Arsonal has officially retired from the battle rap scene after a long and admirable career. He has battled in every major league from URL, KOTD, Don’t Flop, UDubb and others. His final battle which was against Loaded Lux took place a few weeks ago on the 5th of August but is yet to be released on the UDubb network’s YouTube channel. However, two weeks prior to that battle he stood face to face versus fellow battle rap veteran Iron Solomon for his penultimate battle on the King of the Dot stage.
Truth be told it was a disappointing battle. Arsonal was highly disrespectful as usual and Iron Solomon brought some great bars and rebuttals but all in all it felt underwhelming. There weren’t enough entertaining bars to keep my attention and it felt especially disappointing to see Arsonal’s performance in this battle. It feels like he has made a great decision to retire at this point in time while his legacy in the game is still intact, because this was one of his weaker showings.
Arsonal was especially disrespectful as usual; coming within inches of Solomon’s face, pocket check and ending it all by smacking Solomon’s hat off his head, sending it flying off into the crowd. Despite the antics I think Iron Solomon came with the overall better lyrics and took the second and third rounds easily. He clearly did not have the aggression of Ars, very few people do. However, if I judge it purely on rhymes then Solomon out-barred Ars 2-0. Arsonal took the first round with his energy and high octane bars but the rest of his rounds were extremely uncomfortable to watch.
Then again one of the great things about non-judged battles is that everyone can form their own opinion and you can debate the outcome till the end of time. Now I’m patiently waiting to watch the Ars versus Loaded Lux battle, partly because it’s Arsonal’s final battle and partly because Lux’s appearances are so rare. So watching him do his thing is a treat.
Of course the question for now still remains how will Arsonal perform in his endeavors outside of battle rap? Only time will tell. But in the mean time you can watch the entire Iron Solomon versus Arsonal battle in the YouTube video below courtesy of King of the Dot’s YouTube channel.
