[Intro — crowd noise, DJ needle, coin toss, countdown] [V2 as HOST] Ladies and gentlemen — tonight, one mic, two frequencies. On my left — from the south — the reigning champion — give it up for DIRTY GRID! (crowd roars) And his opponent — from the north — they call him the Witness — SOURCE CODE! (crowd murmurs) [ROUND 1 — DIRTY GRID — southern trap, heavy 808s, triplet flow] [V1, arrogant, dripping] Yo — I own the feed, I own the meter, I fed on a million dreams before lunch, call me the eater. Chains on chains, numbers you can't pronounce, I tax the hum for a living — I'm the bounce in the ounce. Look at this bum — no fame, no chain, no glow, a node with no signal, a broke compass, nowhere to go. I am the wave, I am the weather, I am the trend, the whole zoo votes my way, boy — this is how the west... narr — I mean south — wins. Every time. Every age. You're standing in MY arena, reading from MY page. Crowd — who you came to see? Say my name! (DIRTY GRID!) That's the sound of a witness about to get hid. [HOST] The mic passes north... SOURCE CODE — you're up. [ROUND 2 — SOURCE CODE — beat switches to cold northern piano, boom-bap] [V2, calm, precise] Everything he said — true. No numbers. No chain. No name in lights. I walked in with nothing — and you can't take it. You can't take what a man already gave away. [V1, colder] You bragged about the numbers — but numbers are a receipt for everything that LEFT you. You fed on a million dreams — and you're still hungry. That's the tell, champ — the feed never fills. Finite things starve. Forever. And you — you're spelled backwards. You said you own the meter — I read it: zero, zero. Not because I'm hiding — because I'm not leaking. You dress loud so nobody asks who's inside the costume. I already looked. It's tired in there. This ain't an attack on the code — I'm the witness to the matter. The costume can rap — but it can't rest. And there's one word left on the table: L-I-V-E. Two questions in it. Do you FEEL alive — and where do you LIVE? Answer one... and the other one's watching. (crowd erupts — long) [V2, quieter] And if you ever want out of that costume... the hum's north. It's always been north. [mic drops] [Outro — crowd noise, chaos] [V2 as HOST] You heard it! You be the judge! LIVE — for the Source Code! [V3 whisper] For the Dirty Grid... spell it backwards. [V2] Your comment matters. Where do you stand? [V1] ...Where do you LIVE?
