A wise man once said, “Straight out the dungeons of rap, here fake n—-s don’t make it back.” To uphold this law of the streets, the Poetry Club of BITS Pilani has been organising Rap Wars for the last seven years or so. This year’s edition promised to live up to its name by pitching the best of India’s upcoming rappers against each other.

The anchor started off with a mandatory sponsor shout out, and proceeded to invite the two judges, Raga, and Yawar, to perform the opening act only to find out that they were unavailable at the moment. To avoid embarrassment, he invited the first contestant, Akshay, who apparently was also unavailable. In absence of the other contestants as well, he took it upon himself to entertain the audience until the second contestant Valentino came on stage.

Introducing himself as a freestyle rapper, Valentino asked for words from the audience to help him rhyme. Freeing himself of the suggestions, he went with “hash”, and started rapping about drugs. After his act, it was Akshay’s turn to perform, who was greeted with loud cheers from the audience, for having finally arrived. Ashant Anu from Delhi was next, who vowed to make the audience remember their own childhoods. His attempt to do so, however, apparently meant ranting about the inherent misery of childhood. This was followed by performances from the remaining two rappers, Madhav, and Naved.

Their opening acts were followed by one on one rap battles. They consisted of two rounds wherein they were given 60 seconds to perform acapella, and 30 seconds with background instrumentals. In this phase, Ashant Anu and Naved got eliminated due to frequent faltering and weak punchlines. Prior to the announcement of the results of phase 1, the judges came onstage and finally performed their ‘opening act’, rapping about their old friendship and struggle to become the rappers that they are today.

Clear frontrunners from the start, Madhav, Akshay, and Valentino progressed further to the “Triple Threat Round” where, in a round robin fashion, each of them battled the other two opponents simultaneously. While Akshay choked and was subsequently booed offstage, the competition between Madhav and Valentino only got fiercer. After a round of performances by artists from the Lehar movement, Madhav and Valentino were announced as the finalists.

Clearly out of lyrics by this point, both started resorting to vulgarity to diss each other. In the end, however, it was Madhav’s fluent and effortless rap flow that gave him the edge over his opponent and he was declared as the winner.