Jumping in Headfirst

Not as good as last week's, but this means I'm one step closer to seeing Real Deal vs. Ill Will, a battle that's got the makings of a classic.   Anyway, it's hard for me to say Deal got anything less than a 3-0 on this one.   Young Kannon tried to bring the heat, and even had a pretty slick Round 1, but after that it just looked worse and worse.  The truth is, very, very few of these battle rap dudes are in the streets like that, so having Real Deal pull his card like that just made Rounds 2 and 3 sound much more impressive by comparison. Not sure who's battling next week but I'm looking forward to seeing it.  We got 2 more weeks left of Round 1 before we move on to Round 2, and I gotta say this format has been one of my favorites in battle rap.  Two minutes forces the rappers to cut all the filler out of their verses (or lose)--I could see them stretching it out to 2:30 or a full 3 minutes but make that the absolute maximum.  The crowds are quiet, and t

Finally started getting into Chance the Rapper's Acid Rap .  It's not bad, it just takes some time to get used to his voice and his beats, but once you do its addicting.  The piano on the song for this video, for instance?  Crack.

Yeah, I'm late as fuck.  The summer is becoming like anathema to me.  This shit is only for folks who live in metropolitan areas or have money to travel, otherwise fuck this season.  Anyway, you ain't come for that, you came for this: I can't really call it, as far as who won.  Cortez had a much more organized flow, plus he ain't try that silly Daylyt "Peter Pan" scheme shit (points to Diz for using Mega Man tho).   Forced to give an answer I'd say Cortez 2-1 since his last round wasn't that hot. Looking forward to the rest of these #TAKEOVER battles, especially since URL might be BSing with the NOME3 battles it looks like.

URL's team-up with BET turned out to be a lot better than I expected.  I'm sure this sounds like ass on cable but this is what I wish URL was all the time: you can hear the battlers clearly, the air is noticeably free of the "Don Demarco" echo, and best of all--they got the crowd to shut the fuck up.   Anyway, let's talk about this battle for a second.  To me, the best battle of the year so far has been Ill Will vs. Johnnie Alcatraz .  Arcane vs. Dizaster involved a lot of fuckery from both opponents, Hollow vs. Tsu Surf was underwhelming, but those two Proven Ground cats went at it and gave battle rap a classic on the level of that JC vs. Chilla Jones.  So its good to see Ill Will here battling again.   Danja Zone didn't do too badly but Ill Will took that 2-1, so I'm looking forward to seeing him go up against (hopefully) Real Deal in two weeks.

Back again, right in time for the next one. Astro City 2 One of the hardest things to do in superhero comics is come up with an idea that deals with superheroes that people haven't seen before.   This difficulty gets exponentially worse when you decide not to just phone it in and do something involving the words "this is a more mature take" when you explain your story.   But yet again, Kurt Busiek succeeds, telling us the story of a young woman hired by a seemingly innocuous call center who actually discovers she's working for Astro City's premiere super team Honor Guard as a sort of 911 operator for superheroes.    Few superhero series (or fantasy series, period) deal with the human component quite like Astro City , and its honestly amazing how he can keep you interested with what should be the most mundane parts of a world with Kirby-inspired alien technology and men and women with abilities far beyond mortal men.    It helps having Brent Anderso