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.

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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

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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.