Pretty decent spar here, fellas. I'll keep this short. One was smoother with his flow and had the stronger and better executed concepts than the other here. Good luck to whoever goes through, Fairs in, i'm out. 

January 19th: Round Three Posting Deadline

IF YOU POST AFTER DEADLINE YOU WILL BE DQ'D

19:00 EST (USA)

See Stickied Text Forum Thread For Countdown Timer. 

CLASSICK u BASTIDS!!!

Expo:

He's obese as fuck and frequently DMs people asking for feedback on his bars.

Government cheese (cheese they give to welfare recipients in the USA) is infamous for being moldy.

Look up "Luxor Casino" if you don't get it.

The grand prize for this tournament is a GTX 1080Ti which is an expensive ass graphics card. And he hit me up in DMs right after he posted saying that he'd phoned in his verse. Which I doubt.

Expo: Verse is Arale's. Arale is a character from a manga called Dr. Slump. 

Close. Shodan came out swinging and also had the BOTB with that government cheese line. The steakhouse and credit union lines were The low points. Landmine punch and Luxor were ok.  Rants opener was his low point imo...the wording wasn't the cleanest compared to the better  bars in his verse and the seizure part was just ok. Grooming/pedophile bit was pretty well done. Bakery scheme lacked creativity but the closing 5 punches were consecutive, well executed jabs. Tough choice but I think Rant was more consistent so I'm leaning that way. 

Winners verse was funny, had better structured punches and he was fairly consistent. Loser wasn't bad at all i just didn't really care for most of the punches/Concepts. Definitely had some good moments but not enough to take the W here. Fairs in 7-6

This is a pretty good bout. I'm going with Shodan here with what I thought were more clever metaphors delivered through cleaner execution. Every one of his punches hit to me, albeit with varying degrees of strength. The one i didn't really like I guess though was the gov't cheese mold one. I think the wording "poor delivery = something people on welfare get" on that was just pretty poor and didn't really make a ton of sense. 

I felt Rant had some great concepts but a couple things that took away from his verse. I think the grooming him punch was good, but the whole idea of having to link a screenshot in your verse to get the point across is something that I felt was just a bit too far fetched. If it was something like maybe just a quick image, which we've seen a few times in live battling, it could definitely work, but asking us to stop mid battle to read multiple sentences from a screenshotted message from Shodan just hurt the verse, imo. I was still feeling Rant's verse from there on until the the verse is arales line. I think the reference was just far too obscure, and even then the line itself is actually just a weaker concept. The only connection was the word 'slumped' and from the 30 seconds I was willing to spend lookin up Dr. Slump, it doesn't look like Arale has anything to do with anything resembling verses. So, on first impression the bar means absolutely nothing to me, and after doing the research I atleast understood it but the concept still just wasn't good. 

So, yeah. I know I sound pretty negative here but I did enjoy reading this battle. I basically felt that Shodan was just hitting more consistently here and with less letdowns in his payoff lines, which earned him the W.

This was a very high-quality bout that saw two different styles executed to a very high level. I'm just gonna go with 1 high and 1 low from each verse because I'm too mentally exhausted to do an extensive breakdown sorry.

Sho, your verse was at a very consistent quality level, I don't really think you had highs or lows per se although I think the government cheese bar was your weakest because the "poor delivery" bit didn't really work both ways. I thought your closer was probably your best bar, followed by your opening.

REZN, your verse was also very consistent in general, but with slightly more defined highs and lows. Your opener worked well as far as the sore throat element and the swallowing your own tongue part made me laugh, but the "grave plot is in a coma" bit was something that took me a lot of thought and energy and time to decipher. Because it was a really weird way of phrasing what I think you were saying it just threw off the mental flow of the bar and almost ruined the rest of it which would have been a shame because it was a dope concept and angle otherwise. Your best highlight was the pie/bread/dough bar. The way you made a 9-syllable multi work smoothly and although I think most of the individual components of the flip were pretty basic (i.e. needed/kneaded) the way you combined them made it hit really hard imo.

All in all I think this was a very close bout, it could go either way but I have my winner.

Real good battle fellas. Sho, the mid sentence capping for rhymes seem a bit forced , but your punches were killer man. Everything practically hit but that closer was bananas. REZ you threw some hay makers as well. Your wordplay was smooth and you had good concepts. The best bar from you was the grooming for greatness scheme, very well executed. 

My vote goes to the strongest punches in this battle. Very clean guys!

"adJUSTING THE BEAM SCOPE, you'll see a "ray of light from the hotel" like the LUXOR CASINO!!"

Justing compared to luxor only rhymes in syllables. 

"Answer: USUALLY THE RAPIST! His battle with Kiwi? "Razor thin," ROUTINES WITH A SHAVE KIT. " lol

well, the fire nation was fire right throughout too many quotable and a very dope and near perfect verse for me (only thing was that the closer was a lil too stretched coz u used the same fact to build two punches unlike the rest of ur verse) while rant had a lighter start but really did throw the kitchen sink in with the greatness bar lol shit was dope asf !! rest of the punches were not too fresh conceptually like the kneaded and and rise references which hurt you heavily here. Overall i got Shodan ahead convincingly for the more fresher and impactful verse. on a side note IMO i think sho and bleu are sure to to clash in the GC finals here if they continue their currently form.