Ayem vs. Pigsty

Who: Ayem (San Jose, California) vs. Pigsty (North Vancouver, Canada)

Where: GZ Battles’ "First Defense" in Vancouver, Canada

When: July 26, 2014

Why you should watch it: Here's the battle Pigsty broke down for us in our "First Defense" recap interview:

BATTLERAP.COM: Tell me about your battle with Ayem. He’s a veteran but he’s one of the most slept-on guys in the scene. He’s had a few really nice performances but hasn’t gotten much traction in terms of a fan base.

PIGSTY: Yeah, for sure. That’s sort of the angle I took going into it too–how long he’s been around but how little known he is. But he’s awesome. The dude was crazy. He beat me the first round for sure. And I remember that moment where I was thinking ‘Oh shit, I’ve gotta step it up.’

BATTLERAP.COM: What were his angles for you?

PIGSTY: He was just doing a lot of bars. His whole second round was jokes about my eye, which was weird because my second round was a joke round as well and it went over a lot better than his. There was a guy in the crowd who kept laughing at setups and he was throwing Ayem off. He kept looking over like ‘What the fuck?’ I did sort of ‘mixed race’ jokes in my second round and he did ‘one eye’ jokes in his. I had this line: ‘He’s got his fist all in your face like he’s part of the struggle / He’s from the Oreo race like Marlo and Shuffle.’

It all came down to the third and it’s all based on preference. I took a personal angle in the third and I had the room pretty silent, which is a weird feeling when you know you’re so good that everyone is shutting up. If you like general battle drama stuff you’ll probably think I won, but if you want to hear some directed bars you’ll probably like his third. I don’t want to give any of the lines away because I want the shock value to hit when people watch it.