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.

Excuse My French, But Is This REALLY French?

Today, I started listening to Polish Hip Hop for a graduate project I’m working on at the University of Colorado — specifically, the rhythms of the rapper’s words, not the beat behind them, the art of the video, or anything else like that. The first guy I checked out was O.S.T.R., this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxq2N38aXGk

I was somewhat surprised to find out that the rhythms of the Polish words were extremely similar to those of English words, to the point that English words could have been interchanged into the melody, and things would still sound the same — the semantic meaning would be different, but the musical rhythms could have stayed the same.

Surprised by this, I decided to pick the language from the countries we’ve studied that is as different as possible from English and Polish, and decided on China. I did this to see if the same thing would still happen. However, the rhythms of the Chinese video here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzwNVCq9bjg

were incredibly similar to those of both English an Polish as well. How the hell could this be?

I mean, when people speak these languages in real life, their rhythms are incredibly different. Having studied French for years, I know that the accent of every grammatical clause or word in French falls at the very end. English speakers like us might pronounce the word for your state like this:

coloRAdo

But French people would say:

coloraDO

We might say:

TEXas

But French people would say:

texAS

All of this is true, even though Colorado’s accented syllable is the penultimate one, and Texas’ accented syllable is its first one. France simplifies that into the same thing: an accent on the final syllable.

But listen to where the accents fall in this French rap song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3sOlpoQYNo

Even if you don’t speak French, and they’re talking too quickly for me to understand what they’re saying anyway, you can hear that the rappers’ accents aren’t falling only at the end of the sentence; they’re falling inside as well. This makes this kind of rapped-French more similar to English than it is to “proper” French.

It seems, then, that French rappers must break the rules of speaking French in order to rap in French.  Perhaps this might be an “extension of self”, a rebellion against the norm that is acted out not just verbally (the meaning of the words they say), but phonologically (how they grammatically say those words) as well (this idea might be developed further later.)

And just in case a person might think these rules I refer to are no more than loose conventions, consider the Académie française:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise

I now quote Wikipedia: “The body has the task of acting as an official authority on the language; it is charged with publishing an official dictionary of the language.”

Could a living, breathing art like rap ever have happened in a language with such a cloistered climate? It’s no mistake that French used to be the language of diplomacy; in the future, we’ll speak of a lingua anglica, not a lingua franca.

English is so popular because it has no problem incorporating other languages’ words, like omerta, or (ironically) even French ones, like voyage. In contrast, the Academié française proscriptively decrees that French people should use the word “le courrier electronique” when referring to what we call e-mail. But what is easier for a person, no matter their native language, to say: “e-mail” (2 syllables) or “le courrier electronique” (8 syllables)? The answer is “e-mail”, obviously, so that’s the word most French people use.

Don’t doubt the power of nativist institutions like the Academie française. A certain percentage of all songs on French radios stations must be in French:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_pop_music#Radio_in_France

And the Toubon Law makes the use of French in many public instances mandatory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toubon_Law

I mention all of this to show that these ways of speaking French from France aren’t just conventions; they’re taken as common foundations of a well-integrated social fabric, on an equal level with virtues as idealistic as France’s cherished secularism (laïcité: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La%C3%AFcit%C3%A9), which has so recently been thrown into the forefront of the world’s consciousness with the Charlie Hebdo killings.

Some other notes on the societal conventions of speaking French from France:

1.) People who speak French from France (not African/Caribbean/etc. French, which I’m not familiar with) speak more quietly than American English speakers;
2.) Such French people talk more quickly than American English speakers; and
3.) French people speak in more regular, straightforward, constant rhythms than American English speakers.

You can see all of these conventions manifested in a series of interviews with native speakers outside the abbey of St. Michel in France, here:

https://youtu.be/L_RxZc7eMeU?t=96

Listen to how quietly these francophones speak, how they never pause (even for a second) until the end of the sentence, and how quickly they speak their words. For all of these reasons, I can read and write French really well, but when I try to speak it and combine it with my nails-on-chalkboard accent, it’s almost impossible to be understood by others.

So in that rap song I just linked to, note that the francophones are variously upsetting those established conventions at certain times: they speak (yell, maybe) loudly, they speak relatively slowly, and they speak in stop-and-start rhythms, not a run of straight syllables until the end. Once again, French speakers seem to have to imitate English (or at least speak in non-French ways) for now, in order to be able to rap.

These subversions of French grammatical norms line up well with the uniquely French linguistic phenomenon of verlan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan

Verlan basically inverts and reverses the rules of French. It’s not just harmless wordplay; it’s destructive wordcrime, to certain establishment institutions like the Academie francaise. Verlan is, unquestionably, a subversive reaction to such entities; disenfranchised, criminalized (not necessarily criminal) youth use it as a code (technically, an “argot” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argot) that authorities like cops don’t understand in order to communicate with each other.

Could French speakers’ conscious or unconscious imitation of English function in a similar way?

Combine this now with what I couldn’t have missed in listening to that Chinese hip hop video I linked to before: the distinguishing tones of the Chinese words — necessary in most circumstances for proper comprehension — are now completely gone! There is a minimum of “high level”, “high rising”, etc., tones:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language#Tones

Having talked to a Vietnamese speaker — another tonal language — I found that the absence of what would seem like vital verbal information is actually, to a native speaker, not a huge hurdle. You simply need to know the language very, very well to understand the rapper, and you also have to use context clues to figure it out as well. Similar to verlan, does this function as a way to define an in-group and an out-group?

It’s my theory, then, that these languages actually now have to imitate the norms of the English language at this point in time in order to be rapped. Chinese rappers imitate English’s lack of tonality; French rappers imitate the fact that accents in English can fall anywhere in a word, and so on.

It occurs to me that this imitation of English, in at least some Chinese and some French rap, is an evolutionary stage in international rap. I draw this conclusion because I find similarities to it in the development of other musical genres when they are transported to a different country.

Consider, for instance, classical music in China. After it was eventually accepted by the Communist party there, there was a major effort to make classical the dominant music of the country. For instance, a conservatory system of teaching music, an import from Western countries, was established. Tan Dun, the most famous Chinese music composer (think of movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), is, in fact, a huge example of the success of this system. (He attended the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.)

The early Chinese composers largely imitated Western styles, often inartfully, with no originality or what I’d call artistic self-awareness, and came off as sounding like kitsch.

A modern composer like Tan Dun, however, has merged classical and folk aesthetics in his own music. For instance, he uses the traditional pentatonic scale, but he forms complete chordal harmonies behind it. This gives his music a decidedly authentic feel, while crossing the East-West divide. A great example of this is his “Song Of Peace”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbfLeFYcHhM&list=PLs0cGvZnrIeaZvPFsznyYRho9PZ7q2QqA

Compare the intro of the piece with what immediately follows. The opening is clearly in a Chinese aesthetic, with a deep sensibility for timbre (sound-color). Only afterwards is it that we get a melody in equal-tempered intonation, a decidedly Western development.

Something similar happened when Japanese classical music first came of age. Toru Takemitsu utilized traditional Japanese instruments like the biwa flute, but used it in an full orchestra.

It might be one day, then, that French and Chinese rappers can rap in ways that are not just semantically French and Chinese, but grammatically French and Chinese as well. But that day doesn’t seem to have come yet.

Bone Thugs...Explained!

So, after my incommunicado-ness over the book, here is my first original analysis, post-manuscript. It's about Bizzy Bone's verse on the singular B.I.G. song, "Notorious Thugs," and was done in response to a question from a reader like you, named Ehab.

Enjoy guys!

Peace,

Martin

Bizzy Bone, Analysis:

So, I haven't talked about Bizzy much in my writing not because I didn't think he was good, but only because I didn't know any of his stuff. Scratch that — I THOUGHT I didn't know any of his stuff, but as it turns out, "Notorious Thugz" is one of my favorite songs from that B.I.G. album. I obviously knew Biggie started it off, but I didn't realize the guy after him was Bizzy — I just thought it was some random Junior Mafia member, like throughout the rest of the album.

Anyway, "Notorious Thugz" is one of the most unique songs in Biggie's entire catalogue, in my opinion, because his flow is so much quicker here than it is on almost every other song he made. The song is in a double-time flow, so the rapper either really has to rap slow to match the beat, or rap quickly, to act as a counterpoint to it. There kind of is no in-between here.

The fact that the beat is in double-time doesn't just mean that the beat is slower, however. The fact that the beat is slower actually means that the rappers have MORE musical positions in which to place their notes. Bizzy Bone is an expert at realizing this and taking advantage of it, and I believe that this is what separates him from Twista, like Ehab said in his original e-mail to me:

>singing too fast doesn't make you a goddamn skilled rapper but when it comes to Bizzy l've always felt something different and way complicated..

That "way complicated" part to Bizzy that he mentions, I think, is Bizzy's ability to place notes in multiple rhythmic positions, each of which have various rhythmic meanings, over a double-time beat. That sounds kind of complex, so allow me to explain. To talk about this more, let me make sure that we all know what a double-time beat is.

In normal, non-double-time rap music, there are 4 beats to a bar. Beats are like the minutes of musical time, in that they're a building block for it. Just like 60 minutes make up an hour in everyday life, 4 beats make up a measure (another word for bar) in rap music. And we use beats, not minutes or seconds, to count music, because while we want minutes or seconds to always last the same amount of time so that everyone knows what we're talking about when we use them, we want something else that can be fast OR slow in music, since some music is fast, and since some is slow.

In a normal bar of rap music, beats 1 and 3 are the strong beats, while beats 2 and 4 are the weak beats. Because of this, beats 1 and 3 generally have bass kicks land on them, while beats 2 and 4 have snares land on them. This gives the music a strong, propulsive feel.

Double-time music upsets this straightforward feel a bit. In double-time music, snares happen on the third beat of the bar, not the second, while bass kicks happen on beats 1, 2, and 4. This makes the music sound twice as slow as it should be, since snares are only coming half as often as they should; hence the term double-time. For example, this exact Notorious Thugz' song could be notated in a 4/4 meter at 156 BPM (beats per minute, which is a mathematical measurement of tempo, the speed of a song), or in a 2/2 meter at 78 BPM. And if you'll notice, the snares do happen on beat 3 on it, but the rappers respond to the lower division of the quarter note (another term for a beat.) You can use the website here to track those 2 BPMs on this song, if you'd like.

This is the paradox, then: there are simultaneously 2 very obvious layers of rhythm to double-time beats. Bizzy Bone takes musical advantage of this by sometimes rapping at the faster, 156 BPM level, and then slowing things down to the lower, 78 BPM level.

For example, check out Bizzy's opening lines. They're overall pretty fast, right? This means those opening rhythms are responding to that 156 BPM speed. But throughout the verse, he ends up slowing down the overall rate of his rhythms. Take a listen to his lines at 3:14, when he raps "Beg my pardon to Martin, baby we ain't marchin', we shootin'" His rhythms are much more slower, up-and-down, and almost march-like at that point. While he's using this for expressive effect — to emphasize the poetic point he's making — it also has musical consequences: here, he is now responding to that slower, 78 BPM level. He makes this shifts in rhythmic gear all over the place, and I would now encourage you to go out and find them yourself :)

He even mixes in a third rhythmic level at certain points, when he raps in a special type of triplet flow. At2:37, he raps these words, where the accented syllables are in capital letters:

"DEEP in my TEMple and HAD to get".

That's a 3 over 2 polyrhythm, where the 156 BPM beat is divided into 2 8th notes, while Bizzy conversely divides it into 3. We can see this when we realize that every third syllable in those lines turns out to be emphasized: DEEP, TEM-, and then HAD. This means that his own rhythmic speed over that 156 BPM is actually 1.5 times faster than the beat behind him, since he's placing 3 notes where the beat places only 2 eighth notes, and 3 divided by 2 is 1.5. So, 156 BPM times 1.5 is 234, and this adds a third rhythmic layer to the rap track. This is a complex rhythmic technique called metric modulation, which you can read more about on Wikipedia here.

That got kind of technical at the end, so let me try to paint a more descriptive picture. If I were to describe this more generally, just try to follow along to the structural markers of Bizzy's phrasing. (Phrasing here refers to the building blocks of Bizzy's melody, the sentences he raps and where they start and stop, but separated from their verbal meaning.) Bizzy is awesome because he makes his melody endlessly re-listenable, and we can enjoy his rap listen after listen by paying attention to:

1.) Where his phrases stop,
2.) Where his phrases start;
3.) How long or short his phrases are,
4.) etc.,

with regards to:

1.) The start of each bar 156 BPM bar;
2.) The start of each 78 BPM bar;
3.) The downbeat of each 156 BPM bar;
4.) The downbeat of each 78 BPM bar;
5.) etc.,

and so on. See how deep this is?

Bizzy is constantly shifting the listener's interpretation of the beat behind him, and trying to track him as he does this incredibly quick is really, really fucking amazing, haha. You're right, that there is more to Bizzy as a Midwest chopper style, than some other people. This is because I think he realizes that, in rap, it's not about the notes; it's about the syllables. That is, his approach isn't to try a rapid-fire triplet flow, like Twista does. He just thinks to himself, "Where should I put the syllables?" He imagines musical time like a malleable piece of clay, whereas other, less-talented rappers see it in a more clear-cut, almost woodblock-ish way, where YOU have to do what the MUSIC wants, not where YOU have the ability to make the MUSIC do what YOU want.

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.)

Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly Review - Rap Music Analysis

Let me set the tone for this piece right off the bat: To Pimp A Butterfly is the greatest rap album of all time.

Now, I know a lot of rap albums, and practically study them over and over through playing them not just all the way through in one take, but also on multiple mixes and playlists. For instance, one single song — “How We Do” — occupies 4 different playlists on my computer (a swag one, a Top 10 Dre Beats one, a workout one, and another playlist.) In fact, iTunes tells me that I’ve listened to Cam’ron’s song “Dip-Set Forever” 95 times, which is about 4 minutes long. That works out to 372.4 minutes, or about 6.2 hours. That’s almost a week’s total of listening to only that single song, and that play count doesn’t even take into account how many times I’ve listened to “Dip-Set Forever” elsewhere, like on my iPhone. I mention all of this for two reasons: 1.) To show that I can judge Kendrick’s TPAB against a lot of other rap albums, and 2.) To show what kind of listening treatment To Pimp A Butterfly got from me.

One of the contexts I want to judge TPAB against is the format of the rap album throughout the genre. Now, for me, the format of rap albums breaks down into two basic categories that really describe a spectrum. First, there are rap albums where every track has a completely different sound from the next one. On the other side are rap albums where every track leads in a very unified manner from one to the next. In the first category falls a lot of the mega-albums, like Lil Wayne’s The Carter III. “A Milli,” by Bangladesh, has an electronic, chopped and screwed sound. Meanwhile, Kanye’s beat “Let The Beat Build” has a soul sample that sets it completely apart from Bangladesh’s production. The fact that these albums sound so different from one track to the next is primarily a result of the fact that there are different producers for every track. 

But then there are albums that largely have only one sound world, and each track then works to explore and expand out that sound world. A great example of that album is Dr. Dre’s Chronic: 2001.It’s no surprise, then, that Dr. Dre produced every song on that album. His ability to guide the album in a single direction means that all the songs sound similar, without ever being repetitive. For example, many of the songs use the minor scale, which gives the album that dark feel, as between “Forgot About Dre” and“Let’s Get High." 

Kendrick’s TPAB, then, is an album that falls into the latter category. It has an incredibly unified sound, even though there are many different producers on it. For example, we have Pharrell, Flyin Lotus, and Boi-1da as credited producers. But it’s actually Sounwave who appears the most on tracks, a total of 7 times. But every track except 1 has more than 1 producer listed in the credits on Wikipedia. In fact, “Complexion (A Zulu Love)” has a grand total of 4 producers listed! But somehow, overall, Kendrick managed to pick beats that all sound related. Jay-Z probably has one of the best ears for a beat in the game — discovering Kanye, discovering 9th Wonder — but Kendrick is right behind him. The difference is Jay-Z follows the sound of his time, while Kendrick, like Kanye,is currently defining it. What I think is interesting about Kendrick’s own unique type of unification is that it doesn’t consist primarily of subgenres of rap, or the sounds of his songs; it actually consists of strictly musical aspects, like harmony. For instance, there are tons of jazzy chords on “For Free?”.

On this song, normal, triadic (3-note) chords are replaced and extended to have lots of notes (into chords that include 4 or even 5 notes.) These extended, spacy chords are reflected all over the album, as on“Institutionalized,” or the opening of “Hood Politics.” Jazz has been in rap for a while, as on Tribe Called Quest’s songs. But those were always samples. TPAB sometimes comes across as a live performance of a jazz quartet where the lead singer just happens to be rapping. But, of course, most of those aesthetic choices were made by session musicians, not Kendrick himself, who almost definitely doesn’t know any harmonic music theory. In this way, then, Kendrick shows the ability to guide his unofficial artistic collective as well as RZA did Wu-Tang, or Dr. Dre did Aftermath records. RZA coached all 9 members of his clan to huge success, making all of their beats and business decisions (such as what label each group member, like Raekwon, would sign with.) Dr. Dre, meanwhile, also obviously made beats for Snoop Dogg, N.W.A., and others, but he also launched Aftermath Records, which directly or indirectly discovered Eminem, 50 Cent, and Game. Kendrick, in picking unified beats and session musicians that worked great together, displays the same kind of foresight and genius. 

I’ve always thought it interesting that rap is almost inherently a collaborative process. No one blinks twice when a producer makes a beat and then gives it to a rapper, with almost no interaction or aesthetic discussion between the two. In fact, 50 Cent wrote the raps for “In Da Club” without ever having heard the beat. This would make almost no sense in other arts, or musical arts. For instance, classical composers write their own complete music, and then give it to musicians to play. Kendrick seems to be an excellent mediator of this relationship. In fact, I wanted to pitch an article to one of my freelance media outlets, WatchLoud or Pigeons and Planes, that would be a complete review of To Pimp A Butterfly without ever mentioning Kendrick Lamar once. That’s how essential part I think the session musicians and unheralded or unnamed contributors are to this project. 

As for Kendrick’s rap itself, this album continues a general theme in Kendrick’s music. Since Section.80, and down through good kid, m.A.A.d city on to To Pimp A Butterfly, Kendrick has slowly simplified his technical style. Since “Rigamortis” on Section.80, Kendrick hasn’t ever utilized a musical motive to the same complex, sophisticated extent, an idea that I covered for Pigeons and Planes here. But, somehow, this doesn’t really matter to me. That’s because his poetic message is so strong. There are some interesting musical aspects to it though. 

But he does do something melodically (strictly musically) that I’ve only heard once before, from Pharoahe Monch. I want to compare Kendrick’s own rap verses and the variations form in classical music. In classical music, variations is a form where a composer takes a small idea and creates a series of somewhat different sections of music that places that small idea in extremely different contexts. The idea is to show that the composer can come up with a great melodic idea that is flexible and inventive enough to appear in tons of different places, like an imitative canon, or a dance. Such an example is the “Variations On A Shaker Melody” form Aaron Copeland’s masterful 1944 piece “Appalachian Spring,” which you can hear here. 

If you listen closely, you can tell that sometimes the opening musical idea is played quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes in by one group of instruments, sometimes by another, and so on. In this way, the entire piece is unified, and Copeland displays his versatility and originality. 

I noticed on TPAB that Kendrick does something similar. On the opening song “Wesley’s Theory”, he raps these words: 

What you want? 

You a house or a car?

Forty acres and a mule, a piano, a guitar?

Anythin', see, my name is Uncle Sam, I'm your dog

Motherfucker, you can live at the mall… 

This song “Wesley’s Theory” has a musical speed of 120 Beats Per Minute (BPM.) This speed is quite fast for a rap song. 

Later on in the album, on the song “Alright”, Kendrick actually raps an extremely, unmistakably similar verse: 

“What you want, you a house, you a car?

40 acres and a mule, a piano, a guitar?

Anything, see my name is Lucy, I'm your dog

Motherfucker, you can live at the mall…” 

But the speed of “Alright” is actually much slower than when that same exact verse is rapped on “Wesley’s Theory.” The speed of “Alright” is 56 BPM, much less than the 112 BPM of “Alright.” It’s also important to mention that the musical rhythms from one song to the next on those bars are also the same, allowing the astute listener to recognize them as the same melodic idea. In this way, then — by placing the same melodic idea in a new musical context — Kendrick is engaging with the variations form in a way that rappers often don’t. 

So, yes. That whole 1500 page article is actually only a small, small part of why I think To Pimp A Butterflyis the greatest rap album of all time.

Godïus R.ichard Oasis & Cartier Jones Interview

I don't often push music, so if I'm endorsing a message like this, then you know it's gotta be some slick shit.

That's exactly what we're about to get from Godïus R.ichard Oasis & Cartier Jones, who are about to come out with a full album, previewed in a video planned to drop any day now. If you're into rappers who are a little more out there than most, like OutKast or Chance The Rapper, you'll definitely dig what these guys are coming up with.

To get properly introduced to these 2 Chicago rappers, just check out the interview below.

Paul Edwards Interview, Part 2

This is part 2 of an ongoing series of interviews with "How To Rap" author Paul Edwards. You can see part 1 here.

-----

1- What formal training or education do you have in anything that
might help you analyze or talk about rap in an in-depth manner? For
example, are you a rapper, do you have a degree in
music/African-American studies/literature/journalism, etc?

As far as my academic background, I have a masters degree in
Postmodernism, Literature, and Contemporary Culture and a BA in
English literature, both from Royal Holloway, University of London.
With both of those I wrote the final dissertations on hip-hop music
and I also worked hip-hop into many of the other essays as well. My
lecturers were really open to me studying hip-hop and gave me a lot of
support, I think it helped they were big music fans and were like,
“yeah, of course you can study The Chronic!”

Then musically, I play the Arabic drum, the doumbek—I grew up in the
Middle East and so I heard a lot of that kind of music, some of it is
very percussion heavy. So learning the rhythms for that really
influenced my interest in the rhythmic aspects of rapping. I also
always loved making beats, usually using step sequencer types of
programs, where the percussion notes are laid out visually in a grid,
so that fed into how I looked at rapping as well.

Also most of the best education came from interviewing so many rappers
directly, because you get to hear so much first hand information from
the actual people who developed the art form. You get to know which
rappers everyone learned from and what they listened to pick up the
techniques.

2- Kool G Rap and Gift Of Gab both wrote forewords for these 2 books.
How did those collaborations come together?

I had already interviewed them so I was already in contact with them
and their management, so when it came time to get forewords I reached
out to them again—it was really about finding a good fit. I felt like
Kool G Rap was perfect for the first book, as he's a very technically
adept MC and a true pioneer and Gift of Gab fit the second book, as he
has such an incredible range of flows and deliveries.


3- Consider a hypothetical but logical extension of the project found
in these 2 books. If there was a complete school, with classes and
curriculum and everything, where people learned “how to rap”, what do
you think it would look like? Is it even possible?

Going towards that, there are already rapping courses that the How to
Rap books are on, in different universities—I've seen the books pop up
on a number of reading lists. For example there is one at University
of California, Berkeley called "Tupac, The Evolution of Hip Hop, and
How to Rap" where they write a "two verse rap song" by the end of it
and “Words, Beats, & Life” also have MCing classes using How to Rap –


http://www.wblinc.org/classeslocations/emceeingrapping/ ...and


University of North Carolina have their “Next Level” program where
they travel around teaching rapping and DJing and dance, I'm not sure
if they use books for doing that.

As far as a complete school specifically set up to teach just rapping,
I'm not sure if that's entirely feasible, but then again there is
Scratch DJ Academy for DJs, so it's a possibility. As far as the
actual classes, I would assume it would be split up in terms of
content, flow, and delivery, with different specialists teaching those
parts and at some stage there would be drills and exercises, the same
as learning anything. Like first you learn the theory behind
everything, then you move onto the practical stuff where you write a
lot of metaphors or story raps, or on the flow side you learn how to
do triplets and practice them over and over until you get to a certain
level, and then you're taught a new area to master.

4- Based on your knowledge of where rap — strictly rap, not its beats
or anything — has come from, can you make any guesses or informed
conjectures about where it might go?

I would hope eventually we would get some kind of “prog-hop” type of
thing, like how rock went through a prog-rock phase, with lots of
different time signatures, weird structures, intricate back-and-forth
vocals, maybe really off-the-wall stylistic raps that are the
equivalent of experimental guitar solos, maybe with distortion and
wild effects on the vocals and that kind of thing. I think that would
bring us some really interesting music. It would probably come to a
natural end as well once it had exhausted itself, just like prog-rock
did, but it would be great phase to go through just to see what
hip-hop would sound like in that framework.

Those things have been done briefly in little bursts here and there by
groups like Latyrx doing two verses at the same time that interacted
in certain places and great back-and-forth sections, Blackalicious
with tracks like “Chemical Calisthenics” with rapping that followed
all the changes in the beat, the Beastie Boys had “B-Boy
Bouillabaisse” with an unusual structure and they used distortion on
their voices on other tracks, and Freestyle Fellowship had tracks with
melodic jazz scatting type of things going on. But I'd like to see
that sort of thing become a full sub-genre with lots of artists all
pushing the boundaries like crazy for a while.

Then maybe that would be followed by the equivalent of punk, where it
would all get stripped back down to just huge drums and raw distorted
sounds, a bit like early Run-DMC tracks. That would be an interesting
movement to see as well.

Now that's where I hope it will go at some point, but being more
realistic I think it's likely to stay as it is. And that's staying
reliant on successful hit formulas, where the rapping is simpler so
that the vast majority of people can understand it, with keyboardy
club beats that you can dance to, and either R&B choruses or simple
chanted catchy choruses taking up most of the song. That's the hit
formula that brings in the money and so I think few people are willing
to divert from that formula at the moment.

5- If there was one thing about rap as a genre that you could change,
what would it be?


I would bring back sampling in a big way. Breaks and samples are where
the music came from and in the late 80s and early 90s the boundaries
were really pushed with sampling as an art form, and it resulted in
hip-hop's “golden age” with all types of different styles and sounds
and influences. Unfortunately that ended when more and more lawsuits
started popping up around sampling and it became more popular for
people to just sample really obvious hit records instead of creating
innovative sound collages.

And I think those beats with a lot of sampling brought the best out of
the MCs as well because the beats were more organic and had a more
textured, layered sound, so it inspired the MCs to make
timeless-sounding records. It also meant that people brought in
samples from jazz, blues, rock, classical, dance, country, pretty muc

everything you can think of, and that made hip-hop from the golden age
a lot more varied and colorful.


6- Rap, as an art form, is treated with less respect by the media and
society at large than other musics. For instance, no rap artist is
ranked higher than 44th on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “100
Greatest Artists Of All Time”:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-greatest-artists-of-all-time-19691231/public-enemy-20110420

Furthermore, rap lyrics have been admitted as evidence in criminal trials:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/opinion/rap-lyrics-on-trial.html?_r=2

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/10/nation/la-na-nn-rap-lyrics-at-heart-of-murder-trial-20120510

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/nyregion/seeking-clues-to-gangs
and-crime-detectives-monitor-internet-rap-videos.html

while violent rock lyrics are not.

Also, President Obama was criticized by some in the media:

http://nation.foxnews.com/common/2011/05/09/michelle-obama-hosting-vile-rapper-white-house

when he invited Chicago rapper Common to the White House in 2011. The
administration was attacked by critics for supporting Common, a
supposedly “controversial” and “vile” rapper, even though Common’s
real message at the small concert was specifically against violence,
as he performed such lyrics as, “Destiny’s children — survivors,
soldiers — in front of buildings, their eyes look older / It’s hard to
see blessings in a violent culture.” There was little similar protest
against past White House guests like musician James Brown in 2001,
who, unlike Common, has been convicted of multiple crimes that
involved drugs, weapons, and domestic violence.


Finally, a 2013 article by Juan William:


http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324619504579028691595414868

decries the supposed differences between African-American music made
at the time of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 “I Have A Dream Speech”
in Washington, D.C., and the music supposedly made by African
Americans today. As he writes, “The emotional uplift of the monumental
march is a universe of time away from today’s degrading rap music —
filled with the n-word, bitches, and ‘hoes’ [sic] — that confuses and
depresses race relations in America now.” While focusing on one 2013
song from a rapper he criticizes by name, Jay-Z, Williams ignores
other empowering songs by the same artist.

Why do you think there is this difference in how rap is treated, when
compared to other types of music?

That's an interesting question, but for me personally, I try to give
as little time and thought as possible to anything to do with how
outsiders see hip-hop. And by “outsiders” I mean anyone who doesn't
already “get” and appreciate hip-hop or isn't willing to try to
appreciate it. It's tempting for me to write loads of words trying to
rebuff every criticism every person has of hip-hop and to try to
understand why people might treat it differently to other types of
music, and I did briefly deal with some of the common criticisms of
hip-hop in “The Concise Guide to Hip-Hop Music,” because that book
called for a little of that.

But I honestly find that time is much better spent simply studying and
preserving hip-hop and not getting drawn into the agendas of
critics—critics who usually aren't willing to take the time to
understand hip-hop even if you present them with perfect arguments. I
do my work and research for people who already love hip-hop and
respect it and people who genuinely want to know more about it. I find
it's much more rewarding giving people information they appreciate,
rather than trying to change the minds of people who already made up
their minds about hip-hop a long time ago.

I think a bigger problem than outsiders criticizing hip-hop is the
problem of actual hip-hop fans not knowing that much about hip-hop.
There are millions of hip-hop fans out there and ideally they should
all know who Melle Mel is and why he is important and who Kool Moe Dee
is and the sort of rapping techniques he pioneered. They should also
know how different types of beats are made and the difference between
a SP-1200 and an MPC 60. I think this should be basic, entry-level
stuff that all hip-hop fans know, but sadly it's not at the moment.

Rap Music Analysis Interview - Paul Edwards

Paul Edwards is a rap journalist who wrote 2 books, called "How To Rap: The Art and Science Of The Hip-Hop Emcee" and "How To Rap 2: Advanced Techniques And Delivery." Rather than Mr. Edwards himself telling you "how to rap," he's simply organized some interviews he's done in the past with great rappers like dead prez under different headings. He has chapters on writing better stories, dealing with writer's block, and stuff like that.

For a long time, I've wanted to interview Mr. Edwards, since so many of our interests seem to dovetail nicely. The other day, I got that chance. Here is just the first round of questions I've been holding onto for the longest time, and finally got to ask. Enjoy!

Love,

Martin

-----------------

The Composers Corner: Why did you start out notating rapper’s words the way you did, with
the flow diagram? Did rappers do this on their own? Did you find it
out from the work of others? Did you come up with it on your own?

Paul Edwards: It was based on what the rappers did – the idea was to mimic their
systems as closely as possible. Part of that was so that it's “true”
to how it's done by the actual artists, but also because their systems
usually focus on the most important things in rapping, the things you
really need to be able to show clearly.

So for example, most wrote out their lyrics with one line equal to one
bar – that kind of layout makes it easier to plan out where your
rhymes are falling within each bar, whether they're on the 1 beat or
the 3 beat or the off-beat of the 4 beat, etc. And rhyme placement
makes a massive difference in how the rap will sound, so it's
important to be able to “see” it on paper. Another example is showing
where a rest falls on one of the beats in bar – in a lot of battle
rapping styles, it's crucial to include a rest on a beat after a
punchline as it gives the line so much more emphasis.

So that went hand-in-hand – notating it how the rappers notated raps
themselves and focusing on the things that were important in rapping
(as opposed to focusing on things that are important in poetry or
other music genres, for example). If it was a system that didn't show
those things or focused on things that weren't important in rapping,
then it would make things a lot more difficult for the reader.

I think it was also a key thing to avoid showing things that were not
needed as well, things that might “get in the way” of seeing the flow
clearly. You needed to be able to “read” the flow in real time and rap
along with it, just as the rappers did. So it had to be detailed
enough to replicate the flow accurately, but not so specific that it
was impossible to follow while you're recording.

Also I have to give a shout out to academic author Adam Krims (RIP)
who was a pioneer in this area – he had a system with crosses and beat
numbers along the top of a chart. I'm not sure if he got that idea
direct from rappers as well, but it's a logical way to do it and
shares some similarities with the way I do it.

The Composer's Corner: Many people do great things, whether in sports, music, politics,
whatever, but they can’t explain why they’re good at it, or what
they’re trying to do, maybe. Your book, whether inadvertently or not,
really acts as a compendium of how rappers think of themselves as
rappers as well. What rapper struck you as being particularly
self-aware and conscious as an artist, who truly understood everything
that they were doing? That is, which rapper could explain not only
that what they were doing was great, but also why it was great?

Paul Edwards: Well, it's tempting to answer that question by pointing to the rappers
who were able to explain the complexity of the “obvious” stuff in a
clear way. So for example, I think the people who are known as being
really “lyrical” had a lot more awareness of things like wordplay and
metaphors, and also putting rhyme schemes together and creating
rhythms, and they could talk at length about those kinds of things. So
Pharoahe Monch, Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, Crooked I, Tech N9ne,
Royce Da 5'9” – those kinds of rappers where you can tell they sit
down and get really deep with the content and get really technical
with the flow. They knew a lot more about literary devices and rhymes
and rhythms – you don't even have to ask in some cases, someone like G
Rap will bring up multisyllabic rhymes himself and start making some
up as examples.

But then I think that's the easy way to answer that question, because
things like clever content and complex rhyme schemes are what a lot of
hip-hop fans think of as being “lyrical” and “good,” but I think
that's partly just because they're easier to talk about and identify,
so it's easier to judge a rapper on those things. Content is the
easiest thing to talk about, so it gets the most attention, and then
after that are rhyme schemes, as they're relatively easy to talk about
once you move past talking about content. The things that are much
harder to describe are things like vocal delivery and expressing
personality and overall “feel” through the delivery.

So with rappers who are really good with vocal delivery and expressing
their personality through their voice, I think they're just as aware
of what they're doing as the guys I previously mentioned, but it's
harder to talk about vocal delivery in technical detail, so the
conversation and explanations around it isn't as “precise.”

People like Shock G, B-Real, Del the Funky Homosapien, Devin the Dude,
and the guys from The Pharcyde all had a lot to say about vocal
delivery and knew how important that was to their style, but there
isn't that much widely used or known terminology to really get into
everything they're doing with their voices. They all knew that
bringing their fun personalities to the table and loosening up and
expressing all that character through their voices was what made them
great, but it comes out more as “I have a lot of fun when I'm
recording,” rather than more precise like “I try to make every word in
the bar rhyme and use the same compound rhyme scheme for the whole
verse.”

Then for some it's really more of a feeling, like “it feels good to
approach the track like this,” so those types of rappers tended to be
vaguer and they talked about bringing a certain “feel” to the track –
not really thinking about it too much, just letting it happen. And
that's exactly what fans of those types of rappers like about them
usually, they're not ultra-rhymey or doing crazy fast rhythms or
anything like that, they sink casually into the music and play around
on the beat in a free kind of way. In those cases, some rappers
actually said to me, “don't make me think about it too much, because
then I might not be able to do it again in the future!” It's like the
analysis can be detrimental for some artists, especially if they have
a simpler style and it's more of a feel thing.

So I think pretty much all the rappers were aware of what made them
great and could express it, it's just that some of the things that
make someone great are harder to put into precise language than other
things.

The Composer's Corner: What have you been up to since How To Rap 2? Will there by a third?
Why or why not?

Paul Edwards: Right after “How To Rap 2” I got a deal to do “The Concise Guide to
Hip-Hop Music” with St. Martin's Press. That book just came out, it
was released in February this year, and so writing that and preparing
for its release was what I did between “How To Rap 2” and now.

That's a book I thought was really important to do, as often people
know some hip-hop knowledge here and there, but they don't have an
overall framework of how things developed and how they fit together –
they don't have a fundamental template to work from basically. I
wanted to give people that in a clear, brief way, like what things
hip-hop fans listen for and how listening to hip-hop is different from
listening to other music genres. I also look at how rapping and
beatmaking developed and things like “hip-hop instruments” (different
types of samplers, etc.) as well as debunking some popular myths along
the way. It's written a bit differently from How To Rap, because with
the How To Rap books those are 100% my own interviews, while with this
new one I used a mix of my own interviews and quoting existing
sources.

I'm not sure at the moment if there will be a How To Rap 3, though
it's possible. There's plenty of stuff left to cover and more info
from the same set of interviews that hasn't been used yet, but I also
have some other book ideas that I would like to do first, before
thinking about a potential How To Rap 3.

If I do another one, it'll probably go in depth in areas that really
aren't covered that much, things I think are really interesting and
are things that would push hip-hop forward. Areas where there is still
a lot of room for innovation that haven't been fully explored yet.

The Composer's Corner: It’s occurred to me that listeners know how they themselves
understand and relate to rap music, and they obviously know that
rappers understand and relate to rap music in some way, but most
listeners, not being very close to the rappers themselves, haven’t
ever really thought of just how and in what ways rappers relate to
their art form. That’s why the ability of Jay-Z or Lil Wayne or
Notorious BIG to write rhymes without paper, or for Kendrick to rap
“Rigamortus” on just the 3rd take, is so popular and incomprehensible.
In all of your interviews, what have you learned about how rappers
think of rap?

Paul Edwards: I think it's different from rapper to rapper – there are definitely
some who like to keep a kind of secrecy around it or try to
mythologize it, because it makes them seem more impressive. If it's
seen as some kind of magic power or where you write songs in 30
seconds and things like that, it makes it all seem more mysterious to
people who don't know how it's done.

But the rappers who really open up about how they do it, they talk
about it in a very matter-of-fact way, as one rapper described it to
me: “a bunch of grown men and women just sitting around writing some
raps.” They usually see themselves simply as writers and vocalists.

The unusual thing with rapping is that most rappers have learned
independently from each other, not really knowing how other rappers do
it. In contrast, something like playing the guitar doesn't have that
kind of disconnect from other guitarists – you know when you begin
playing how most other people have done it, either through learning
chords from a book or getting lessons with a guitar teacher most of
the time. No one really tries to figure out the guitar and all the
chord combinations from scratch, or just from listening to records
with guitarists on them.

So what was funny was often at the end of the interviews, the rappers
would ask me what other rappers did, especially when they heard who I
had interviewed already. They were interested to know how other
rappers were doing it and if they were doing something different or
similar to the “rest of the crowd” or if there were any weird methods
they hadn't heard of before.

The Composer's Corner: As someone who has interviewed tons of rappers, what advice would
you give to a music journalist who wants to get better at interviewing
them?

Paul Edwards: I think it really depends what you're interviewing them for – doing it
for a book is probably a lot different than doing it for a magazine or
website, especially if it's a book where you're using bits and pieces
rather than printing the entire interview in the order it happened.
With my books, I had very specific information I wanted to find out,
so I put together questions that would hopefully draw out the kind of
info I needed.

As I was doing the interviews and hearing the answers I was thinking
things like, “ok, that sentence he just said will fit over there to
help explain that technique, but maybe try to get a bit more info on
this other specific thing, as I know I need more quotes for this
section”... it's like you're partially piecing together the book as
you're interviewing. And with a book, you're normally doing it all on
one subject, so you don't really want to go off on any big tangents,
as interesting as they might seem at the time.

While for a website or magazine or a radio interview, it can really go
anywhere and it usually needs to be interesting just as a conversation
all the way through, because people are going to read or listen to the
whole thing in the order it happened. So for me personally, it helped
to ask specific questions that drew out answers that would fit in
certain sections of the books and I had to really stay on topic as
much as possible. But that kind of advice probably won't help someone
doing a “regular” interview, because it's so different.

Though the one big piece of advice that probably applies across the
board is to make sure your recording set up is good if it's a phone
interview or in person, as you don't want to lose all the answers! I
had two tape recorders set up to my phone back when I did my
interviews, where one of them was a backup.

The Composer's Corner: Was there one rapper you really wanted to ask these questions but
never got a chance to? Who would it be?

Paul Edwards: Oh man, there were lots, particularly MCs who are no longer alive.
Those are the ones where in hindsight there was only a narrow window
for journalists and historians to interview them and preserve their
methodologies, so it's a shame from a historical perspective that that
info hasn't been documented in some cases. For example, interviewing
Big Pun would have been great, he was really the next MC to really go
all out with that compound rhyme style after Kool G Rap did it, and of
course Big L as well, it would have been great to ask him about
writing “Ebonics” as that's such a clever concept. Guru from Gang
Starr and Pimp C from UGK are rappers I actually tried to get hold of
at the time, but unfortunately those interviews never happened.

The Composer's Corner: What do you think of Kendrick Lamar as an MC?

Paul Edwards: I think he's a great MC, especially from a technical point of view –
his flow, content, it's all there, so it's great there is someone at
the forefront who has that ability and is taking some risks,
musically. He's not actually someone I listen to for my own enjoyment,
just because I don't really like his voice (or the different ones he
uses on different tracks), but that's a very subjective thing, whether
you like someone's voice or not.

Also the beats really have to be in a style I like for me to enjoy the
music, even if the rapper is incredible. I'm a big fan of raw, sampled
beats with a lot of texture and grit, so like Sir Jinx in the early
90s, DJ Muggs on the first couple of Cypress Hill albums, Dr Dre on
the second NWA album, Large Pro, DJ Premier, DITC, those types of
beats, and guys who pushed sampling forward like DJ Shadow and Cut
Chemist, where they were chopping up samples and putting them in
different time signatures and things like that.

So probably with the right production he would be someone I'd listen
to a lot more, just because my taste in beats is quite different from
the ones he tends to use.

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.)

Hip Hop Headlines Support

The "Hip Hop Headlines" app, from www.RapAnalysis.com, is easy to use. Just tap any of the rapper's name on the intro screen, and you'll be taken straight to a feed with customized news stories about that rapper. There are also included top sources for news on any rapper that you can click: The Source and Watch Loud, for instance. A custom search can be located on the button in the very bottom left with the title "Search." Just input the name of a rapper you'd like news on, and you'll get top news stories on that person.

For questions, comments, or restaurant suggestions, email mepc36@gmail.com

Thanks for downloading! And please think about donating.

Love,

Martin Connor

P.S. - This app, available for iPhone (and hopefully Android soon) was developed in March 2015 by Martin Connor. The names of the rappers and sources were compiled from the top posts on the reddit forum /r/HipHopHeads.

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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 - Kendrick Lamar - Rigamortis, Pt. 2

*This article is a continuation of the first part of how to listen to "Rigamortis," which you can read here. You can hear the Kendrick Lamar song here.

As I mentioned in the first article, these exact lines below — what I'll call Refrain 1 — occur at 0:21, 0:59, 1:26, 1:36, 2:31, and 2:42, and last 4 bars:

[got me breathing with dragons] [i’ll /

crack the egg in your basket, you /

bastard] [i’m marilyn manson, don’t /

ask for your favorite rapper]


Below is the second refrain, Refrain 2. These exact lines occur at 1:31, 1:42, and 2:36, and also last 4 bars:


[he dead] /

[amen] /

[he dead] /

[amen] /


When you combine these 2 refrains, the entire 12-bar chorus that happens at 1:26 and 2:42 is this. It's Refrain 2 + Refrain 1 + Refrain 2.


[he dead] /

[amen] /

[he dead] /

[amen] /

[got me breathing with dragons] [i’ll /

crack the egg in your basket, you /

bastard] [i’m marilyn manson] [don’t /

ask for your favorite rapper] /

[he dead] /

[amen] /

[he dead] /

[amen] /

However, there's a mismatch here. Refrain 2 happens at 0:59, but the chorus (which, again, should mention both Refrain 1 and Refrain 2) happens only at 1:26 and 2:42. How is this possible?

Just like what we see in part 1 of this article, the answer is in how Kendrick manipulates the musical material that he already has placed in the chorus. At 0:59, he raps only the first 2 bars of Refrain 2, so that “amen, he’s dead,” is repeated only once. Right after, at 1:01, he cuts right back into his proper verse rap by continuing the thread of semantic meaning from the refrain into the verse. He does this by extending the sentence of “amen, he’s dead” in explaining who it is exactly that’s telling him his rap adversaries are deceased.

The astute reader will also have noticed that a Refrain 1, at 1:42, was also left out in the cold. It doesn’t appear to be part of any chorus, or at the least, it appears to be an extra Refrain 1 on the end of a chorus. How is this to be interpreted?

Here, Kendrick once again demonstrates an unfailing lack of the means by which a rapper creates semantic and musical meaning. That’s because when he starts the completely new material of his second verse at 1:47, he continues a rhyme on the final vowel pattern of the last word of Refrain 1. He takes the word “rapper,” from Refrain 1, and rhymes it on “casper,” “nasa,” and so on.


[got me breathing with dragons] [i’ll /

crack the egg in your basket, you /

bastard] [i’m marilyn manson] [don’t /

ask for your favorite rapper] [i /

wrapped him and made him casper] [i /

captured the likes of nasa] / …

Not only are the rhymes from Refrain 1 continued into this new musical section, but they are also the same types of rhymes musically. That’s because they also all happen at the end of bars.

This strong similarity means that instead of interpreting the chorus at 1:26 as the real chorus that lasts 16 bars, and the ending chorus at 2:42 as a shortened chorus of only 12 bars, I interpret the real chorus as lasting 12 bars, and this addition of another Refrain 1 as an elision into the verse. Thus, the Refrain 1 at 1:42 is really part of both the verse and chorus. On the one hand, it’s material from the chorus that we’ve heard before, but on the other, it’s part of the verse because Kendrick goes on to rhyme off its words. Kendrick has blurred the lines between what a chorus is and what a verse is. And without an aid from the production, such as a distinct musical idea that separates the verse from the chorus, we’re left answering that this section is both.

You're welcome.

Love,

Martin

P.S. If I'm Internet-famous enough to have what I think they call "haters," please click here.

Rap Music Analysis - Kendrick Lamar - "Rigamortis"

All of the rappers in my own personal Top 10 are unique and special in their own way, just like their mamas always told ‘em. However, there are also certain overlaps between their artistic oeuvres. For instance, André 3000 and Nas have both utilized metric transference, which stands as a good measuring stick for just how technically complex a rapper is. But Kendrick Lamar, along with Eminem, is one of those few rappers about who it can truly be said that they’ve made certain songs in rap music that have never been done before, and have never been imitated since, even poorly.

“Rigamortis” is one of those songs.

The title of the song alone bespeaks some sort of consciousness of the history of rap or its poetic themes, as it recalls his West Coast godfather Dr. Dre and his lines about turtles dying from the 1987 N.W.A song “Express Yourself.” Poetic? Not the most. Rhyming? Yep, and that’s often good enough for Dre when he isn’t using a ghostwriter.

That, of course, is not true when we talk about Kendrick’s lines. As I say over and over in my articles — I should really get it tattooed somewhere  — we can only appreciate rappers' musical abilities when we understand the musical conventions that they’re working on top of. The important convention in “Rigamortis” is how choruses (also called hooks) are written in rap. This knowledge will allow us to see how Kendrick cleverly deviates from what used to be unquestioned musical commandments in order to make something knew. To see this, we need just the tiniest bit of music theory. Rappers brag by saying, "I got bars, I got bars." Well, what the hell's a bar?

A bar is the base unit for the musical system of time, just like a second is the base unit for a chronological system of time. Musicians use bars though, and not seconds, because seconds always last the same amount of time, while music can be either fast, like Macklemore's "Can't Hold Us," or slow, like The Roots' "Boom!". Hence, bars can come at different speeds, because they don't always have to last the same amount of time. The use of a bar, and not a second, expresses this difference. But just like seconds, bars are repeated over and over in order to make up longer lengths of times, like a whole musical section of a verse or a chorus. About 99.99% of the time, those bars are added up in groups of 4 to make those larger sections. For instance, verses usually last 16 bars, and choruses usually last 8, although there are small, differing exceptions sometimes.

The chorus of “Rigamortis" seems at first to be no different, because it lasts for 12 bars. What Kendrick innovates here in a way few other musicians have before is in just how his rap over those 12 bars interacts with the musical accompaniment behind it. That's because this song's actual chorus of 12 bars occurs only twice, while material from the chorus as a whole is mentioned at least 5 times in the song. How is this mismatch possible?

In order to keep track of all of these moving parts, we’ll consider the following lines to be the first refrain, called Refrain 1, and say that multiple refrains add up to 1 full, 12-bar chorus during this song. You can hear "Rigamortis" here. In the below transcription, brackets [ ] surround the start and end of sentences, and the slashes / indicate where each succeeding bar stops before the next one begins.

These exact lines below occur at 0:21, 0:59, 1:26, 1:36, 2:31, and 2:42, and last 4 bars:

[got me breathing with dragons] [i’ll /

crack the egg in your basket, you /

bastard] [i’m marilyn manson, don’t /

ask for your favorite rapper]


Below is the second refrain, Refrain 2. These exact lines occur at 1:31, 1:42, and 2:36, and also last 4 bars:


[he dead] /

[amen] /

[he dead] /

[amen] /


When you combine these 2 refrains, the entire 12-bar chorus that happens at 1:26 and 2:42 is this. It's Refrain 2 + Refrain 1 + Refrain 2.

[he dead] /

[amen] /

[he dead] /

[amen] /

[got me breathing with dragons] [i’ll /

crack the egg in your basket, you /

bastard] [i’m marilyn manson] [don’t /

ask for your favorite rapper] /

[he dead] /

[amen] /

[he dead] /

[amen] /

However, the real chorus doesn’t appear until an unusually long time into the song, at 1:26. That’s because the first time the listener hears these lines it is in a far different musical structure than that more traditional, 12-bar chorus chorus. The first time a listener hears Refrain 1, it is in the varied form of what we can call Refrain 1B, at 0:13:


[got me breathing with dragons] [i’ll /

crack the egg in your basket you /

bastard] [i’m marilyn manson with /

madness] [now just imagine the /

magic i light to asses] [don’t /

ask for your favorite rapper]


Kendrick has now inserted a new line in the middle of Refrain 1. He’s added, “…with madness, now just imagine the magic I light to asses.” This makes refrain 1 not 4 bars long, but 6 bars long. Why did Kendrick do this? Put another way, why does this new refrain not just work, but work well?

The key is that those opening 6 bars just quoted start 10 bars into the song.

“But wait!”

Yes?

“Neither those 6 bars or 10 bars are a multiple of 4 bars that you said every rap section is made out of!”

Ah! You’ve got me. But what’s 6 bars plus 10 bars?

“Enough happy hours to put Bobby McFerrin out of business!”

Yes! But also…16 bars. Which is a multiple of four.

On the one hand, Kendrick could have repeated Refrain 1 in the exactly correct way so that it lasted only 4 bars. But that would have left his rap ending at bar 14. This is a problem because the musical loop behind him — made up of those melodically spiraling jazz instruments — is 4 bars long, so he would’ve ended the opening of the song halfway through his loop, which would sound awkward without some kind of explicit support (like a beat drop) from the musical accompaniment.

On the other hand, Kendrick could’ve again repeated Refrain 1 exactly and started at bar 8 or 12, which would line up the end of his opening with the end of his rap. But this would have been really, really boring, because that's what 99.99% of other musicians do. So he decided to do what was on the other-other hand, and balance the 16 bars into 10 bars of an instrumental intro, plus the 6 bars of a slightly modulated Refrain 1. This is so musically groundbreaking that if all of my dozens of articles could be summarized in short, I would need only those 16 bars.

That relationship that’s just been described — the one between the lines of Kendrick’s verse and the lines of his chorus — is what drives this entire song, in a way that previously seemed impossible in rap. This is the core musical game that Kendrick is playing throughout this entire song. 

If you want to hear how, check out part 2 of this article here.

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