Kendrick Lamar, "For Free? (Interlude)" Sheet Music Transcription & Notation

Logic, Growing Pains, Rap Analysis

***As appeared on last week's website e-newsletter***

Sometimes all of you guys on this newsletter just blow me the hell away, you know that?

I’m over here, sitting around, writing about rap, thinking I know what I know. And then one of you send me a song, and it makes me re-think everything, and what I used to know I don’t anymore.

Let me walk you through the entire experience of my first listen to “Growing Pains II.”

So I go to YouTube, and turn it on to get to know it, and immediately begin killing time on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Blogger, YouTube, YouFace, MyBook, wherever. I’m listening, and it’s cool, and I’m letting it sink in, but still thinking, “This isn’t anything I haven’t heard before. I mean it’s really, really good, but still pretty standard.”

And then 3:40 rolls around, and I get knocked on my ass.

I get knocked on my ass because it occurs to me that I’m not even the one person here who’s telling you that Logic’s song is a great one. Arthur gave me such a good song to analyze that he basically did my job for me, haha!

Seriously, by around 3:50 — ten seconds into this part of the song — I know I’m hearing something great. Because it isn’t just that Logic put an extended beat drop here, while still rapping — he put an extended beat drop in here at this point, while rapping…and rapping…and rapping…and still rapping…

Immediately, my mind at this point is racing to connect what Logic’s doing to other examples I might know of. Of course beat drops are classic in Hip Hop — I can right away think of a killer one from Black Thought off the top of my head, where he gives his rap the maximum punch available by inserting his best lines when the spotlight’s all on him: “Thump this in your cassette deck / Hip Hop has not left yet”, time-stamped on YouTube here:

https://youtu.be/3dNkIDPC9UE?t=135

And of course, Lil Wayne has his own greatest one, on “Got Money,” perfectly marrying the beat to the rap and the rap to the beat:

https://youtu.be/crfhQnIv9Jk?t=69

And then there are songs that might be considered just extended beat drops, where the beat never comes in. I’m thinking of Supa Nate’s verse from jail on the OutKast Aquemini album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71jax17z2Fw

or even Big Noyd’s freestyle on Mobb Deep’s Infamous album, called “[Just Step Prelude]:”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bD1Nlhe1A0

It’s also got me thinking about some Cool Kids beats. There, the beats often drop out, but the exiting beat is simply replaced by a new beat, as different as it might be, like on “Action Figures:”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09HeBs4Fx2w

Lil Wayne’s breakdown on “Let The Beat Build” comes close to doing what Logic did, but the producer only drops Wayne down to the drum instrumental…there’s not as much there, but there is STILL something.

Even Kendrick doesn’t beat Logic to the punch. Kendrick’s outro verse on “The City,” from Game’s R.E.D. Album, is a long, LONG beat drop rap verse, almost 40 seconds long with no beat…but Kendrick never brings the beat back, like Logic does on his own track. You can hear Kendrick’s verse here:

https://youtu.be/9xN_EmhQ4hQ?t=267

This all makes Logic’s own rap verse an extremely interesting mix of musical approaches to structure we’ve seen from rappers in the past. We now have to ask ourselves: is what Logic is doing here no more than a complicated version of a verse? Is it simply a long beat drop? Is it a mini-freestyle, inserted into a larger pop song structure? Let’s try and find out.

On the one hand, someone might want to call Logic’s rap between 3:40 and 4:20 just another verse in the song. However, this particular section of the song is so unique when set against the rest of the song, that I don’t think you can call it a verse. Not only does Logic completely change his flow, he also drops the beat all the way out right behind him. Additionally, Logic raps a cappella here for a very long time, when compared to the other examples we just looked at before: for almost 40 seconds, or 14 bars in musical time.

Actually, this verse’s length isn’t exactly 14 bars — it’s 14 and a half, which is a very unusual length for a verse to be. Logic is able to make this a cappella section end at a relatively awkward stopping point, because he has no beat behind him. This means that he is using a rhythmic approach called rubato, where the music-maker is ever so slightly changing the feel of where the beat is falling behind them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo_rubato

So, because it’s so different in terms of length, beat structure, and rhythmic approach, I don’t think we can call Logic’s rap at 3:40 just another verse.

I also wouldn’t call it “just” an extended beat drop, because beat drops, as the term is usually used, rely on the beat almost immediately coming back. Out of all the examples I quoted, the beat drop is never longer than 2 bars, including the Lil Wayne and Black Thought examples. Here, the beat exits for over 14 bars!

Instead, I would in the end call this a cappella section at 3:40 a nestled song-within-a-song. Yes, Logic does have the grand, unified “Growing Pain II” idea on this track, that starts and ends the song. But right at 3:40, it’s almost as if Logic has inserted what could be considered a completely new track. Because he has taken the beat out of the mix, and then gone on to rap for so long, this rap version of a musical black sheep feels like a freestyle. We almost forget that there was a chorus before this section, because it feels so very different. There is no chorus connected to this rap here, so just imagine how easy it would be for a talented producer to take his lyrics from here, put them over their own beat, and come up with a dope remix — THAT’S why it is its own song.

Logic led us down this path, by starting off the song very traditionally for the first three and a half minutes. Afterwards, though, he takes us down an unseen left turn road. We saw this before, from Kendrick specifically…but Logic once more surprises us when he brings the beat, unlike Kendrick did. That’s how Logic can actually give us 2 songs, when we think we’re hearing only one.

Kweli Vs. Beethoven: What Does Jazz Really Mean In Rap?

After having dealt with how jazz has influenced rap in a general sense, I’ll now mention the specific, strictly musical aspects that these two types of music definitively do share.

The first is something known as “playing behind the beat.” This means that a musician plays their notes slightly later than the actual felt beat of the music. It is a very small delay, though, so it doesn’t feel like a shorter duration length of note. Instead, it’s simply expressive. In rap, you have to have a very discerning ear to hear it, but a pretty clear example is Mos Def’s verse on “RE: Definition:”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr6SrRQnZv4

The most obvious one is at 2:10, on the “-ssem-“ syllable of “assemble it.” That syllable “-ssem-“ is still accented heavily, and it feelslike it’s on the beat, not syncopated like the word “did” back in his line “Like Moby Dick did Ahab.” But he’s actually way after it, to an almost startling extent.

This expressive delay also happens at 1:52, on the “sti” of “Palestinians”; The word “day”, at 2:00; The “syn” of “synonym” and the “fem” of “feminine”; and even others.

Compare this to a video of Miles Davis’ solo on “Freddie Freeloader”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14zAa_PBfRI

It has the notated music in the video. But, actually, that sheet music (note that it is Western music notation) is all wrong. Those notes that are written down don’t actually fall on the beat, as the notes indicate; they fall way after, as you can hear.

This is something African drumming music, and jazz, does a lot as well.

Another thing people will compare between rap and jazz or African drumming music is “polyrhythms.” But, just like jazz is being used to justify rap, “polyrhythms” isn’t really the right word, if they want to make the comparison such a commentator thinks they’re making. Polyrhythms is when more than one rhythm is being played at the same time, and since a rapper can only say one note (or word) at a time, it’s hard to see how they could ever make polyrhythms.

Instead, what I really think such commentators are alluding to is the fact that rappers can touch on many different metric divisions of the beat, all in a short span of time.

For instance, a polyrhythm, such as that from Western African drumming music, might be one where 1 drummer plays 3 notes in the same time duration during which another drummer plays 2 notes. This is what that sounds like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8tKbd91kFA

And if rappers are using polyrhythms, they could, at most, only be switching between alluding to that level of 2 notes at a time, and alluding to that level of 3 notes at a time. But again, I’d maintain this isn’t a polyrhythm, but complex rhythmic subdivisions of the beat, since the rapper is only saying one note at a time. That is, they aren’t thinking bottom up (add 3 notes together, then 2 notes, etc.); they are thinking top down (divide the beat/bar however I want.) This doesn’t reflect how the rapper is consciously thinking at the time they are making their rap, but the different musical traditions they are working with (classical, which would be bottom up, vs. jazz/African traditions, which is top down.)

At a much more complex level, this is what Kweli is doing in that same notation from “RE: DEFinition” that we looked at last week. As a reminder, this is it:






You can hear that song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr6SrRQnZv4

To help you understand those rhythms, I've isolated them and had them played back by a simple triangle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DICLoafxSag

For a while I have been notating rap rhythms exactly as they sound — behind the beat, all of these complex rhythmic subdivisions — while other people simplify them. When you simplify them into straight notes, you lose much of what I’m talking about: rapping behind the beat, displaced accents, complex subdivisions. But if you look at that notation from Kweli, you will see all of it. In order to see the complex subdivisions I’ve just been talking about, compare how many different note lengths there are. Sometimes this, (called a sixteenth note), as on the first instance of the word “is”:



Sometimes there is this other length of a note (called a dotted sixteenth note), as on the word “so”:



Sometimes there is still different length, that of the dotted 32nd note:

And still others. Again, you don’t need to be able to read music to get this; just see how many different note lengths there are, and how quickly Kweli changes between all of them. Compare this now to a zenith of Western music, the “Ode To Joy” melody from the final movement of Beethoven’s 9th’s symphony. This is the first 3 bars:

Unlike Kweli’s music, here, there is 1 length of notes: a quarter note. This is a great, physical example of the difference between Western music and African-influenced musics (like jazz or the blues.)

Rap Music Analysis - The 23 Most Repetitive Rappers

**I want to thank everyone who helped this article spread. It went on a worldwide tour of my hometown HipHopDX (thanks to Danielle Harling), as well as XXL, BET, Pigeons and Planes (thanks to Graham Corrigan), Complex (thanks to Justin Davis), and even a translation into French (thanks to French Montana.) If you like these articles, and want to see more, feel free to like the Composer's Corner facebook page.

This chart measures what rappers repeat the same words the most. This chart is actually an index, as is explained on Wikipedia here.

As the guy who generated this data for me emailed me, "Repetitiveness: This is an algorithm I hand rolled to use on this data. It's similar to vocabulary density, but uses ngrams instead of individual words. I think it gives a really meaningful metric. I got the idea when I saw this meme comparing Beyonce to Freddie Mercury."


I used Excel to create the visualization. The data analyst got the raw material from crawling popular lyrics websites.

Love,

Martin

P.S. - UPDATE:

Here is the data on how many words and how many songs the data was compiled for each artist, so you can decide how big the sample size should be:

P.S. - It's happened so much I had to make an FAQ for negative feedback, so before you offer non-constructive criticism, please read this.

P.S. - If you like this and want to encourage me to write more articles, think about buying a T-shirt here. Don't worry, I won't make any money off it - it's all for the love of the game. The rap game.

Blue Devils See Green: Duke, Not Kentucky, The Real One-And-Done Powerhouse

Coach K Might Be Beating Coach Cal At His Own Game

Does that “K” in Coach K stand for Kentucky?

That’s what it might seem like recently, after Duke's Mike Krzyzewski apparently transformed his recruiting philosophy since his 2010 NCAA championship team to be closer to that of Kentucky coach John Calipari. That 2010 Duke team, driven largely by senior starters Jon Scheyer, Brian Zoubek, and Lance Thomas, never had a full chance to defend or recapture its crown in the following years, after its ranks were depleted by those three’s graduations that summer.

Duke’s recent 2015 championship team won’t have that chance either, but for a completely different reason: instead of graduating, freshmen starters Jahlil Okafor, Tyus Jones, and Justise Winslow all got promoted.

Duke's underrated NBA appeal has received more of its proper due recently, as multiple articles counting Duke among the most productive in terms of big ball talent shows. But not enough focus has been placed on the very top recruits, the Jabari Parkers and the Kyrie Irvings, the 1% of the 1% of freshmen who are good enough to leave college after just one year. And maybe commentators are right: when Calipari had 4 freshmen selected in 2010, including #1 overall pick John Wall, he all at once doubled the number of freshmen that Krzyzewski had ever sent to the NBA in his decades-long career at Duke by that time. 

But a new narrative surrounding the one-and-done phenomenon has begun to emerge since 2011. It’s a story with strong, disruptive waves currently emanating out of Durham, NC, that have the potential to completely upend the received wisdom around men's basketball recruiting.

The phenomenon of the one-and-done has been here since 2006, when the NBA put into place its current 19-year old age requirement. Since then, Kentucky coach John Calipari has re-engineered his universities, whether Memphis or Kentucky, into well-oiled factories that succeed by promising Top 100 high school recruits NBA-money after just one year. In the 8 NBA drafts since 2008, for instance, Calipari has coached the #1 overall pick four times — each of them freshman. 

It would, however, be several years of agonizing wait before Coach Cal’s system achieved the ultimate prize in NCAA basketball. In 2012, Kentucky may have arguably had the first through-and-through, one-and-done championship team. College rookies had played starring roles on past championship teams, like Carmelo Anthony in 2003. But in contrast to Melo’s more experienced supporting cast, Kentucky was fully led by freshmen Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, and Marquis Teague. According to Sports-Reference.com, this trio altogether averaged over 31 minutes of playing time per game, and made up 46.6% of their team’s average points per game.

Coach Cal, while never replicating his championship dreams in the years since those 3 left Lexington, seems to have only opened up his lead over other colleges with draft picks since then. It was just 2 months ago that he tied the single-year record for number of draft picks from one school…with himself, because 6 Kentucky players were also chosen over two rounds in 2012.

And if Kentucky leads the rest of the NCAA in one-and-done NBA stock, then their lead over the more veteran-laden Duke could only be greater, right?

Well, not necessarily.

Kentucky does have almost twice as many freshmen draft picks as Duke since 2011 — 11 to 6. But although Kentucky plays more freshmen, Duke now plays better freshmen. That’s because although Kentucky’s freshmen triplets altogether averaged 36.1 points per game, Duke’s own 2015 trio — Jones, Okafor, and Winslow — outpaced them by almost 5.6 points, at 41.7 combined points per game.

And while Coach Cal has had more picks since 2011, Coach K’s own rookie picks can expect to be drafted at a better position. Calipari's crop of 2011–2015 freshmen averaged a draft position of 9th, while Krzyzewski's own 6 rookies over those years were drafted at an average position of 8th. That might not seem like a big difference, but just try telling that to this year’s 9^th pick, the Hornets' Frank Kaminsky. He can expect to make $600,000 less than this year’s 8^th pick, the Pistons' Stanley Johnson, over the course of their respective 3-year rookie contracts. All of that great Carolina barbecue Kaminsky has coming his way still might not be enough to make up for that difference in salary. 

Even a head-to-head matchup of these two program’s recent flagship players tilts in Duke’s favor: Kyrie Irving, his year’s #1 pick like Anthony Davis, won the Rookie Of The Year Award, while Davis lost out to Damian Lillard.

The most frightening thing for all of the Wildcats out there (or Tar Heels) is that Duke seems poised to continue the reversal, and possible overturning, of this trend over the next few years. Per ESPN, Duke has the top-ranked incoming class for this year’s season. It includes four Top 100 recruits, as well as three 5-star recruits, among them the #1 overall small forward, Brandon Ingram, and Derryck Thornton, the #3 point guard. Kentucky’s class, although containing the top center and top point guard, has only two 5 star recruits, and three ESPN 100 commits.

Furthermore, only 1 recruit out of the Top 10 for 2016 has firmly committed to any school yet, and it just so happens that #1 overall small forward Jayson Tatum will be taking his talents...to Duke.

If top recruits are already adding up their millions when they get the call from Calipari, as many cynical observers believe, then maybe those recruits should start adding these numbers into their calculations too.

Rap Music Analysis - Kool G Rap

**This is from a request I got on my weekly newsletter to analyze a certain song, "Ill Street Blues" by Kool G Rap, and so it's addressed to that person. Join the newsletter and you TOO (2) could get analysis articles whenever, wherever, on whoever!**

Hey man,

I checked out and really liked "Ill Street Blues," which you can hear here. I frankly was not expecting that, haha. Not because I have anything specifically against Kool G Rap, but because the rap that I listen to from that earlier period is very, very select. The earliest rappers I'm likely to turn on just for pleasure are Wu-Tang, 2pac, Notorious B.I.G., and Run-D.M.C. But beyond that, mostly everyone I've checked out was because I was writing a post on them and kind of had to, haha, like Rapper's Delight, by the Sugarhill Gang. I mean, that's a great, important song, but just not one I'm personally going to put on for pleasure.

I don't really like rappers who go that far back because, frankly, I think rappers have gotten better as time has gone on. Rakim might be held up as a great rapper for his innovations, but I truly believe that his innovations have been assimilated and improved on by other people. He might extend and shorten his lines in unexpected ways poetically and musically, but he was never able to put them into structures that fit as well together as those of Notorious B.I.G., like on "Hypnotize." Kool G Rap might have long, complex, multisyllabic rhymes, but I wasn't sure if he ever combined production genius with a completely novel, complex rhyme scheme like Eminem did on "Lose Yourself."

However, I really enjoyed this Kool G Rap song, which, like I said, was unexpected. On this song, though, I wasn't looking for his rhymes, which is generally the last thing I pick up on a song, but the rhythms of his words. What I enjoyed so much about his musical rhythms on this song was the one, small, but very unique/characteristic idea he kept repeating. It was honestly music to my ears — pun intended — when he started repeating the idea that he first mentions around 0:11, on the words "front of my." The important aspects of this idea are that it's 3-notes long, and faster than his other rhythms, and are triplets (which is a technical, musical term, so I won't go into it.) This 3-note and fast rhythm, which I'll call rhythm 1 just for simplicity's sake, stands out from his other rhythms, which are generally slower.

Now, let me walk you through how I heard this song. I heard this rhythm 1 idea once, and it stuck out because it was so unique from the other rhythms he was rapping. When he repeated it around 0:14, on "raggedy," I knew that something was going on. However, it was up to Kool G Rap to get the most out of this idea. At 0:15, he does rhythm 1 again, on "kickin a." Again, everything I'm quoting has 3 notes/syllables (they're the same thing,) and they're all fast rhythms.

Having mentioned rhythm 1 three times already, I was dying, dying, dying for him to mention it throughout the rest of the song. But from 0:17 to 0:34, he doesn't at all. That might not sound like a long time, but in music that's 7 bars, which is a long time in terms of musical time. At this point, I was incredibly disappointed, and thought I'd be able to dismiss KGR as just another good-but-not-great rapper. However, when he brought rhythm 1 back at around 0:35, on "thinking a-", my heart leapt for joy. He even does it again, right after, on "gotta get". I now knew this was a rapper to be reckoned with.

That's because this is clearly a musician who understands how to unify an extended musical structure, a 4-minute long song, in unique ways. His simple repetition of a unique rhythm is a great way to keep the thread of dramatic tension throughout this entire song taught. After 0:36, I'm not paying at all to the words Kool G Rap is saying, but instead listening for that unique rhythm. Every time it comes back, it's a relieving satisfaction of my musical expectations. For instance, he does it again at 0:45 and 0:55. I'll let you track down the rest of the times it occurs, because it's honestly so much fun to do so.

Thanks for passing him along!

Peace,

Martin

Kendrick Lamar Structural Elision - Rap Music Analysis

This is an excerpt from my upcoming book Check Out My Melody: The Expert Musicianship Of Master Rappers, which will be fully published next year on McFarland Books. If you'd like regular updates on this book, with more excerpts on Kendrick and other rappers, drop me a line at mepc36@gmail.com

Thanks and Love, - Martin

-----

After displaying his prowess on his first major CD Section.80, on which “Rigamortis" appears,” Kendrick Lamar upped the anticipation for every new song he comes out with on his next album, good kid, m.A.A.d city. That album’s song “Backseat Freestyle” is an excellent example of how the poetic aspects of rap inform how it is to be understood musically, and how rap’s musical aspects inform how it is to be understood poetically.

As we’ve already seen, Lamar is apt to blend the lines between different sections of his verse, as well as slightly differentiating between different iterations of the sections of his songs that repeat multiple times. “Backseat Freestyle” is no different, and these trends show up right away. Kendrick begins the song at 0:25 with a 4-bar, shortened preview of the material that will appear in the full 8-bar chorus later:

/ [all my life i want money and power] [re-

/ spect my mind or die from lead shower] /

[pray my dick get big as the eiffel tower so

/ i can fuck the world for 72 hours]

Afterwards, he launches into his first verse, which lasts 8 bars. Afterwards, the real chorus appears at 1:02 and lasts 8 bars:

/ [all my life i want money and power] [re-

/ spect my mind or die from lead shower] /

[pray my dick get big as the eiffel tower so

/ i can fuck the world for 72 hours] [goddamn

/ i got bitches] [damn i got bitches] [damn

/ i got bitches] [wifey girlfriend and mistress]

/ [all my life i want money and power] [re-

/ spect my mind or die from lead shower] /



Already, we see some deviations from the norm in Kendrick’s structuring of his lines. For instance, he both begins and ends the chorus with the same lines: “all my life i want...” This is notable because he has flipped the structural arrangement of this line, and this is what he’ll manipulate in the third verse to play with the listener’s expectations.

In the chorus’ first 4 bars — again, the number around which all musical sections in rap are based — the line appears in the first half of this sub-section. But in the second 4 bars, the same line — “all my life…” — appears in the second half. This leads to an ABCA phrasing form, where the As represent lines that are exactly the same, and the BC letters represent phrases (“pray my dick…” and “damn I got bitches…” respectively) that are different from both each other and the A phrase. This mirror form will allow Kendrick to blend the line between verse and chorus in the chorus’ 3rd appearance at 1:53.

This 3rd chorus, coming after a verse of 8 bars, opens exactly the same way as the choruses we heard at 0:25 and 1:02:

/ [all my life i want money and power] [re-

/ spect my mind or die from lead shower] /

[pray my dick get big as the eiffel tower so

/ i can fuck the world for 72 hours] [goddamn

/ i got bitches] [damn i got bitches] [damn

/ i got bitches] [wifey girlfriend and mistress]

Although opening the same way as our first few choruses, its normal rhyme pattern is thereafter slightly changed during its final 2 bars at 2:12, after those opening 6 bars from above:

/ [all my life i want money and power] [re-

/ spect my mind or nigga it’s go time] /

Here, Kendrick doesn’t rhyme on “power,” as he had previously, but on “mind.” He next continues that rhyme on “mind” on “grind,” “-ton,” and “mines” in the section that comes after this 8-bar section, which would normally be a verse, as it was after the chorus at 1:02:

[i / roll in do with a good grind] [and i run at ho with a baton] [that’s a /

relay race with a bouquet] [she say “k, you go’n marry mines?”]

This is where Kendrick’s symmetrical flipping of the “all my life…” line above turns out to be so important: it allows him to be musically flexible. We supposedly thought the 8-bar section at 1:53 was the chorus, since it’s a repetition of the material from 1:02, but these lines above have forced us to reconsider that. That’s because the “chorus” at 1:53 and the “verse” at 2:18 are so tightly tied together in their poetic and musical aspects that they blend into one another. They both have rhymes on the same vowel sound, those from “mind” and “time” during the chorus, to “grind,” “-ton”,” and “mines” from the verse. Additionally, all of those rhymes come at the end of sentences, as well as at the end of bars. And because the first and last lines of the chorus are the same, this forces us to ask the question: is this chorus an 8-bar section that is elided into the verse, as I’ve so far asserted? Or is it a truncated, 6-bar version of the chorus whose opening is then repeated only in part for the next 2 bars before a verse of a more traditional length?

That second question deserves special consideration because, although the first and last lines of the 8-bar version of the chorus are the same, when the section is repeated in a unique form at 1:53, there are no distinct musical ideas in the accompaniment which could otherwise help us separate the verse from the chorus. Such ideas are paramount in the crafting by a producer of a musical beat that is both satisfying but engaging, as we saw on Dr. Dre’s “Oh!”

So we have no distinct musical ideas for us to distinguish the two sections from each other, and as we’ve heard on other songs, even on Kendrick’s own “Rigamortis,” verses can last a number of bars other than those that are multiple of 4, even if it is comparatively rare. But since the same 8-bar chorus shows up at 1:02, 1:53, and 2:55, it makes elision more likely than truncation, although it is far from a settled matter. Since there is no clear answer, the listener is left with nothing to do but go back and forth between the interpretations, and this deliberate ambiguity makes the song replayable over and over again.

As icing on the cake, in addition to playing with structural truncation and elision, Kendrick also uses structural extension during this mysterious 3rd verse at 2:43 when he makes this final verse last a length that’s longer than the 8 we’ve been expecting, as was established during the first 2 verses. And at 2:55, the chorus appears for a fourth time, in the same way as it had at 1:02. Thus, we see a careful balancing between exact repetition (choruses at 1:02 and 2:55) and variation (chorus-ish material at 0:25 and 1:53.)

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What's up! My name's Martin Connor, a 20-something freelance writer and musician from Philly, PA, and it is I who made the rap news aggregator you now hold in your hands. Do you want to see more stuff like Hip Hop Headlines? Maybe a news aggregator for other music genres? Great! You can help make those other projects happen by donating here:     
                                        

$1 or $2 would, seriously, mean the world to me. I don't ever forget anyone who furthers my vision through their support, monetary or otherwise. So if you could find it in your heart to help make this day unlike any other in your life by right now trying to correct the structural inequities of capitalism, well, then, why wouldn't you? Right?

Look man, I get it. You expect to get everything free online: music, video games, whatever. Shit, I do the same damn thing, so I'm not saying that's wrong. But I am saying that, as of yet, there is a disconnect online between the quality of someone's work and how they are in turn compensated for that work. I've gotten over 500,000 page views, had my work featured on the biggest media outlets in the rap industry, and never seen a dime from any of it. And you know what those-magazines-who-shall-not-be-named did with my articles that went viral? They copied and pasted my work, and straight up stole my content. Not only did I not see a fraction of a penny from any of this, but I didn't even get the puerile satisfaction of seeing my page views go marginally up.

But I know it's a balance. If people did have to pay to see my articles or download my apps, I probably wouldn't have gotten 500,000 page views in the first place. I'm not saying what I'm proposing to you now is the be-all, end-all answer. But I am saying that I'm at my fucking wits' end trying to make this work, because bussing tables every weekend on back-to-back graveyard shifts isn't what I want to do the rest of my life.

So, thanks. And, as always,

Love,

Martin

Rap Music Analysis - Why I Do What I Do

Hey there! My name's Martin, it's nice to meet you. If I gave you a link to this post, it's probably because you criticized me on Reddit, or some other site, for something. You may have called me out for supposedly shamelessly promoting this website (in which case, go to bullet point 1); you may have said I was over-intellectualizing rap (please press 2); you may have made fun of a clearly white guy talking about an art form with African-American origins (press 3.) I want to talk about each of these criticisms one by one.

1.) "Martin, stop! You're shamelessly promoting your website!"

I humbly disagree. First, the proffering of this criticism insinuates that I somehow benefit in an untoward way from this site. Well, rest easy, because I don't. I don't make money off this site, even with the ads there; I make a fraction of a penny every month, even. This website doesn't even forward any of my professional goals; I am not using this website as a launching pad to pad my resume or something. The only payoff I get, a rather modest one, is seeing my page views go up, and thereby knowing that someone enjoyed my website. There is no bigger prize for me than checking my site analytics and seeing someone spent half an hour on my site viewing over a dozen articles. I sincerely hope you would not begrudge me this one advantage to my site, when everything else in my life is largely drudgery, haha.

2.) "Martin! You're just over-intellectualizing an art form whose very popularity relies on how accessible it is!"

Okay, fine. I agree to a certain extent. But no one is forcing you to look at rap this way. But I know for a certain fact that there is a non-negligible section of rap fans who do enjoy this kind of stuff. I know this, because I have almost 250,000 page views (Yeah, I'm kind of a big deal.) So if you don't like this stuff, skip it! Just know when you downvote it, you kill my soul. I spend a lot of time and energy on this, and like I said, my only payoff is having people enjoy it. If you downvote it because you don't think it belongs in the subreddit, fine, but if you're downvoting it because you object to my motivations, then I disagree.

Besides, I can't help it; this is the way — almost the only way — I think about rap. To not do this would be deny a part of who I am, which is totally mad bullshit. I try to balance the intellectual stuff with more straightforward articles, like my one on Pharoahe Monch. Neither am I claiming this is the only way to think about rap; I greatly appreciate outlets that are more general in their approach, like HipHopDX. But that's not how I do things.

3.) "Yo dude! You're a white guy talking about an African-American art form!"

Yes, I am. But I am also constantly paying respect to the forebears and predecessors who made my analysis possible. This doesn't make me a card-carrying member of pro-black unions, but after doing my due research, I sincerely think Iggy Azalea is racist. I think parodies of Hip Hop, like Bo Burnham's song here, are racist. I completely agree with Kanye West when he says, "Racism still alive / they just be concealing it," and that George Bush really, really, just didn't like black people, even if he himself didn't know it. I already knew everything that Q-Tip tweeted to Iggy Azalea, because I've read "Can't Stop Won't Stop," by Jeff Chang, which is, as the sub-title says, "A History Of The Hip Hop Generation."

Look man, what I'm saying is that my engagement with Hip Hop didn't stop at these articles, the Internet, or even the music. I read Chinua Achebe's book "Things Fall Apart" after I found the source of The Roots album by the same name. I'm probably one of the few people who can name an anti-apartheid activist besides Mandela because of the Tribe Called Quest song "Steve Biko." I read Malcolm X's autobiography twice after so many rappers mentioned him, like on Run-D.M.C.'s "Proud To Be Black."  I actually know who and what the Zulu nation is, because Mos Def pointed me back to Afrika Bambaataa.

This isn't to establish my cred with rap fans, or any demographics of the population, whatever the color of their skin might be. It's to show that I truly, genuinely love this music, and I'm not just piggybacking off it for some kind of Internet popularity (as groundbreakingly important as that is to some people.)

4.) Do you even know anything about rap? What makes you so qualified to talk about rap music?

Good question! The answer is that I've studied rap music for years, as a job, and have built up my knowledge over that time. If you think money talks, well, people have paid me to teach them how to be better rappers, and colleges have given me freelance work to transcribe rap rhythms.

Think of it this way. You know how you went to school, in high school or college or whatever, and studied math for hours and hours? You went to class multiple times each week for hours at a time, where someone who had studied math for a lot of their life then taught you what you knew. You did homework every day, took quizzes, took tests, and studied a lot. Thus, by the end of it, you knew a lot about math.

Well, that's exactly what I've done with music. It's my job. I don't doubt that you know a lot about rap music, and that you even love rap music. But it most likely isn't your job to know rap music. You didn't take tests on rap music. You didn't transcribe rap music, and then study it for hours at a time. You would never tell a lawyer, "Hey, you're not lawyering well!", if you hadn't been to law school. You wouldn't tell a psychologist, "Hey! You're doing it wrong!" So when someone who's studied music for 15 years of their life, plays piano, plays guitar, tells you something about rap music, don't be surprised if it turns out you might just be able to learn something from it.

So please, over all, I'm begging you to please think before you speak. Do your research on my articles, just like I've done on Hip Hop, so you get the full picture, not just some title and the first paragraph after browsing through.

Love,

Martin

Rap Analysis - Rap's Rhythms Transcribed

For the past few years, I've been analyzing rap. This has led to an exact transcriptions of rap's rhythms. They have led to rhythms which are, quite simply, amazing. I'd like the transcribe reddit to see this not just because I think it's cool, but also to discuss the philosophy of transcription. See the body of the reddit submission for that part. A note on my transcriptions:

There is no standard way to notate rap. Western music notation fails to account for non-semitonal pitch movements, and it's this failing that has led to some to disparage rap. (In fact, I've tried to rectify this by using a modified MIDI piano roll that can move in smaller amounts than semitones. I combined this notation with an Eminem song in this video here.) For this reason, I've notated the rhythms all on a single staff line, to also emphasize rap's percussive nature. The slurs, far from indicating articulation like legato, instead show where semantic meaning (sentences) stops and ends. Rhymes are capitalized. The clef is included not to indicate melodic range, but to emphasize the melodic nature of rap, which doesn't always happen.

Some of these rhythms, understandably, mean nothing to people who view them. That is, they can't be performed by people who see them, for instance, as by people who see more standard scores, with straightforward 16th notes, for instance. This informs my approach. I have notated the rhythms exactly; other people round them off, such as Kyle Adams in his "On Metric Techniques Of Flow." However, I don't believe rapper's rhythms are swung. They are too intricate for that; to reduce them with a legend would give no information beyond how many notes there are too a bar. They're not swung because they don't relate in a straightforward manner to a bass, as they do in a shuffle rhythm.

I've used noctuplet groupings not to reflect how rappers are counting them, but because it's easiest to notate them in this manner, because it affords so many different types of rhythmic subdivisions. This means I can use noctuplet groupings for every bar, which keeps the music nicer. One drawback is that, just reading this music, it's harder to appreciate that every rhythm is different. Game's sound nothing like DMX's, and DMX's sound nothing like Time Bomb, who doesn't sound like Hittman, etc.

I've used note rhythms not to indicate the length of how long the rapper pronounces the words for, but to make the music easier to read.

These rhythms are really unbelievable. I promise they're true though. Earl Sweatshirt's alone took me 20 hours. I also checked them by overlaying video of the actual recorded music being played over a video of Sibelius with the notation being played.

Without further ado, these are my transcriptions, with links to each song. If people ask, I can put up video of Sibelius playing these rhythms, overlaid with the actual music. The six songs are "Some L.A. Niggaz," by Dr. Dre, "Earl," by Earl Sweatshirt, "Aquemini," by OutKast, "Vomitspit," by MF DOOM, "How We Do," by Game, and "Who We Be," by DMX. I've also offered thoughts on their rhythms sometimes. Here we go!

"Some L.A. Niggaz," - Dr. Dre, from Chronic: 2001; notated below are verses from Hittman, King Tee, and Time Bomb; verses from Defari and Xzibit were omitted.

Notice how they almost without fail avoid the 3rd beat, which is noticeably missing in the backbeat. Notice how Hittman is constantly starting and stopping his sentences in different placs. Notice how the sentences run across the barlines, which rarely happens in rap. Notice King Tee's long pauses.

The Game - "How We Do" - complete first verse, and excerpts afterwards from him and 50 Cent

Notice how Game is constantly changing the final note to fall on the beat, and then to fall syncopated off it. Accent marks with < are on the beat; notes with a tenuto are off the beat. Notice how many times he repeats a 3-note rhythmic figure. Notice how this goes throughout his whole verse, and into other verses as well. Notice that rhymes on the vowel sound "-uh" are all we hear for the entire opening 16 bars. Notice his really short sentences, and lack of full sentences.

DMX - "Who We Be" - complete first verse

Notice how he's constantly repeating his 2-note rhythm that falls on the beat. Notice that he lists just nouns, not verbs. Notice how few notes there are. Notice how small his rhythmic subdivisions get sometimes. Notice how he falls behind the beat at places, and places tons of small rhythms to catch up to it.

Earl Sweatshirt - "Earl" - First Verse

Video Demonstration Of Rhythms Here

Notice how slow his rhythms are. Notice how lazy they are. Notice how long his phrases (sentences, indicated by slurs) are. Notice his crazily long rhymes. Notice how many different types of rhythmic subdivisions he uses. Notice his dancing around the downbeat constantly.

MF DOOM - "Vomitspit"

Video Demonstration Of Rhythms Here

Big Boi, with OutKast - "Aquemini" - His First And Second (Third Overall) Verses

Demonstration Of Rhythms Video Here

Notice how fast his rhythms are, especially in a song with this tempo.

Rap Analysis - Who Is More Versatile, Black Thought Or Waka Flocka Flame?

There are two main challenges in the writing about rap from a strictly musical point of view, and not a poetic one, for instance. One is keeping my argument mostly at the level where anyone, even non-musicians, can understand it. The second is making all of my arguments as quantitative as possible, and thereby most convincing. I have to do that because I’m writing about a strictly sonic phenomenon, and so it’s hard to demonstrate any of my claims, even when I’m just giving general descriptions. If I were talking about poetry or race relations, I could quote or transcribe song lyrics; I can't do that for the strictly musical elements of rap.

All of this is especially challenging when discussing a musician’s versatility, or lack thereof. However, some simple statistical analysis, equally understandable by the layman or laywoman, can bolster what might be the shortcomings of strictly music analysis in dealing with those 2 problems mentioned above.

In lots of my other articles, I've described what bars are. As a reminder, they’re the building blocks of musical time that are always repeated in a song, and always last the same amount of time. They're similar to how minutes are the building blocks of chronological time. However, bars are different from minutes because bars can last different amount of times between different songs. We need this so that some songs can be slow, and other songs can be fast.

I also mentioned that each bar is made up of 4 beats, just as every minute is made up of 60 seconds. As it turns out, the rate at which those beats come, when compared to a minute, can give us a measurement of how fast or slow a song is. The rate of how slowly or quickly beats come in a given song is called BPM, for “Beats Per Minute.” The lower the number of BPM is, the slower a song is. Conversely, the higher the number of BPM is, the quicker a song is. Songs can vary widely in their BPM, anywhere from that of John Cage’s piece “As Slow aS Possible,” which is to last 640 years in a certain performance in Germany, to the 184 beats per minute of Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance.”

Rap songs, especially recently, have a much narrower range of speeds in which they appear. As we’ll see, this is usually somewhere between 60 and 120 BPM. However, this does not bespeak a closemindedness of rap’s music-makers; instead, it only emphasizes the importance of a unique and personal approach that must come from the rapper on every song.

Using an investigation into the speeds of the songs at which certain rappers perform, we can see who is more versatile in their ability to deliver their lyrics, and who is more narrowly focused.

Using music software, I calculated the speed of songs from different rappers’ discographies. In certain situations, I was able to use every official album from an artist; in others who had a smaller output, I was forced to limit the search to only their studio albums. However, this always resulted in a sizable data set of at least 36 songs.

When I think “versatility” in rap, there’s only one person who comes to mind: Black Thought, emcee for the rap group The Roots.[1]

The Roots were the artistic force behind the second rap album I ever owned, their 2002 album Phrenology.[2] Since then, they’ve dropped The Tipping Point (my personal favorite,) Game Theory, Rising Down, How I Got Over, Wake Up!, Betty Wright: The Movie, Undun, Wise Up Ghost, and …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin. During this time, they collaborated with everyone from Elvis Costello to John Legend to Betty Wright. They’ve also been the backing band for the TV program “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” So far, I’ve got a lot of evidence that Black Thought is a jack of all musical trades, and a master of all musical trades. And that’d be good enough for a lot of writers…

But not me, which is where my aforementioned promise of statistical funsies comes in.

As I mentioned before, I went ahead and calculated the speed of Black Thought’s songs for a huge portion of his oeuvre.[3] The results for Black Thought’s 126 songs are below, in ascending order:

Each of those values should be read as, “60.8 beats-per-minute,” "61.8 beats-per-minute,” and so on.

Now, two things are pretty clear from this:

1.) Black Thought has a huge catalogue, and

2.) Black Thought has rapped over songs with tons of different speeds. His lowest song has only 60.8 BPM (on “Boom!”, from The Tipping Point,), while his quickest has 117 BPM (on “Here I Come,” from Game Theory.)

But in that list format, all of that information remains largely intellectual, and doesn’t really hit home. Let’s put it in a graph form that’s much easier to understand, because it’s visual. That same info, in graph form, looks like this:

This is a little more helpful. We can see that at either end of the graph — all the way to the left, or all the way to the right — we start getting some outliers, which are points that aren’t very close to the main portion of the data.

But what’d be really helpful is a graph that described, in detail, where Black Thought’s speeds fell most often, and where they fell least often. That’s exactly what this next graph is: 

The above graph shows where Black Thought’s BPMs fall most often. The horizontal axis along the bottom of the graph shows the BPMs, while the vertical axis along the lefthand side shows how often Black Thought had a song with that BPM along on the bottom. For instance, go to the chart’s highest point in the middle, closest to the very top of the graph. This falls along the vertical “Frequency” axis at exactly 14 times, while it falls on the horizontal “BPM” axis around 93. This means that Black Thought had 14 songs with a BPM of 93. This is his most common BPM, and applies to songs as different as “Stay Cool,” “What They Do,” and “Ain’t Sayin Nothin’ New,” which all come from 3 different albums.

Meanwhile, there are some other BPMs for which Black Thought doesn’t have a single song. If you look at 66 BPM on one end of the graph, or 120 BPM on the other end of the graph, you’ll see that the graph’s line doesn’t rise at all above the horizontal axis, and so it’s value is “0,” which means “0 songs are at this speed.”

As we’ll see soon, Black Thought has a very wide range of BPMs. His slowest song is at 60.8 BPM, and his fastest at 117 BPM.[4] This gives him a BPM range of about 56.2 BPM. His song’s average BPM is 93.2, which I suspect is true for most rap nowadays. That number also fits in very well with the frequency distribution of his BPMs, since it is a number very nearby — 93 BPM — which is the most frequent in Black Thought’s musical speeds.

If I suspected Black Thought to be extremely versatile, then I suspected another rapper, Waka Flocka, to be more limited in his musical approaches. If I applied the same operations to his rap that I just did for Black Thought, could I back this up with empirical proof as well?

Waka Flocka has a much more limited discography than Black Thought, so he has only 36 songs over his 2 official, major record label studio albums, Flockaveli (2010) and Triple F Life: Friends, Fans, and Family (2012.) The BPMs of all of these 36 songs are below, in ascending order:

Even in simple list form, some differences between Black Thought’s musical speeds of Waka’s speeds immediately stands out. For one thing, Waka Flocka’s speeds are more concentrated at the lower end of the BPM speed; 29 of the songs fall between 60 and 70 BPM. (For the musicians: double-time tempos were reduced to a straightforward BPM.) We can also see that Flocka’s slowest song, at 60 BPM, is slightly slower than Black Thought’s lower limit of 60.8. Additionally, Flocka’s fastest song, at 85 BPM, doesn’t come close to Black Thought’s comparatively breakneck speed of 117 BPM. So while Black Thought’s range of speeds is 56.2, as we said before, Waka Flocka’s range is only 25.

This is all represented visually below:

As we can see, Waka Flocka’s BPM speeds are mostly all the way on the left, towards the slower and lower end of the spectrum. Meanwhile, Black Thought’s speeds were more equally spread out.

We can, in fact, combine the frequency distribution graphs of both Black Thought and Waka Flocka to compare them visually:




We see that Black Thought’s output has a wider spread of speeds, as well as more songs at more different speeds than Waka Flocka’s. Waka Flocka is also more consistent in his choice of musical speeds; his most chosen speed was chosen 15 times, while Black Thought’s most chosen speed was chosen 14 times.

These statistics have already yielded some great results in describing the differences between rappers. Simply put, Black Thought raps over quicker songs, while Waka Flocka raps over slower songs. However, we can also calculate how much variation there is in each rapper’s output by talking about each data set’s standard deviation.

As the Encyclopedia Brittanica says:

“Standard deviation, in statistics, [is] a measure of the variability of any set of numerical values about their arithmetic mean (average.)”[5]

If a set of numerical values has a high standard deviation, the values are very spread out; if it has a low standard deviation, the values are grouped more closely to each other.

We want to use standard deviation because it is, in this instance, a measurement of a rapper’s versatility. That’s because the set for which we’re finding the standard deviation is the set we’ve been talking about this entire section so far: the speed of songs. A higher standard deviation means a wider spread of points, which means a wider spread of song tempos, which means a more versatile rapper, because they can rap over a greater variety of musical speeds. Get it?

How do you think the standard deviation for Black Thought’s BPMs and the standard deviation for Waka Flocka’s BPMs compare? Who will have the higher standard deviation, and, thus, the greater amount of versatility?

In fact, the standard deviation for Flocka’s BPM data set is…4.77

And Black Thought’s is…9.16, much greater than Flocka’s 4.77.

This quantitatively confirms the qualitative assertion with which I began this chapter: that Black Thought is a very versatile rapper. So WF might be a great rapper, but it wouldn’t be because of his versatility.

Footnotes:

[1] And not just because he too has the good luck to be from Philadelphia.

[2] Will Smith’s Big Willie Style was the first. Obviously.

[3] A rapper who’s been in it since at least 1992 is bound to have a huge amount of recordings, so to gather every song was basically unworkable.

[4] Double-time songs in these charts are represented in straight time, at their “true” speed, without double counting quarters.

[5] http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/562938/standard-deviation

Rap Music Analysis - Black Hippy

-Steven Bruno is a 22 year old author from Toronto Canada who writes short scary stories, you can find his work on his blog Blood In My Pen.”

Black Hippy Analysis: Kendrick Lamar & Ab-Soul

Intro:

This article was written to compare and contrast each member of the rap group Black Hippy and highlight the differences and similarities in their lyrical ability and content. I’ve chosen to split this article into two parts: the first centering on Kendrick Lamar and Ab-Soul and the second comparing Schoolboy Q and Jay Rock. The reason I’ve chosen to do this is simple: Kendrick has a lot more in common with Ab-Soul (in terms of their technical ability, what they rap about, their use of metaphors, etc) than he does with either Schoolboy or Jay Rock. Schoolboy Q on the other hand has a style that is more similar to Jay Rock than it is to Kendrick or Ab-Soul. This article aims to point out the more subtle differences between two similar rappers instead of the more obvious differences between two rappers who are not that much alike.

This brings me to another detail that I should mention. Before you begin reading, you must realize that each member of Black Hippy imitates eachother’s style to a certain extent across the whole of their music. They have spent countless hours in and out of the studio together, so it is expected that they have inspired eachother’s flows to a small degree. What this article tries to focus on is how the rappers tend to rap, or what techniques make up their own unique signature style. Okay, now let’s start with a (very) brief history of Black Hippy and the rappers we will be looking at in this article: Kendrick Lamar and Ab-Soul.

Black Hippy was formed in 2009 and consists of rappers Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, Schoolboy Q and Jay Rock, who are all signed to the label Top Dawg Entertainment. The group was purposefully formed after each artist had established themselves individually, which was revealed by Kendrick in this interview. “We had a plan with this shit. We said we was gonna get each individual artist off first, let the world identify them with these artists, and at the end, bring them together was a collective.” Each artist has publicly stated that they doubt a Black Hippy album will come to fruition, and Ab-Soul has jokingly called it “Detox 2” (the joke being that it will never come out).

Kendrick Lamar Duckworth is a 27-year-old (born June 17, 1987) rapper from Compton, California. He released his mixtape “Youngest Head Nigga in Charge (Hub City Threat: Minor of the Year)” under his rap name K-Dot in 2003 while he was just 16 years old. This led to him securing a contract with Top Dawg Entertainment. He changed his name to Kendrick Lamar soon after he dropped his 2009 mixtape “C4”.  His most widely known records are “Section.80” (2011) and “good kid, m.A.A.d city” (2012).

Herbert Anthony Stevens IV is a 27-year-old (born February 23, 1987) rapper from Los Angeles, California. Shortly after his birth, he moved to Germany with his family until he was 5 years old, when he moved back to a suburban area of California. At ten years old he was diagnosed with Steven-Johnson syndrome, which is a rare condition that is responsible for his dark lips and light sensitive eyes (hence his nickname “black lip bastard” and the fact that he is always wearing sunglasses). He recorded his first song in 2002 but didn’t sign to TDE until 2007. He released his first mixtape “Longterm” (one of four) in 2009 and then his second one, “Longterm 2: Lifestyles of the Broke and Almost Famous” in 2010. His first studio album “Longterm Mentality” was released in 2011, followed by “Control System” and “These Days…” in 2012 and 2014, respectively.

FLOW:

Let’s start off by taking a look at Kendrick’s flow. I think it’s safe to say that Kendrick is a very complex and unique rapper. He’s able to weave bars and rhyming patterns together so effortlessly that you often cannot detect where exactly he transitioned from one pattern into to another without taking a closer look at his lyrics. There are a few general techniques that he utilizes when writing lyrics, and I think an examination of the first verse of the song “Rigamortus” will help serve as an introduction into identifying these techniques.

            [and this is RIGAMORTUS and it's GORGEOUS when you DIE]

      [ali RECORDED, and i'm MORPHEUS, the MATRIX OF MY MIND]

      [i'm out the ORBIT, you an ORPHAN and a hairdresser COMBINED]

      [i'm on the TOILET when I RHYME, if you the SHIT THEN I DECLINE]

      [i CLIMAX where you BEGIN and then i END on CLOUD NINE]

      [and that's IMPORTANT when you MORPH INto a ANGEL IN THE SKY]

     

If you haven’t heard the verse before, I highly suggest listening to it before continuing with this article, which will emphasize how smoothly he blends together each rhyming pattern. Although this song is not a prime example of the speed he usually rhymes at, it does showcase a few important pieces that contribute to his signature style.

First let’s break down and categorize some of these rhyming patterns. Although I capitalized every rhyming word, is it still difficult to see on the surface exactly where each pattern intersects and combines to form a new pattern. If we start with the first line,

[and this is RIGAMORTUS and it's GORGEOUS when you DIE]

you can already see two patterns begin to emerge. We can classify Pattern A as words containing both the long –o sound and the short –u sound and Pattern B as words containing the long –I sound.

Pattern A	Pattern B
(long –o, short –u)	(long –i)
rigamortus	die
gorgeous

The structure of the bar is pretty simple here. He uses two internal rhymes containing two rhyming syllables and one end rhyme containing one rhyming syllable. Let’s look at the next line:

[ali RECORDED, and i'm MORPHEUS, the MATRIX OF MY MIND]

Here he adds two words to Pattern A ([RECORDED] and [MORPHEUS]) but pay attention to the rest of the bar. [MIND] is a close family rhyme of [DIE], so it fits perfectly into Pattern B. But [MATRIX IN MY MIND] as a whole rhymes with [ANGEL IN THE SKY], which he spits four bars later, and integrates the one syllable rhyme from Pattern B (the long –i) into a new three syllable pattern (long –a, short –e, long –I, if we ignore the syllables in [IN], [MY] and [THE]), which we’ll call Pattern C. A lot of popular rappers do this, but what makes Kendrick’s approach so unique is the consistency of which he utilizes this technique. In the next few lines he sandwiches the same type of combination pattern in between Pattern C. Let’s quickly categorize the rhymes in the next line first before addressing this:

[i'm out the ORBIT, you an ORPHAN and a hairdresser COMBINED]

[ORBIT] and [ORPHAN] both loosely fit into Pattern A because he stresses the long –o syllable in each, and [COMBINED] can fit into Pattern B because [-BINED] stresses the long –i sound. [hairdresser] does not rhyme with [ANGEL IN THE] at all, so it cannot be put into pattern C.

He follows the same structure basic structure as the first bar, using two words from Pattern A in an internal rhyme and one word from Pattern B as an end rhyme. Again, this is nothing too out of the ordinary for a skilled rapper. So:

Pattern A	Pattern B	Pattern C
(long –o, short –u)	(long –i)	(long –a, short –e, long –i)
rigamortus	die	matrix in my mind
gorgeous	mind	angel in the sky
recorded	combined
morpheus	sky
orbit
orphan

But the real genius lays in the next few bars.

[i'm on the TOILET when i RHYME, if you the SHIT THEN I DECLINE]

[i CLIMAX where you BEGIN and then i END ON CLOUD NINE]

Here he changes the structure of the bar a bit, while adding a third multisyllable rhyming pattern that utilizes words from Pattern B. Instead of internally rhyming two words from Pattern A, only one word belongs to the pattern this time ([TOILET]) and the second word belongs to Pattern B ([RHYME]). His entirely new pattern (Pattern D) is created when he rhymes [SHIT THEN I DECLINE] with [END ON CLOUD NINE] (the short –o vowel is [CLOUD] is stressed almost like a short –e sound, which rhymes with the short –e vowel from [DECLINE]). This new pattern is created in between Pattern C ([MATRIX IN MY MIND] and [ANGEL IN THE SKY]).

But that’s not all he does. He transitions to the next bar by stressing the long –I vowel in [climax] at the beginning of the bar, which is stressed in [DECLINE] at the end of the previous bar. [Climax] does not belong to any pattern, but carries the same vowel sound and two of the same consonants in the same order (“cl-”). This is part of a larger technique that Kendrick uses to transition between bars that I will talk about more in depth later. The bar also contains two internal rhymes [BEGIN] and [END], which belong in an entirely new pattern themselves but also fit into Pattern D. Then he finally returns to the structure that he used in the second bar with:

[and that's IMPORTANT when you MORPH INto a ANGEL IN THE SKY]

by utilizing two words from pattern A and then ending it with pattern C.

So now the his rhymes could be categorized as:

``Pattern A	Pattern B	Pattern C	Pattern D	Pattern E
(long –o, short –u)	(long –i)	(long –a, short –e, long –i)	(short –i, short –e, long –i)	(short –i)
rigamortus	die	matrix in my mind	shit then i decline	shit
gorgeous	mind	angel in the sky	end on cloud nine	begin
recorded	combined			end
morpheus	rhyme
orbit	decline
orphan	nine
toilet	sky
important
morph in-

Or if looked at differently:

A	A	B
A	A	C
A	A	B
A	B	E	B
E	E	B
A	A	C

He manages to create 5 different rhyming schemes in 6 bars and continues to create and intermingle new ones during the rest of the verse, all while staying inside the 4/4 time signature. He consistently hits anywhere from 14-17 syllables per bar, going as high as 21 syllables per bar in the second verse. This may be 10 syllables fewer than the fast part of Eminem’s Rap God but it’s still a respectable number to hit, especially considering how smoothly he integrates his different patterns together and how efficiently he creates new ones.  

So how does Ab-Soul’s style compare to Kendrick’s? Let’s take a look at the first verse of one of his most well known songs “Pineal Gland”:

*Side Note: As I said in the introduction to this article, each member of Black Hippy has their own unique style, but you can also hear them copy and emulate eachother’s techniques during their songs. I did not choose to look at “Pineal Gland” as a comparison to “Rigamortus”, I chose it to serve as an overall look into Ab-Soul’s unique flow and how he raps in general. Try to read this verse in Kendrick’s voice or any verse from “Rigamortus” in Ab-Soul’s voice; you simply cannot do it. This is because these two songs perfectly encapsulate each rapper’s distinct style, whereas the first two verses of “Say Wassup” are a lot more interchangeable, for example.*

[it was all a dream, i swear it NEVER HAPPENED]

[i WROTE LIKE EDGAR ALLAN, i was PO' LIKE EDGAR ALLAN]

[let me hit the WEED, you know i really NEED THAT]

[MISSING SCREWS, BENDING RULES like KNEECAPS]

[i don't even know what's real, i'm just BEING REAL]

Pattern A	Pattern B	Pattern C	Pattern D	Pattern E	Pattern F
(short e, short –a, short –a, short –e)	(long –o, long –i)	(long –e)	(long –e, short –a)	(short –i, short –i, long –u)	(long –e, long –e, short –e)
never happened	wrote like	weed	need that	missing screws	being real
edgar allen	po’ like	need	kneecaps	bending rules	being still
edgar allen

[making moves, you just another human being BEING STILL]

Instead of going through each individual line, I am just going to group together the rhyming patterns and then expand on a few things that make this song a perfect example of Ab-Soul’s signature flow.

A
B	A	B	A
C	D
E	E	D
F
F

Right off the bat you can see that this verse is not as structured as Kendrick’s. Ab-Soul is capable of organizing verses like Kendrick does (and vice versa), but normally his verses are structured in a style similar to this. You can see that he tends to switch rhyming patterns a lot more and the transitions between them are more prominent and a lot easier to spot. In “Rigamortus”, Kendrick references words from Pattern A in the first and sixth bar, while Ab-Soul ends Pattern A in this verse after the second bar and doesn’t go back to it. Kendrick tends to stretch his schemes a lot more than Ab-Soul does, as well.

Let’s look at how he utilizes internal rhymes in this song. Pattern E contains a set of internal rhymes ([MISSING SCREWS] and [BENDING RULES]) that do not intermingle with any other patterns in the song (although [MISSING SCREWS] comes at the beginning of the bar, I count it as an internal rhyme because it only rhymes with [BENDING RULES], which comes in the middle of the bar). This is how he commonly utilizes internal rhymes. Kendrick on the other hand often mixes his internal rhymes into other patterns, as seen countless times in “Rigamortus”.

Although this is how they most commonly use internal rhymes, examples of them doing the opposite can be found too.

 [the bass bit the BAIT, I'm STRAIGHT, you a GAY COUPLE]

From “Black Lip Bastard (Remix)”, Ab-Soul rhymes two words internally ([BAIT] and [STRAIGHT]) but mixes one into the end rhyme ([STRAIGHT] is a family rhyme of [GAY], which is part of the pattern [GAY COUPLE])

[in RETROSPECT i REMEMBER DECEMBER being the HOTTEST]

[squad CARS, neighborhood WARS and stolen MAZDAS]

From “Ronald Regan Era”, Kendrick uses an internal rhyme ([REMEMBER] and [DECEMBER]), which is not part of any other pattern.

There are a couple of other things that Ab-Soul does in this verse, but I will come back to them in the appropriate section.

I now want to talk about each rapper’s unique usage of homonyms in their songs. First let’s go over a few definitions in case you were sick that day in grade three.

A homonym is a word that looks or sounds the same, but has a different meaning. There are three important subsets of homonyms that we should keep in mind when analyzing Kendrick and Ab-Soul’s flow:

1.    Homophones are words that sound the same but have different spellings or meanings (i.e. “ate” and “eight”).

2.    Homographs are words that are spelt the same and have the same or different sounds, but have different meanings (i.e. “content” meaning happy and “content” meaning material).

3.    Heteronyms are a subset of homographs, which are spelt the same but sound different and have different meanings (i.e. “dove” referring to the bird and “dove” referring to the act of diving).

Now let’s take a look at these bars from the song “Hol’ Up” to see one of Kendrick’s utilizations of homonyms:

[BACK in this BITCH in the BACK of that BITCH, with my BACK against THE WALL]

[and your BITCH on the edge of my DICK, JUMP-OFF]

These lines contain examples of Kendrick’s use of (specifically) homographs because both [BACK] and [BITCH] are spelt the same but are used to refer to different things throughout the verse. [BACK in this BITCH] is a pretty common saying, meaning that he is “back at it” or “back doing his thing”. When he says [in the BACK of that BITCH], he’s referring to the back of the airplane, where he is currently writing this song [i wrote this record while thirty thousand feet in the AIR]. [With my BACK against THE WALL/and your BITCH on the edge of my DICK, JUMP-OFF] uses the word [BACK] to refer to the back on his actually body, and the [BITCH] he is referring to is an actual woman, most likely the stewardess that he mentioned at the beginning of the song [stewardess complimenting me on my nappy HAIR].

He makes use of each subset of homonyms in his music, but I’ve found that he is mostly a fan of using homographs like the previous lines. In the second verse of “Fuck Your Ethnicity” he uses them almost in the same fashion with the word [KNOCK]:

[it's TREASON and i'm TYLENOL, i KNOCK out when you KNOCK IT OFF]

[KNOCK on the doors of opportunity, i'm too INVOLVED]

Or from the first verse with the word “mind”:

[had a brain, then i LOST IT, I'm out of my MIND]

[so don't you MIND how much the COST IS, penny for my thoughts]

But in “Hiiipower” he uses homophones:

[and she always told me PRAY for THE WEAK, UHH]

[them demons got me, I ain't PRAYED in SOME WEEKS, UHH]

[WEAK] and [WEEKS] are words that sound the same but have a different spelling and meaning (i.e. homophones).

Kendrick utilizes all these different types of homonyms to fill up space in the middle of his bars while giving the illusion that he is rhyming different words together (which he technically is, since they are not considered the same word). But he also uses homonyms to transition between rhyming patterns. Here is an example from “Blow My High” of him using (specifically) homophones to do this:

[the galaxy ain't got ROOM FOR Y'ALL]

[ain't nothing gonna happen SOON FOR Y'ALL]

[while I'M HERE and every day I HEAR]

[your bullshit, SELF-PITY]

[reason why you never DEALT WITH ME]

The homophones in question here are [HEAR] and [HERE], which are used to transition between the rhyming schemes of [ROOM FOR Y’ALL/SOON FOR YA’LL] & [SELF-PITY/DEALT WITH ME]. You can catch these types of transitions in all his music but especially his older tracks.

Ab-Soul uses homonyms too, but not to the extent and amount that Kendrick does. Most of the lyrics I’ve found only show Ab-Soul utilizing two meanings of a word, like his use of homophones in “Black Lip Bastard (Remix)”:

[swung two AXES and knocked the earth off AXIS]

where [AXIS] and [AXES] are the homophone in question. Homonyms are not a part of his signature style like they are with Kendrick, but are something that he uses sparingly. The area that Ab-Soul really shines with (and is arguably a building block of rap music) is his ability to create some of the most unique and near perfect mosaic rhymes I have ever heard.

You have all heard mosaic rhymes before, even if you are not familiar with the definition. Simply put, a mosaic rhyme is a multisyllable rhyme where one word is rhymed with two or more words. For example, “jealous” and “tell us” would be a mosaic rhyme, as the syllables of one word (“jealous”) are being rhymed with the syllables of two words (“tell us”). Ab-Soul uses these types of rhymes so often and so well that I believe it is one of the only areas where he fully outshines Kendrick. To illustrate this, let’s first take a look at one of Kendrick’s general mosaic rhymes, this one from the song “Fuck Your Ethnicity”:

[i'm just a MESSENGER, yeah, i know life's a bitch, get the BEST OF HER]

The words we’re looking at here are [MESSENGER] and [BEST OF HER]. If you look at the vowel sounds, they line up almost perfectly. [MES-] and [BEST] both stress the short –e vowel while [-GER] and [HER] both stress the short –u vowel. [-EN] and [OF] stress short –e and short –o respectively, but they sound close enough to be acceptable, especially considering that they come in the middle of the mosaic rhyme and not at the beginning or end. This is an example of a standard mosaic rhyme in rap music.

Ab-Soul takes it not one but two steps further. First, the vowel sounds in his mosaic rhymes more often than not line up perfectly, which is something that not all rappers do. But instead of only the vowels lining up, Ab-Soul will also make sure that the consonants line up as well. Take a look at these three examples, all from the second verse of “Illuminate”:

[POPPING COMPTON OR TIMBUKTU]

[i might even sell my new shit FOR TEN BUCKS TOO]

[This is a shift in PARADIGM, i remember when i couldn't SPARE A DIME]

[Now i step in with a PAIR OF DIMES, on P's, y'all KNOW ME]

[i PAID DUES, even got that shit TATTOOED, hiiipower on another PLATEAU]

[i know you know we need a few PLAQUES TOO]

In the first example, the mosaic rhyme is made up of the words [TIMBUKTU] and [TEN BUCKS TOO]. As you can see, each vowel lines up perfectly:

[^1.TIM^2.BUK^3.TU] and

[^1.TEN ^2.BUCKS ^3.TOO]

1. Short –e

2. Short –u

3. Long –u

But if you look closer, the consonant sounds also match up perfectly, with the only real exception being the [S] in [BUCKS].

[TIM/TEN] = the only difference is the [N/M], which are consonants that sounds extremely similar anyways

[BUK/BUCKS] = the [K] replaces the [CK] to create the same sound, the addition of the [S] is the only exception

[TU/TOO] = both [U] and [OO] stress the long –u vowel, [T] remains the same.

He does the exact same thing in the second example with [PARADIGM] and [PAIR OF DIMES], where [S] is the only out of place sounding consonant again. I remember when I was introduced to Ab-Soul and first heard this song; this was the only line that stuck with me after the first listen. His mosaic rhymes are so memorable that it is absolutely mandatory to consider them a part of his signature style.

The third example is a bit rougher yet is still a quality mosaic rhyme, and it showcases a technique that Ab-Soul uses quite often. The [–TEAU] in [PLATEAU] is normally pronounced by stressing the long –o syllable (like you would pronounce the word “toe”), but Ab-Soul enunciates it with a long –u sound so it matches the vowel sound of [TOO] in [PLAQUES TOO]. Again the vowel sounds line up perfectly and the consonants line up almost perfectly too (the exception being the [K] sound’s absence in [PLATEAU].

He’ll also use the same principles when rhyming either multisyllable words or multiple words together. The vowel and consonant sounds in each word tends to match up so perfectly that it almost sounds like he is using homonyms or rhyming the same word. Here’s an example that illustrates this from the song “Black Lip Bastard”:

[i TOLD niggas, caught wrecked, then i TOWED niggas]

[TOLD] and [TOWED] are not homonyms but he makes them sound as if they are by stressing the long –o syllable and short –e syllable in both words and by pronouncing the [L] in [TOLD] as a [W]. It’s quite easy to find examples of him utilizing this technique, in fact he does the same thing with the word [DRAWERS] in the very next line by stressing a long –o syllable to make it rhyme with [TOLD], [FOLD] and [CLOTHES]:

[FOLD niggas like CLOTHES and DRAWERS, nigga]

Now let’s look at a technique that Kendrick has adopted into his flow, one that probably contributes to his signature style more than anything else, and that is how he manipulates root words. He will often rhyme a root words (or a very, very similar sounding word) with said root word + suffix/prefix. If we go back to the previously quoted lyric from “HiiPower”:

[and she always told me PRAY for THE WEAK, UHH]

[them demons got me, i ain't PRAYED in SOME WEEKS, UHH]

you can see that [PRAYED] is rhymed with its root word [PRAY]. He does this all the time, but usually tends to place the two words either beside each other or very close together in the bar. Here is an example from the song “Hol’ Up”:

[they checking my PASSPORT, i'm too ACCUSTOMED with CUSTOMS]

and one from “Ronald Regan Era”:

[strong enough to stand in front of a travellin' freight TRAIN, are you TRAINED?]

But he will also do the exact opposite of this by keeping the suffix or prefix the same and changing the root word instead. Here’s an example from “A.D.H.D.” where he places the words close together in the bar:

[and they probably RELATIVES RELEVANT for a REBEL'S DREAM, yep]

The prefix [RE-] is being repeated here while the root words change. But let’s take a closer look at this line to see how well he makes this sentence flow. The three words that we’re looking at here are [RELATIVES], [RELEVANT] and [REBEL’S]. Obviously the prefix [RE-] is being repeated, but he also repeats the letter [L] in the first two words, as well as two short –e vowels at the beginning of all three words. Doing this greatly adds to his flow, and he doesn’t restrict this technique to only words placed beside eachother. In fact he more commonly spaces the words out across multiple bars, as seen in this example from the song “Textbook Stuff”:

[the gang-banging and VIOLENCE, is the sweetest SONG]

[and i ROAM with the heart of a VIOLIN]

[don't VIOLATE my PATIENCE i'm WAITING, to kill a man]

[VIOLENCE], [VIOLIN] and [VIOLATE] all follow the same principle but are spaced out among the bars. This is probably one of my favorite things that Kendrick does. It gives the illusion that he is rhyming more words than he actually is, even though most of them are included in one rhyming pattern or another.

Ab-Soul sometimes utilizes the same technique, but not with enough consistency to justify including it as part of his signature style. Here is one of the better examples I found, from the song “Black Lip Bastard (Remix)”:

[PERPETRATING, bitches popping percocet and PERCOLATING]

This line is very similar to something Kendrick would spit; the similarities are uncanny. Each word has the same prefix [PER-], and both [percocet] and [PERCOLATING] take it a step further by lining up the letters [-CO-], as well as [PERPETRATING] and [PERCOLATING] being a part of the same rhyming pattern, similar to [VIOLENCE] and [VIOLINS] from the previous example. It is quite obvious that Ab-Soul can pull off the same technique but he has chose not to make it a central part of his flow.

The few times that Ab-Soul does use this technique, he really goes all out and uses it to stress the meaning of the lyrics that he is spitting instead of using it to dress the lyrics up (not to say that this is how Kendrick uses it). My favorite example of this is from the song “Terrorist Threats”:

[peep the CONCEPT]

[you've got PROGRESS, you've got CONGRESS]

[we PROTEST in hopes they CONFESS]

[just proceed on your CONQUEST]

That’s seven words with the same prefixes (PRO- and CON-) lined up perfectly within two bars. He takes it a step further than Kendrick here and uses two opposite prefixes to stress that what the government [CONGRESS] does is the opposite of what should be done to advance our society [PROGRESS]. It is unfortunate that Ab-Soul does not play with prefixes and suffixes more often, as he is quite good at it.

CONTENT:

As previously stated, the reason that I grouped Kendrick Lamar and Ab-Soul together in this article is because they rap about very similar topics in their music, although they do have a few major differences of opinion as well. The evidence supporting this is most strongly shown in the song “Ab-Soul’s Outro”, which is included as track fifteen on Kendrick’s album “Section.80”. I linked the song, but its general mood can be summed up by the variations of the same lines that Ab-Soul keeps repeating:

[what's your life about, ENLIGHTEN ME]

[is you gonna live on your KNEES, or DIE ON YOUR FEET]

[take out that student loan, and pay off your COLLEGE DEGREE]

[and do exactly what you SEE on TV]

[what's your life about, ENLIGHTEN ME]

[is you gonna live on your KNEES, or DIE ON YOUR FEET]

[is you gonna PLEAD the fifth, or SOUND the HORN]

[the TIME is NOW my CHILD, come ON]

The main theme of this song is going against the system and questioning what society dictates as the right and “proper” thing to do, which I think are major themes in both Kendrick’s and Ab-Soul’s music (although they rap about a variety of different things, a lot of it could be boiled down to this). They are both very socially aware rappers (although Kendrick seems to disagree) and are very frustrated with the way society is structured and the way people are taught to act. You can hear this frustration in Ab-Soul’s voice when Kendrick tells him to repeat the previously quoted bars, as if the audience he is speaking to just doesn’t understand him and the concepts he is trying to get across.

Kendrick’s “No Makeup” and Ab-Soul’s “Double Standards” are two songs that I think perfectly showcase each rapper’s individual desires to change the world and how the people in it think. “No Makeup” introduces the character of Keisha; a prostitute that Kendrick sympathizes with who is featured multiple times across his albums. The general message of this song is that women don’t need makeup to be sexy, and he uses the theme as an analogy for how people cover up and hide from the world (like makeup is used to hide your flaws) instead of facing reality (or being comfortable with how you really look). It points out a societal problem that is rarely addressed in rap music now adays, and it’s hard to deny that Kendrick is trying to change people’s perceptions when he says (at the end of the song) [and you ain't gotta get drunk to have fun, you ain't gotta get drunk to have fun]. In “Double Standards”, Ab-Soul delves into the double standard surrounding men and women when it comes to sex. He addresses the fact that in today’s society, men are commonly congratulated when they have slept with a lot of women but women are scolded and called sluts. He sums it up neatly in the last verse with the line:

[my auntie told me always treat my lady RIGHT]

[my uncle told me only love 'em for a NIGHT]

[you can see the IMMEDIATE DISCONNECTION]

[between a man and a woman, the REASON FOR REGRESSION]

But as much as they tend to be similar, they also tend to have very different views about a couple of subjects. Kendrick tends to speak about societal problems involving the hood and issues that are faced on the street; a good percentage of “good kid, m.A.A.d city” is about these kinds of topics, including songs like “The Art of Peer Pressure”, “m.A.A.d City”, and “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst”. Ab-Soul is concerned with the state of the streets as well, but his major topics pertaining to societal problems tend to be on the subject of control (specifically governmental control). This is most strongly evidenced by the fact that he named his second studio album “Control System”. The song “Terrorist Threats” is the best example of him attempting to tackle this issue; in it he mentions not wanting to be “chattel” (a slave), Aleister Crowley, the city of Babylon and “Selassie’ eye”. The difference in subject matter between the two rappers can most likely be contributed to the environment they grew up in. Ab-Soul was born in Los Angeles, California, but relocated with his family to Germany and spent the first four years of his life there. (Read the whole story of his childhood here). When they moved back to the United States, his family settled in the suburban part of Carson, California, so he was not raised around constant violence of drug usage, and his family was not poor. He says, “I was broke but not broke in a sense of poor. I come from Carson, CA. It's the suburbs. So, I was safe.” Kendrick on the other hand grew up in Compton, California, which is well known for its abundance of gang violence, sex and drugs. This is what he was exposed to growing up in Compton, which is evidenced by the fact that the album “good kid, m.A.A.d city” is essentially a retelling of his childhood. It’s quite obvious how their respective childhoods have influenced their views on societal issues and what they choose to talk about in their music.

The main subject that they stand starkly in contrast with is their views on drugs. Ab-Soul is a user of drugs and a firm believer that drugs can be taken to enhance consciousness and spiritual connectedness. His song “Pineal Gland” talks about one of the most potent (and, in the United States, one of the most illegal) psychedelic drugs known to man: DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine). With lines like [enjoy your mind trip but don't trip on your MIND, no man is safe from the war going on OUTSIDE] he is stressing the point of safe drug usage, asking his audience to enjoy their psychedelic trips but not use them to escape reality or forget about their troubles. His viewpoint on drugs has clearly affected the content of his album, as the “war on drugs” and “government control” are two subjects that go hand in hand. He is also an avid weed smoker, which can be evidenced by a brief listen to any of his albums.

Kendrick on the other hand doesn’t do any drugs, but he also doesn’t avidly detest them. The song in which he speaks most bluntly about this subject is appropriately called “H.O.C.” (which stands for High Off Contact). In it he has lines like [i go in studio sessions and feel like a NERD, cause i'm the only nigga there not smoking no HERB. You telling me the kush make you think on LEVEL FOUR? i'm on five, you saying that I can LEVEL MORE?]. He’s simply telling the world that he doesn’t smoke weed but can spit better than anyone who does. People will often urge him to smoke weed, saying that he’s “crazy with it now but if you smoke this blunt you’ll be thinking like a motherfuckin’ alien on steroids” or something to that effect, but Kendrick is adamant about the fact that he doesn’t need weed to rap on a higher level, he can do it despite being sober. And although he doesn’t personally smoke, he doesn’t speak against it much either, and he actually has a few songs that advocate it somewhat (The song “The Recipe” featuring Dr. Dre comes to mind). When it is mentioned, he often treats it as a metaphor or symbol for some greater concept, like in “Kush and Corinthians”, where the image of kush and a bible are meant to paint a vivid picture and symbolize his quest for finding answers and questioning life. He is also not silent on the matter of drug abuse either, with songs like “A.D.H.D.” and “Swimming Pools” (remember, alcohol is a drug, guys) being on the forefront of these issues.

Wordplay

I originally wasn’t going to write this section; after a month of having both Kendrick Lamar and Ab-Soul on repeat in my car, I still found it difficult to decide who has the best wordplay, as “wordplay” encapsulates so many different things. I can talk about something as subtle as how Kendrick pronounces [fuck that] (like “fuck thought”) in “A.D.H.D.” to contribute to the underlying meaning of the song, or I can talk about his more obvious lines: [hotboxing like George Foreman grilling the MASSES of the WORKING WORLD]. Ab-Soul and Kendrick pack their music with so many different forms of artistry that it’s hard to analyze all of them, so to keep it simple we’ll look at one verse in one song by each of them that I think summarizes their general individual approaches to wordplay.

The first song we’re going to look at is “HiiiPower” by Kendrick Lamar:

[back to put you backstabbers back on your spinal BONE]

[you SLIPPED YOUR DISC when i SLID YOU MY DISC]

[you wanted to DISS but jumped on my DICK]

We have already talked enough about Kendrick’s use of homonyms to refrain from mentioning it again in detail in this segment; it’s quite clear what he’s doing with the words [back] and [DISC]. Also, as a side mention, it’s interesting to note how well these bars flow, with the b/b/s/b/s/b sounds being stressed in the first line and then it switching to s/d/s/d/d/d.

So what exactly is he saying in the first line? Well, the definition of a backstabber is someone who metaphorically “stabbed you in the back” or did you wrong in some way. Your [spinal BONE] is a reference to your spine, and [SLIPPED YOUR DISC] is referring to the intervertebral discs that make up your spine. So on the surface you can group each of these words together in the same category (having to do with the back). But the head is also attached to the spine, so when he says [back to put you backstabbers back on your spinal BONE], he is saying that he has come to put your head back on straight. He reveals that you [SLIPPED YOUR DISC when i SLID YOU MY DISC], referencing to the fact that your spinal disc slipped out of place (your head came undone) when he handed you his CD, and you had the urge to jump on his dick instead of diss him. This wordplay is not spelt out for you, but you also don’t have to delve too deep into it to figure it out.

[I got my finger on the mothafuckin' PISTOL]

[aiming it at a pig, Charlotte's web is going to MISS YOU]

This line is very surface level and an easy to understand play on words with “pig”. It doesn’t need to be explained.

[my issue isn't TELEVISED, and you ain't gotta TELL THE WISE]

[how to stay on beat, because our life's an INSTRUMENTAL]

This line is a bit more difficult to understand. First, notice the wordplay with [beat] and [instrumental] and the fact that they are synonyms. [THE WISE] refer to his fellow members in the HiiiPower revolution; you do not need to have their issues [TELEVISED] because they will always be aware of the issues [STAY ON BEAT] because they live with them and see them everyday [life’s an INSTRUMENTAL].

[this is physical and MENTAL, i won't SUGAR COAT IT]

[you'd die from diabetes if these other NIGGAS WROTE IT]

Another easy line to analyze. Diabetes is a disease directly related to the amount of sugar in your blood. When Kendrick says he won’t [SUGAR COAT IT], he’s telling the audience that we don’t have to worry about him “dressing up” issues to make them look better because he will always be blunt with us. Other rappers will dress up and sugar coat the issues so much that they will not only give you diabetes, you will also die from the disease (It’s very possible to live with diabetes).

[i don't want PLASTIC NATION, dread that like a HAITIAN]

Calling something “plastic” is another way of saying it’s fake, so Kendrick is simply stating that he doesn’t want a fake nation (one where people worship material goods, listen to everything the government says, etc). The simile used here is very easy to understand too: Haitians often have their hair styled in dreads.

Now I know Kendrick has a lot of other high quality metaphors and intricate wordplay examples, but I think this song is an accurate sample of his general usage of wordplay. If you are interested in analyzing a song with more intricate wordplay, I suggest listening to his “C4” mixtape or “The Art of Peer Pressure”Now let’s look at the second verse of “Illuminate”. I chose this song because we have already gone over some examples of wordplay from it,

[POPPING COMPTON OR TIMBUKTU]

[i might even sell my new shit FOR TEN BUCKS TOO]

[This is a shift in PARADIGM, i remember when i couldn't SPARE A DIME]

[Now i step in with a PAIR OF DIMES, on P's, y'all KNOW ME]

but he packs a few more genius bars in this verse. Here’s one that I would have never fully gotten if not for the amazing analyst skills of the people over at RapGenius:

[COLD SHIT, i'm HOT THOUGH, like COAL GET, ab-SOUL]

On the surface, this line doesn’t seem too hard to analyze. Rappers use the adjective “cold” to mean “amazing”, “great”, “sick” or any variation of the sort. They call themselves “hot” to mean the same thing. Pay attention to the duality of the line; he’s calling himself “cold” and “hot”, two opposite adjectives that he uses to describe the same thing about himself. This is a nice example of wordplay, but it is not what makes this line so attractive. He tells us that he is hot like [COAL GET], because once you light fire to coal, it gets hot. But the way he enunciates [COAL GET] sounds like “Colgate”, a brand of toothpaste that provides both a hot and cold sensation in your mouth. This gives a whole new meaning to the bar, and is a prime example of the sort of wordplay that Ab-Soul tends to use in his music.

[and as WE PROCEED to follow THESE DREAMS, i ain't losing no SLEEP]

[NO, NO on them NODOZ, just KNOW "NO" if it's NO DOUGH]

Once you know that NoDoz is a caffeine pill, the line is quite easy to understand. He’s following his dreams and he’s not losing any sleep in the meantime. Therefore he says “no” to any caffeine pills, and tells you to understand that if there’s no money involved, his answer will also be a “no”.

This is a beautiful example of him combining multiple techniques into a short space. [NO] is used four times in a slightly different context but is also matched with its homophone [KNOW]. Not too mention that [NODOZ] and [NODOUGH] is a near perfect mosaic rhyme, where only one consonant sound (the “Z” in [NODOZ] and the “GH” in [NO DOUGH]) is different.

[SO high but i'm SOULO]

Although this line looks very easy to analyze, there are actually four different meanings behind it. I’ll let RapGenius explain because they already did an amazing job of it.

[TOO ILL WHEN I JOT THESE WORDS, TRUE EEL WHEN I SHOCK THE WORLD]

This line is pretty easy to understand as well. [TOO ILL] = [TRUE EEL], and what does a [TRUE EEL] do? It shocks things. I mentioned this bar mainly because Kendrick has a very similar line on the song “Phone Home” off his mixtape “C4”, and it’s cool to note the comparison:

[i'm sick and electrifying, that's double ILL]

WILL BE CONTINUED WITH PART II: SCHOOLBOY Q & JAY ROCK, PART III: BLACK HIPPY