Rai & Manhattan Vs Punk & Fidel. Post by 15th December @ 23:00 GMT // 18:00 PST.

GL both teams lets see a dope semis.

But you already know its

LoD..

Lod

This is some top tier material from both pairs. I'm giving it to the boys in LoD for that plastic hip replacement bar. Insane. Them boys in DedSec did alright. The 'bend the rules' yoga with Simon bar was okay. 

Rai & Man - Points for keeping the same scheme from start to end and still laying out some decent punches. I really liked the opener, the rest of the verse was just consistent without any misses or mistakes but also had nothing that I thought was super standoutish either. 

Fidel & Punk - Had to read it a couple times, there was definitely some of the verse that just kept falling flat for me no matter how many times I read it. From the opening line to the tag team champions I wasn't feeling. I thought the yoga with simon and the guts punch were in the top 3 for me in regards to best of the battle. 

This was a tough one for me to decide on. Rai's team was more consistent, I thought evey bar hit in some sense. Where as Punks team had some ups and downs for me but the punches that did hit were real nice. I would not be surprised if a vote or two is the deciding factor in this battle. 

DedSec!

DedSec.

This was super dope. Really comes down to consistancy. One team was relentless imo. Fairs in. 1/

Sick ass battle, Both had direct line methods, not really lacking in much as far as Metas, punches, style, consitancy, flow. Hard choice to choose. FV In Fellahs.

So what's the point of even commenting stupid

great job Rai/Manny. Y'all did y'all thing man.

that gentrification bar was easily BOTB with the guts bar a close second. Unfortunately what makes this close is that Rai's team overall had excellent schemeing and execution w/ okayish punches while Punk had only okayish execution/scheming with okayish punches. If a couple of Punk's punches were polished up a bit more (like the slightly long winded opening bars) then IMO he would have easily taken this in my eyes. What I do like about both teams is yall clearly went pretty personal here and the style difference on both sides is enjoyable to read. Good battle here, but i'm swinging toward Rai's squad.

Tough call for me here. I felt that rais team scheming the whole verse was a hindrance. Especially with that bandaging eczema patients multi. Have to do some serious bastardizing of the language to make that fit. Ex-ZEE-ma. Nah. Punks team focused on the manny personal maybe a bit too much. It's old hat at this point. So I went back and looked at punches. Felt rai an manny overused the double multi punch and while that can be effective, sometimes it just feels like an overused gimmick. Liked the last punch. Punk and liked the reverse gentrification shit and thought the closer was a clever use of an idiom. Damn close but I guess I'm leaning slightly one way.

Really strong battle here, on both sides. But, I felt one team was more cohesive throughout their entirety(aided here, I think, by their decision to scheme their verse.) While the other team also had chemistry, at times it felt like their verse was somewhat disjointed(in part, I think, because of their stylistic differences.) Both had highlight lines, and big highs, though. And this battle was super close. But, I have to go with the team I felt meshed the best together as a unit, and used that to maintain consistently hard hitting lines. 

DEDSEC!!!!

LoD...

I'm gonna be honest, I was underwhelmed here. Whoever wins this will need to step up their game no matter who they're facing in the final.

Rai'n'Man, I thought your scheme really took away from your verse here. At the start it was fine, but the further into the verse you got the more you were wording things in weird ways that were blatantly just trying to fit the scheme. "dad had split between the phases" or "battling bulimic stages" just don't make logical sense to me. Phases of what? What are 'bulimic stages'? I got the gist of what you meant, but it wasn't even remotely natural and it ruined the entire bar for me. Maybe they're idioms or terms of phrase I've never heard, but I check with others and they hadn't either. Seriously, if you win this, don't scheme the final unless you can actually have naturally-worded punches in EVERY line. Other than that I thought your punches were inconsistent, there were some that just didn't really land well for me, but some (like the bikini punch and the grandma closer) were dope. Finally, I wasn't sure on some of your rhyming. I've always really pronounced Catholic as more of a two-syllable word (cath'lic), I guess it can be 3 syllables but I think the cadence would still be off here. I've also never heard eczema pronounced like "ec-zee-ma", but it seems plausible some people pronounce it like that so I let it slide.

Pudel, you told me at the start of your verse you weren't gonna make it about the ghost-writing personal, and then you did for like half the verse. Not only was I confused, I was also disappointed because I think your first bar was right that it was a bad angle. I liked the "tag team champions" punch from a humour perspective, but "that seems ambient"? What? I do not understand how the ghostwriting allegation can "seem ambient". The couples yoga thing was a decent punch, I felt like it landed the hardest thus far in the verse. The "murda is the answer" punch literally took me days to get but I think that's just me being an idiot, the wording was quite weird but it was an alright punch. The "reverse gentrification" punch was the BOTB in my eyes. It was cleanly executed, a concept I haven't heard before, and I really liked it. The next punch just didn't click for me, guts nameplays are overdone enough without dragging them into a battle guts isn't even in and beyond that I didn't think there was a great deal going on. The next punch I thought was cleanly executed, it just didn't really hit hard for me since I didn't really think it was hurting your opponents a great deal.

Overall I thought there was a lot of wasted potential in both verses. At the end of the day I found one much clearer to understand and I thought it had more memorable parts, so that was the one that got my vote.

Sorry to be overly negative but at the end of the day I'm just trying to be as helpful as possible for things to improve.

great