Tanto Blacks (third left) speaks with MC Nuffy (centre) at the end of his clash with LA Lewis (second right) at The Famous Nightclub last Thursday night. - Anthony Minott

Tanto Blacks is known for performing standing on one leg, the other extended towards the crowd with a coloured shoe shaking as if in contact with a Jamaica Power Service Company (JPSCo) high-tension wire.

Last Thursday night for his face off with LA Lewis, Tanto brought on a male dancer, who not only shivered a red boot toward the Magnum girls closest to the stage at Club Famous, Portmore, St Catherine, but also shook his entire body as if barely containing an internal volcano.

Introduced as 'Tanto Duppy', he played with a superb energy level which was transmitted to and amplified by a large crowd.

That crowd enthusiastically endorsed every decision by judges Ian Container Boss, Ikel Marvellous and Cool Face to officially hand each round in the Celeb segment of the week's edition of the Magnum All-Star $1,000,000 Face Off to Tanto and his duppy.

Not that the result was ever really in doubt, after Tanto dominated segment after segment.

high-tempo set

Tanto's dismissal of LA Lewis started from the opening juggling round, when he started off a relentlessly high-tempo set with a spoken introduction by a rapid-rhyming Chi Ching.

Kartel represented vocally for Gaza and the crowd roared. Mavado declared "on the top it's just us", the duppy was up and skanking (falling off the stage and running around to make his way up beside the original again) and Tanto had gathered a momentum that would carry him right through to the end of the face-off.

Tanto closed the round with a Specialist dub plate, to the audience's delight.

From the early going Tanto stressed that he would defeat the 'Illuminati', Lewis.

The best of LA Lewis came at the very beginning, as he opened with Peter Tosh's Creation. The sounds of thunder and rain filled Famous, Tosh's recital of the Bible's opening escorting a slow walking, full-white clad Lewis to the stage. Timing taking off his shades to coincide with Tosh starting to sing, Lewis made the removal of his spectacles a spectacle, his arms moving as if encased in glue.

However, throughout the rest of the round and entire face-off, Lewis never lived up to that outstanding start.

Buju hailed the "top a top" renowned figures and Sizzla urged "get to the point" - a measure of Lewis' lack of impact being that the 'hey, hey!' part of the Sizzla track did not enjoy its accustomed crowd participation. Mavado's Bad Man Place was included in the juggling.

In assessing the round, the judges acknowledged that Lewis' "introduction bad! Yu lif' up the whole club". Of course, Tanto's duppy came in for special mention. All three judges scored Tanto at four points and LA Lewis at two, with the point for crowd response going to Blacks, and the rout was on.

In the 45 round, Tanto played Scion Success Done Dead Already, Supercat's Ghetto Red Hot and a pair from Bounty Killer, ending with Lodge.

The distance between the two grew, as two judges scored Tanto Blacks at six and LA Lewis two, with another having Tanto at four and LA Lewis two.

The dub-for-dub can change the direction of a clash, but in this case it only reinforced the leader's position.

Tanto opened with the master stroke of playing himself on dub plate, chanting "Tanto win, Tanto win!". Famous erupted.

more boos

LA Lewis attracted boos when he accused Blacks of bringing "some likkle people from Spanish Town, because from LA Lewis start play them say boo". His slow dub did not help his case, as there were more boos.

"Sorry, hush," Tanto told LA Lewis, dropping a Specialist dub which said in part "dem say LA Lewis nah no gal". There was a frenzy in Famous.

LA Lewis tried to score points with the crowds by adjusting his opponent's name to 'Tanto Flop' and claiming that after he used "sebolious" as a slang Tanto said acrimonious. "Yu cyaa dis yu faada," LA Lewis said.

However, Tanto Blacks was dismissive. "Mi nah say nutten. Mi kill him already," Tanto said, before delivering another devastating dub.

LA Lewis tried to attack Tanto's one-footed style, saying "mi a nuh go go. Mi no dance an lif' up mi foot inna di air ova people".

Tanto's last speech was a gem, as he hailed his children - all named as take-offs of Tweet, such as Little Tweet. And his final dub was a killer - literally, as Bounty Killer said "Tanto gun no stick".

To the end there were boos for LA Lewis, who claimed that he had an allegiance with Bounty, which the Warlord had broken. It was a double boo - one round for the speech and another for the dub plate.

"The boo them echo!" the judges noted about LA Lewis in their final report. "Tanto Blacks go hard. From yu see de man go real Bounty Killer a nuh normal ting ... The fact that yu play yu owna self pon dub an' kick out him teet that out of the building. Mi disappointed inna LA Lewis still."

And the dub-for-dub scores only reinforced the lopsided nature of the face-off. For while all three judges scored Tanto Blacks at eight points, one scored La Lewis at three points, another, one, and the third, a fat zero.