My Personal Rank: #1 of 6.

Cons: Rachel’s maybe a little too mean in her first full opening verse, even allowing for the meanness of rap battles and the way she’s trying to provoke Frigg. (She did call her a fraud and a weakling in the original scene, though…that scene starts here.)

“Won’t amaze me” should probably be “doesn’t faze me.”

And uh…that’s about all I can think of!

Pros: John clearly enjoyed this as much as any of the six. Hee hee, “POOT.”

I think this one has strong use of “feminine” rhyme, by which I mean multi-syllable constructions: surgery/perjury, wood on her/good on her, hounds you/round two, grab it/habit, I am it/goddammit, shithead/it said. “Silent/violent” is a little cliché as rhymes go, but then “violent” plays off “violin” and hopefully all is forgiven.

The original was one of the best throwdowns we ever cooked up, and its structure is distinct enough that we can pretty much just repeat it: Rachel has the edge for most of the battle, and then she “wins by losing.” This inspired me to look for other ways we could diverge from the classic rap-battle structure, though as we’ll see, results of that were mixed.

(No FB.)