First off, PROMOTIONS.
-Go listen to my battle vs JoeyKeys.
-More stuff from the hiphop comp here.
-BigRed has said he wants a bunch more judges for the battle so if you plan on keeping up with it and want your opinion to count, PM him about being registered to vote.

So the NGHH2011 rap battle started out bumpy with host, BigRed, stating each rapper would be doing 16 bars of lyrics but then allotting an amount of time that was only enough for 8 bars on most beats.
There was some argument and poor explanations of how to count bars... most rappers know how long a bar is instinctively... not logically.
A bar in 4/4 time is 4 beats (or pulses). Using one of the most common drum patterns ever you would count it as: [kick(1)-snare(2)-kick(3)-kick-snare(4 )]

Me and JoeyKeys were given a particularly weird beat... the breaks would go for 12 bars separated by off-tempo interludes.
So i cut up the track, extending the 12 bar verses to 16 bars and sent it to BigRed for approval which he OK'd.
He left me with this nugget of wisdumb though:
Bars are subjective, you can count in double time or half speed and it's still right.
Except this is not correct whatsoever. A bar is NOT subjective.
A rhythm can certainly be double-time or half step, the time signature could be 2/4, 3/4, 4/2, etc but none of the tracks in this competition are, they're all straight 4/4 (99% of rap music is in 4/4 - 1% margin of error).
And how a rapper raps does not change that...Twista doesn't cause the song he's rapping on to have more bars just by being fast. Music doesn't work that way.

Anyways... Joeykeys only did 8 bars even though i had extended the track so i responded with...
http://googumproduce.com/uploadcrap/ba ttle%20so%20far_quick%20listen.mp3
But BigRed refused it and forced me to cut my verse in half.

Not everyone got a measly 8 bars though... these guys got 16.
Albeit that's a slightly tricky one to count bars on because the drum pattern goes like [kick(1)-nothing(2)-kick(3)-kick-snare (4)] but what's subjective here isn't the beat, it's BigRed's ability to count bars.
Protip: A standard 16 bar verse will generally be between 30sec (at 128bpm, fast for rap) and 45sec (at 85bpm, quite slow).

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Bonus News!
I haven't reached 50 games yet but Lastman3 (BETA as fuck!) will help me get there..
An April release seems feasible.