The SlapBack’s “Battle of the Week”: Q vs. Caustic

 Over the past winter break, rap battle leagues took no vacation whatsoever. Leagues like “KingOfTheDot,” “GrindTimeNow,” “DontFlop,” and “Basementality Battles” continued to release top tier matches from headlining events. New battle leagues made their appearances with very impressive matchups as well. In all, there wasn’t really a “winter break” for battling this past year.

Considering these releases, it would be absurd to pick just one battle to highlight; however, there is one battle that in my opinion, stood out among the rest. In one of KingOfTheDot’s major events, entitled “FlatLine,” Canadian battler Q Shinobi squared off against American battler, Caustic. While, in my opinion, the battle was highly in Caustic’s favor, there are still many reasons why this matchup remained so interesting, as blowouts in battles tend to not be so fun to watch.

In the first round, Q Shinobi came out very hard, spitting lines that weren’t expected from the crowd, thus giving him some momentum. Caustic was quick to end this. The major theme of Caustic’s first round was Q Shinobi’s fascination with Asian culture, adding a sort of comedic racism rarely seen in that form, which got a lot of crowd reaction. The best lines from the first round were from Caustic: “You should have named your album ‘Wu-Tang Clan’s affect on the Caucasian mind’.” Shortly after, to conclude the round Caustic jeered, “This Ol’ Dirty B*stard knows every word of every ‘Wu’ song. / Well I’m the Master Killa with The Rza that’ll jizz on this dude’s mom. // This Ghostface will get dead, for trying to cap on the true Don. / So check the Method. You get sent to heaven for actin’ like [you] U-God!” (for those of you who don’t know Wu-Tang Clan that well, he managed to put each name from the group into these lines).

The second and third rounds were very balanced and equally witty for Caustic; keeping his momentum on a constant rise. In the second round, Caustic actually got personal to a point where he pointed out Q Shinobi’s girlfriend in the crowd while making fun of her physical features. One of the members of the crowd shouted, “Don’t bring your girlfriends to battles, bro!” In the third round, Caustic finished him by personals dealing with Q Shinobi’s history with drug abuse, and how there were rumors of Q Shinobi having herpes. To conclude the battle, Caustic’s last line was, “So the sad part about it is, is that you paid me a rack / just to hear to your face what your friends say behind your back.”

In the end, it’s fairly obvious that Caustic came out the winner with his clever rhymes and fierce personality. I loved hearing the syllable game Caustic had in his rounds, and how he managed to add so much creativity on top of his personals. Check out the full battle below.

- Talon Ducheneaux, The SlapBack (Saturdays 10-midnight @ WQHS.org