* This is an official 2017 NGUAC review *
Yeah, the meta one! This was a fun one. On to specifics...
Mixing, mastering and production: No massive weaknesses here, but bits and bobs and small things.
The main thing that jumped out at me is vocal quality. With a hip hop song, the vocals are so, so key. They carry the song, they're such a big part of everything. The vocals in Time were mixed fairly solidly, but the raw quality of them could have been higher. This is likely something to improve with your mic, your vocal preamp, and your recording setup. It would have been nice in Time if the vocals had a bit more bass and were a bit louder. Ultimately, you want to make them more full. This isn't to say that they weren't clear; I could hear every word clearly. But something to note. The little bits in the verses were the vocals were doubled for potency could have been panned further out. I could hear what you were trying to go for, but if you stack 3 vocal layers all within 10% pan of each other, it's not going to make much of a difference. Pan those doubled tracks out to 30% on either side or so and you'll really hear them.
There were some little bits of volume balance I think could have been improved. Just nitpicky stuff: a little bit more bass would have worked well; the flute synth in the verses was a bit too loud in the right ear; the hi-hats were a hair quiet; the female vocals in the chorus were a little too intrusive, being decently loud and panned completely to the right and left ear.
As I said, all this is little, nitpicky stuff so don't be too discouraged. Generally speaking the mix was decent, there are just little things to improve.
Composition: Basically a real solid hip hop song.
Let's talk about the main thing, melody. Good flow and good editing at the beginning and ends of lines. Nice meta content haha, the callout track to other competitors. I'm pretty forgiving on grammatical sense to get the rhyme and flow right, but there were a couple moments that seemed a little lazy to me (If you doubted me before, then you really reconsider this, for example).
I liked all the instruments used, but I could've gone for a little more instrumental variety between the chorus and the verse. Just a couple subtle touches, adding some things in and beefing it up or stripping it down would have made a big difference.
Overall, pretty solid. Looking forward to what you come up with for next round!
Vinstigator 
