The Rap Devil Went Up to Ohio

Final Round

The Rap Devil walked over to the stump, placing one foot on it. He took a few puffs, followed by a final pull before putting the stick out on the flat wood. The Bitch stared at him the entire time, with eyes like dark caverns, shadowed by the light from below. It made him look almost demonic. The Rap Devil noticed a slight tremor in his own hand before flicking the smoldering butt away. With that singular motion, he cast aside any doubts.

His flow started off slow and deliberate, punching the words with the precision of a top-tier prizefighter. Each line poetically came with ease as he drew from a place where powerful emotions lay dormant in a tightly rolled ball. As he moved around the dead cypress, he could hear the whine of a guitar and a bomb-ass beat kick in. The bars came at a relentless pace. He had never felt more in the zone than at that moment. After he ran out of scripted lines, he fell into the sickest freestyle he had ever spit. That Bitch better bob his head! The Rap Devil pulled the shovel from the earth as he came to the end of his verse. After he hit the Bitch with the final lines about digging his own grave, he extended the shovel. The hooded man kindly declined the offer.

The Rap Devil felt like he just had the wind sucked out of him. Even then, he was feeling himself. If only somebody was around to record every bar because that was a guaranteed number one hit. He wanted to sit down but refused to show any fragility. Maybe I need to lay off the smokes... Nah. He couldn't wait to see what the hooded man came up with, knowing full well what the guy was capable of. Words like G.O.A.T and Rap God weren't terms to be taken lightly.

The man in the hoodie paced slowly as he prepared to close out the final round. The older rapper came to a stop after turning his back on the Rap Devil. He put both hands together beneath his chin, appearing to be in deep thought.

"Ha, you better pray!" the Rap Devil quipped.

The hooded man started while still facing away from his foe. It was clear after the first few bars that something was different. The angst in his voice had become pure pent-up rage. When the shady man turned around, his eyes gleamed with an intensity that burned away any assurances of a win the Rap Devil might have had. What came forth was deadly venom that the skinny man could almost feel being injected into his veins. As the Bitch tripled the speed of the syllabic cadence, the Rap Devil felt the words pounding on his cranium. The lyrical punches drummed against his chest like an 808.

The Rap God surpassed basic rebuttals and gun bars. He turned it into a training clinic as he repeated some of the Rap Devil's best lines and broke down a much better way to craft the bars. Fuck, did he just rebut his own corrections? From there, the shady man paid homage to the ones who came before him. He tore himself down only to metaphorically rebuild himself to the size of the Empire State Building. Then he depicted the Rap Devil as nothing but a fly. Into that building, he might go, but he'll never escape before it comes crashing down on him, only to rebuild itself again. Stronger. He'd been almost destroyed many times, including near death, but still came back. Stronger. A Kamikaze attack from a fly? GOATs shouldn't bother swatting at GNATs.

The man standing in front of the Rap Devil was no longer a Bitch. He was also no Rap God. Words dripping with pain, chaos, and triumph came from a man wholly of flesh and blood. He'd stripped away the carefully crafted mask that millions had grown to know. What was left was his bare naked soul.

Never had the Devil ever been in a rap battle where he could feel the words slicing into his flesh. His knees felt weak. Palms sweaty. Propped up on the shovel. The Rap Devil refused to falter, let alone fall to the ground. The hooded man delivered the last bar that blasted the young man's gut like a shotgun.

Then the rap veteran added a simple P.S. "Look at you. Tryna Stan on my legacy when you can't even stand on your own leg, I see."