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Lyrical Analysis of...
Zy pt2
- “Thermal vision: TRACKING YOU”
- Extremely generic.
- I've heard variations of that imagery a million times.
- Same with:
- >“scope”
- >“run and hide”
- >“tracking”
- >“bullets flying everywhere”
- At this point, the gun imagery isn't making the verse sound dangerous.
- It's making it sound repetitive.
- The Mythomaniac line is another forced dictionary flex.
- >“reflection[reputation/vision]”
- >“Like a Mythomaniac”
- This is the kind of thing that makes me think:
- “Do you actually know what this word means, or did you just find it because it sounded intellectual?”
- You're constantly reaching for words that sound sophisticated.
- Sophisticated writing isn't about using the biggest possible word.
- It's about making the simplest words hit hardest.
- “Genx numbers” is practically unreadable
- >“Think my ‘props’ are ‘fake’ like ‘Genx numbers’”
- This one is so obscure that I don't even think the average reader has a fair chance of understanding what you're trying to accomplish.
- And if your defense is:
- “Well, if you understand the reference, it's fire.”
- That's not a good defense.
- A great bar can have layers.
- The first layer still needs to land.
- The omnipresent line is probably the biggest offender
- >“BULLETS FLYING EVERYWHERE: ITS AT MULTIPLE PLACES AT THE SAME TIME.
- LIKE ITS OMNIPRESENT.”
- This is not a punchline.
- You literally define the word immediately before saying the word.
- It's:
- “Something is everywhere because it's everywhere.”
- And then you put it in all caps.
- That's not emphasis.
- That's panic.
- And the ending...
- >“I’d squeeze till my fingers bleed.. since I was 8.. i was trigger pressin:
- time”
- This feels unfinished.
- You have a setup, then “time”, and then nothing.
- So the verse ends not with a punchline, but with the literary equivalent of:
- “Wait, I had something here...”
- The overall assessment.
- The verse has way too much ambition and nowhere near enough editing.
- You've got:
- homophones
- double meanings
- gaming references
- TV references
- mathematical references
- geometry
- anatomy
- archaeology
- insomnia
- vision
- medicine
- weapon imagery
- obscure vocabulary
- weak spelling tricks
- bad phonetic tricks
- And somehow, after all that, the verse doesn't feel clever.
- That's the biggest problem.
- You're confusing density with quality.
- A verse isn't impressive because every line contains a reference.
- It's impressive when you can hear a line once and think:
- “Fuck, that's good.”
- Then hear it again and discover another layer.
- Right now, too many of your bars make me think:
- “Okay... I understand what you're trying to do.”
- And that's a horrible reaction for a punchline.
- Your strongest material in this verse is actually the stuff where you stop trying to be a human thesaurus:
- “dug his own hole”
- “bone to pick”
- the mother/face reversal
- the casket/open hidden idea
- “20/20” /clear to see
- Those are understandable immediately.
- Everything else needs to be put through a massive fucking filter.
- If I were lightly editing this, I'd probably throw away at least half of it. Not because there's nothing here, but because the decent material is being buried under so much noise that it doesn't get a chance to sound good.
- Your biggest enemy isn't lack of creativity. It's lack of restraint.
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