Jumping in Headfirst

Battle rap getting to be like boxing or pro wrestling.  These cats got promos for the battles and shit. From Canadian/West Coast league King of the Dot... And from NYC/Midwest League (hahaha) URL... I'm starting to see now why people say URL has gotten too big.  They're unquestionably the largest League in the game, with most of their least-watched battles having the numbers of other League's highest watched ones.  But with that size and that popularity comes a certain...arrogance.  Ya'll got to come on with this "anybody that imitates us is a biter" or "you're going to see a lot of imitators" or whatever.   Cut that out.  Its a lot of good battlers out there, and its plenty of potential battles for every league to keep them coming.  And ya'll are really a NYC League anyway--that's where all your battles are held.  The last NOME was held in like Chi-Town or something, but this one's being held where?  NYC.  Summer Mad...

Both of these ladies need a lot more work on their delivery.  Granted this video is like a year old so maybe they both stepped their games up, I dunno.  I give it to Bonnie though.  Her lines were pretty good, and even though her delivery made me almost cut the video a few times, she just came off better than Quastar.   Don't get me wrong, Quastar had some hot lines ("Are you a carpet muncher?/No bitch, I'm a target puncher" had me rolling), but she wasted two of her rounds calling Bonnie ugly. ...C'mon chick, really?  Yeah I know you're supposed to insult, but c'mon.  She's standing there looking like Gabrielle Union's little sister and you enough metal in your face to give Magneto a hard-on.  Find another angle.   So while Quastar's delivery was a little more natural AND she had some dope lines here and there too, she wasted a lot of her time so I gotta hand it to Bonnie.

Yupppp. And I've been slacking on these things, but I wasn't entirely happy with the product until now.  We're improving by a lot and I like that--we've got a ways to go still but I'm starting to feel like this is an actual show.   Look forward to next week's.

Bravoman is an obscure Namco property that came out on the TurboGrafx-16 back in 1990.  Recently, it was revived by a duel-effort between Namco-Bandai and UDON on a site called ShiftyLook , where a bunch of older Namco properties are being revived as webcomics.  Bravoman, for whatever reason, was chosen to *also* receive a cartoon webseries, with the main character voiced by Rob Paulsen (AKA, Wakko from Animaniacs) and voice acting legend Dee Bradley Baker voicing his "side kick" Alpha Man.   Check out episodes 1 & 2 below. We're only two episodes in, but so far I actually like this series.  Aside from the super catchy, hilariously non-sensical intro ("He's whole wheat with plenty of Bran..."), it just reminds me of a much happier time.  Bravoman is irreverent about himself without being stupid, and the humor is decently smart without being mean.  It's the kind of innocent humor that was around in the mid-90's when Kids' WB was at it...

When you're young you never think about how many people across the world your favorite series can touch.  Case in point: This is probably the closest I'll ever get to a Wacky Races movie that doesn't try to modernize it or put a "unique spin" on it.  Sure, its a commercial for some car I'm not only not going to buy, I can't buy because I'm not from that country but so what?  It's fun. 

It occurs to me that while I spend a lot of time talking about comics, I never really..."talk" about comics.  Or at least, the few times I've tried I end up rambling.   So after a brief comment on a blog post that looked more like it belonged in an actual blog, I decided to try this: a new column on Jumping in Headfirst (which means it has a high chance of being forgotten about) revolving around strictly comic books. You're probably wondering why I'm calling it Bottom of the Pile.  And there's an explanation for that: See, I read waaaaaay too many comics on a weekly basis to discuss them all in a single entry.  By the time I was done talking about them all it'd be next week already and I wouldn't want to do it ever again.  Instead, I'm just going to discuss the A-List comics that come out every week.  The ones that I always read last because I like to go out on a high note, so they find themselves at the bottom of the pile.  Yes, I know its a co...

There are two potentially correct answers: "Not really" and "Just barely".  And with good reason, since this is developer Little Orbit's first real video game. ...And obviously, the very first trailer they've ever made.  The narrator for this is probably the worst I've ever heard--it's obvious he's forcing the "In a world..." deep voice, and both his lines and the few lines we heard from the characters sound like they threw the script together at the very last moment.  I would say I expect better, but the reality is this is a property that Warner Bros./Cartoon Network shoved to the side sometime last year: it didn't make them enough money, or the rights to the Milestone characters were too expensive, or the execs at CN just didn't like the show--there's actually so many reasons that I'm surprised they even finished the season.   So I'm not expecting much from this game, other than the chance to finally play as...

Say what you will about Inuyasha (I certainly have), but it had some of my favorite openings and endings in all of anime.  Japanese music has been apart of my life since I was about 10 and I first heard Ayumi Hamasaki's Depend on You in Thousand Arms, and My Will was probably one of the last songs I ever heard in an opening or ending before I realized Napster/Kazaa was a thing and started pestering the shit out of a good friend of mine to download and burn to CD.   It also serves the unique distinction of being the first song I ever realized was completely, totally pop and that I had to get out of my hipster/music snob feelings to enjoy because its actually quite beautiful.  dream had some pretty good singers who were actually quite good at maintaining harmony and creating infectious songs that I couldn't NOT enjoy.

Both JC and Caustic put in some work on this, but JC got it.  Apparently Caustic had some problems in the weeks leading up to this battle, leading to him writing most of his shit the night before.  Now you always hear that when a guy you expect to bodybag loses like this, but I'll give the guy the benefit of the doubt.   Plus its not like he did terribly in this anyway--that Boston line was waaaaay too soon but it was REALLY good. That said, I'm still getting tired of the excuse.  I hate that multiple battle leagues basically mean you can schedule as many battles as you want, which means despite that people usually know about most of their battles months in advance, usually they only write a week or two before the battle.  This is why you get so many battles where you get hyped for it and the battler you're hyped for is on Twitter RTing all these "Yo that's gonna be a classicccccc!!!" tweets from their fans or whatever, and then the battle comes out...

Loaded Lux is a wizard with words, so you just enjoy that video for a moment and then we'll get into something else after you've watched. Done?  Okay.  So having watched this I realized that if Summer Madness 3 does have Loaded Lux vs. Hollow Da Don, I'm pretty sure I know the winner.   It's Hollow.  And not because he's a better rapper.  This just proved to me that a prepared Loaded Lux CAN'T actually lose to anybody out there right now. But Loaded can't beat Hollow, and its because of this: Hollow Da Don is funny.  Like, don't get me wrong Loaded has some jokes but in the end when it comes down to bars vs. jokes, jokes will win out every time.   Lux will be there with this complicated wordplay with hard-hitting bars that are honestly way too good for the battle game, and Hollow will be there with "leave blood on the wall and the cabinets homey/it'll look like four bad-ass kids was eating ravioli" every bar and he'll take it. ...

Ahahahaha... So remember when I did a BRW on Goodz vs. X-Factor ?   So yeah, apparently somebody else thought pretty similarly regarding that battle. Dude was hot about that $150!  I just wanna let ya'll know I don't take this as super serious as ya'll think.  This is just something I like to watch because lyrical ability amuses me.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Tell me mirror, what is wrong Can it be my De La clothes? Or is it just my De La Song? Love these guys, and this song is a classic.  Enjoy the nostalgia trip.

Miguel on fire right now between his own music and the co-features This video is a little awkward to watch to me, but the song's good enough so that I don't care.  Also, am I the only person who thinks this feels more like a Miguel song than a Mariah one? Also, as a bonus because it was good and legendary Wu-Tang member ODB was on it, one of Mariah Carey's classic jams:

So reviews aren't really this site's thing, but I do feel like when I hype shit I should at least come back and talk about it and maybe give a few thoughts on the finished product.   If there's anything you've picked up from this blog's existence, it should be that Sage Is A DC Fan.   A huge DC Fan at that, so obviously I was super-excited about this game from the moment it was announced last May.   So excited I paid off my pre-order in January and showed up for the midnight release my local GameStop had.   Now we're nearly a month into the game's existence, and I've put at least 15-20 hours into the story mode, playing the ladders and with my friends.  And I've been trying to three-star all these fucking S.T.A.R. Labs missions.    So, having experienced a goodly portion of the game, what do I think?  Well, let's start off with the Story Mode first.   If you're one of the people who actually bothered to poke holes in this, you'...