It took 1 round for the conversation to shift dramatically,
from “Can JC get Lux?” to “Can JC get a round against Top?” By the end of the
night, the answer to both questions was a decisive “No”.
JC’s disappointing showing against Top has been widely been
attributed to overbooking, the conventional wisdom being his war the weak prior
with Illmaculate on RBE left him with too little in the tank for a rumble with
T-Top. Even his heavy workload throughout 2017 is being used to explain why a
man calling out Loaded Lux couldn’t get a round on a URL stage in a neutral
setting. While stronger material certainly would’ve helped JC against Top, the
issues go deeper than that. There’s a flaw in JC’s game that only really
becomes apparent against the top tiers, but considering he’s arguably defining
this stage of his career by calling out the top-most of tiers, it could be a
fatal one.
It was apparent after the first round of T-Top and JC that
the 2 were not even in the same league in terms of performance and delivery.
Going 2nd did JC no favors, as Top set the stage on fire in his 1st,
punching damn near every line while owning the entire stage, just a ball of
energy and urgency. JC wanting to slow his delivery down because he wants
everyone to catch every single bar is understandable for how intricately he
writes, and in small rooms and on small stages that’s fine, but this slow,
deliberate style he’s embraced allows him to get bum-rushed by aggressive,
energetic performers. His lines fell flat, because while the crowd understood
and appreciated the bars, JC slowed everything down to the point the energy was
sucked out of the room, and that was his undoing.
It’s happened before with
JC. Immediately before JC went on this run to get the Lux conversation going,
he took a clear L and debatable 30 to Bigg K, and the script went largely the
same. JC’s material was not lacking, but watching the way Bigg K went right at
JC, clowning him into oblivion and taking all the steam out of whatever punches
JC was going to attempt to come back with, it just seemed like battlers on two
different levels. The Tay Roc battle that signaled the beginning of JC’s
initial exodus from URL should’ve been the first clue. It wasn’t gas that got
Roc the win that night, it was a charismatic performance that once again left
JC’s rhymes irrelevant. I’d never argue Roc could outwrite JC, but I can’t see
how you can watch the way Roc turned the energy up to 11, and not see why JC’s
lines wouldn’t hit the same.
In a funny way, the best
counter to this that JC could make is to go back to his roots. After clowning
Chilla Jones for rapping “slow enough” and all the overdone stretched out
schemes, his writing has been drifting in that direction ever since, while
Chilla now raps more like 2012 JC than 2017 JC does. The pace, the energy that
was apparent in that battle is what JC needs to get back to. It didn’t matter whether
they were catching every line, the atmosphere and rhythm was more than enough
to bring the crowd along for the ride. If JC can find the time machine to bring
back some of that old performance, then maybe down the road Lux could be an
issue. Until then, I fear the “he was overworked” excuse will keep popping up
after losses to top-tier performers.
