Recap: It doesn’t get much better than this one as Emerson Kennedy and Jey the Nitewing each deliver an exquisite 3 rounds of steady, potent and crowd-pleasing bars and schemes. EK, slightly more lit when it came to hard-hitting (“You supposed to be toe taggin’, keeping up the race, you know, even up the pace with the East to be the greats, Jey, every time you choke East, the West reap all [Reepah] the mistakes!”) personals, but also just as fire throughout in lieu of a boatload of stirring punchlines, loaded abstract stingers, aggressive and (“Niggas chains getting rung, I don’t chase fame from a gun, but for a band on the side, I might change on the run, hop out and wait till Nite [night] show, put his name on a drum!”) well-finessed wordplay, stayed on his A-game. And Nitewing, with perhaps a bit of a monkey on his back what with all the heat he’s gotten for choking (a theme that EK had no trouble reminding him of throughout this battle) during battles, stayed flexing with consistent ease during his turns, all the while keeping the pressure on his opponent with a wide bag of witty barbs, banging (“You probably thinking this angle is getting fucking old, but you keep acting like you wasn’t told, can’t survive off what your mother knows, she can’t save you when you touch the stove!”) punches, dizzying metaphorical shiners, rich set-ups and a couple of over-the-top rebuttals. An altogether spitfire battle with nary a dry spot that also displayed plenty of braggadocio zingers and lofty struggle bars from each side, the scoring here saw EK needing a gargantuan opening round to edge the 1st, the two battlers traded an equal amount of potency with their lines to make that one debatable and the deciding 3rd round going Nitewing’s way what with one or two more haymakers.
Verdict: TIE
Favorite line: Jey The Nitewing – “You wanna know my theory of relativity?, get his relatives first!”
