathroom
The monitor’s monitored. Phone line’s tapped - they listen to that too
The job’s a digital panopticon. Cell number iMac six seven dash two"

- By far the best part. Amazing descriptions with perfect flow.

"My social media’s a wasteland, littered with perfunctory edits
Everything carefully curated to conform to the company’s ethics"

- Great wording.

Some impressive writing on display man. Good work.


timeless:

This was different, but in a good way. Mostly. I felt you went in a more unique direction than Dominate's, and your interpretation veering off beyond the obvious was appreciated. I liked most of the vibe of this piece, couple straggling lines aside that snapped me out of the story, but you TRIED something here, and I liked the effort.

The biggest issue for me was the technical aspects. It just didn't read well at points. Sometimes it was bang on, but that just made the negatives get accentuated even more. For example: "on more of a bender than Futurama" had no place in this story. I like when people tie in clever references but this just seemed amateur to me. I rolled my eyes at it... Never good.

Also, this:

"I'm going in blind with my nostrils flared waiting on bliss.
Shit, forever I'll sip on bourbon until my liver worsens"

This just came off jagged and awkward... like when someone forces a word to rhyme unnaturally and it just seems like such a stretch. I thought the interior multi would've worked better for the conclusion of the 1st bar just for pure reading purposes. For example, it could've been:

"I'm going in blind with my nostrils flared as I sip on bourbon
Shit, forever I'm waiting on bliss until my liver worsens"

Just reads better, in my opinion. Which matters in text.

The ending was actually pretty cool, but I felt the last descriptive line of the bottom being "dope" was a horrible choice of words and cheapened the impact. Sorry, but words like these aren't deep at all. The english language has way better terminology that you could've utilized here... and you should've.

But enough negatives... this was the good stuff:

"And I'll stay home and count my pesos 'til the tides change.
Ride out this high life of mine with stained clothes and a migraine"

- Loved this bar. The juxtaposition of "high life" to "stained clothes with a migraine" was so nice.

"Drunk and obscure, crashing through the pearly gates.
The seeing eye in the sky watched my downfall from an early stage"

- Good connection to the topic. Should've expanded on this though - give us some backstory here... Maybe how this dude was brought up being watched (or feeling like he was) ala The Truman Show or something... like what if you detailed Truman's life AFTER he escaped the show... like he felt like he was still being watched even though he no longer was... and how that televised upbringing manipulated his psyche moving forward in the real world without cameras... Regardless, a missed opportunity to flesh out your piece here.

Good battle, you two. But the glaring difference here was in the categories of word choice and technical ability, which Dominate, well... dominated. I felt like timeless had the more creative story but it wasn't executed the right way... which it would've had to have been to get the nod over the not-so dark horse of this league.

So, with that all said...

Vote: Dominate