User blog comment:Dragonsblood23/Dragon VS Flashley - Round One of The Seventh ERB Wiki Rap Tournament/@comment-3401602-20180718201802

ESKEETIT

First off, man I fuckin hate one-verse-per-rapper battles. Especially when each verse is so long that by the time you finish the second person's verse that most of the impression you got out of the first person's has been forgotten or nullified. Back-and-forths make battles much more entertaining for me because it feels like there's a greater sense of competition going on and makes the fight for the win more intense. Anyway, let me analyze this shit.

Right out of the gate, Flashley launches into a fury of internal rhymes that I thought were really fucking awesome. "Getting froze / Wicked flow / Writtens cold / Trip in snow / Minneso- / Spit's bone / Hitting through your coat / Frigid you go / Six feet below / Really though". This is a really impressive way to start it off with painting a really facinating image of Flashley's flows being colder than Dragon's typical Minnesotan weather and freezing him to death. Love imagery stuff like that.

One thing I did notice is that Flashley really didn't focus on many insults, but rather brags or general "I'm beating you / I'm gonna beat you" statements like "cuz when I strike I might / Leave you crying from my dominance then it's Night Night", "I could beat you with eight lines / I could beat you with no lines", "I'll shape you up / And create a new lake out of Dragon's blood", etc. Any actual disses were pretty good, sans the Twitter thing that kinda falls flat for an insult imo.

"I’ll slam this nail, call me MC Hammer" is so goddamn unoriginal lmfao I'm sorry but shit man I think everyone that's battled Nail has made a line in the same vein, me included, haha.

That being said, I thought Dragon had a really rocky start in the beginning of his verse but I definitely think it got better and better as it went on, consistently bringing up new disses and things to mention that all ended up mixing together really well. I think the greatest diss here was Dragon saying "Say what you want about Round One but i’m still willing to commit / After losing to TK and Bob, 3 years then on, you called it quits". Dragon's acknowledging that he doesn't have a great record for tournaments, but still auditions because he wants to improve and make it as far as he can. He points out the hypocrisy of Flashley calling him a poor rapper, when Flashley himself left the wiki after being beaten only twice (might not have been the actual reason he left, but Dragon paints it that way and it works really well here).

I didn't like Dragon's last line at all, though. I think he should have gone for one final, strong diss on Flashley instead of basically asking for ascension in the tournament. If I could draw a diagram of Dragon's skill demonstrated in his verse, I'd say it started off low but gradually increasing, peak about middle-late middle, and then drop significantly at the very end. For Flashley, I would go the other way and say that it started off on a high and decreasing with a few ups-and-downs.

The first few times reading this I was pretty convinced that Flashley won but it's a bit closer for me now, the more I read Dragon's verse.

I liked Flashley's technical rhyming and overall style a lot better but in terms of actual competition and dissing the opponent, Dragon shined much brighter. Either opponent focused on different elements of rapping, which when combined make an excellent performance, but I'm going to go with Dragon here because I consider the disses more vital to the overall goal of this tournament--insulting your opponent.

Both were great in their own ways but I'm going to say Dragon won.

Very excellent job, you two. This one took me a lot more consideration to figure out who won then previous battles did. Hell, I even told a few people before posting this that Flashley won, but I ended up changing my mind after reviewing. Very impressive work, guys.