First Chapter, "Check Out My Melody: How To Listen To Rap Music"

This is the first chapter of my work-in-progress book, called "Check Out My Melody: How To Listen To Music". It sets out how the rest of the book will proceed. If you would buy it, let me know! You can comment, or like my facebook page here.

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Check Out My Melody: How To Listen To Rap, Chapter 1

We all know those people.

It could be anyone: your friends, your family, random strangers on the street.

Could be the bus driver who gives you a look as you get off at your stop, playing your mp3 player just a little too loudly for her taste.

Could be your parents, who talk about the songs and bands from their younger days as if the time was a Golden Age for the entire art of music.

Could even be your classmates who talk about “real” music, with “melodies” and “chords”, as if they could even define what those words actually mean if asked to do so.

We all know those people. They’re people who just don’t get it.

“Can you believe all the disgusting things rappers talk about?”

“It’s just a bunch of no-talent gangstas who found a mic and put a bunch of random loops together until they had a song.”

“Rappers are sexist, racist, homophobic bigots who don’t know a thing about music.”

It is useless to try and refute any of those criticisms. Not because it can’t be done, but because their criticisms betray such a misguided understanding of rap, and music more generally, that they have already defined the argument so that rap will always appear devoid of any and all value. In a way, these people cannot be blamed. You hope that they would take some time to actually get to know the genre, but such an approach is not often found today in our 142-character world. Besides, it is not often nowadays that a person comes into contact with an entity, especially an art form, as devastatingly honest as rap music is, in every sense of the term. When one of the most celebrated pieces of music in the 20^th century is five minutes of silence, where can someone go to hear the reflection of deeper thoughts that the listener by themselves could not put into words?

Do you know why Eminem has a song, “Kim”, a murder fantasy of killing his wife that ends with him screaming, “Bleed, b*tch, bleed!”, while his real life daughter cries in the background?

Why Nas casually raps about a ghetto shoot-out against a rival gang on the song “Represent”, from his album “Illmatic”?

Why Notorious B.I.G. describes the rules that every drug dealer should follow to become successful, on his song “Ten Crack Commandments”?

Because that crap actually happens. Yes, in real life. Yes, in our neighborhoods, our cities, our schools. Rap has the audacity to talk about such difficult topics because of its counter-culture origins. For every violent rap song like those just described, there are even more songs like Eminem’s “Mockingbird”, where he apologizes to his daughter for everything his career has put her through. There are songs like Nas’ “Thugz Mansion”, where he imagines a heaven with no ghetto violence, or Notorious B.I.G.’s song ”Juicy”, where he describes how he had to deal drugs just to feed his daughter. And instead of receiving credit for starting a conversation about a multitude of hot-button issues, rap gets blamed for making these issues worse in the first place by daring to talk about it openly.

It is a myriad of factors that leads rap to become part of the national debate every time a new moral panic breaks out. Rap, because of its ubiquity, devastating breadth of variety, and unique demographic origins, has now become a mirror in which the beholder sees whatever contemporary crises they think deserve the most attention.

                        Bigotry.

                        The sexual revolution.

                        The urbanization of today’s youth.

                        Rising violent crime rates.

It’s hard to recall any electronic dance, jazz, folk, pop, or classical pieces from the era that dealt with major social problems in such a direct way. And yet politicians blame musicians like Eminem for creating a “culture of violence”. Such criticisms miss the point, because it critiques a version of rap that simply doesn’t exist. If we took every rapper’s word for how many people they’ve killed, there wouldn’t be a single human being left on the planet. Eminem didn’t actually kill his wife. Nas never actually shot anyone. They expressed the powerful, darker side of their emotions in public yet safe ways, in ways one hopes that more people would adopt instead of actually picking up a gun. If Eminem and Nas had really committed those crimes, they would not get on a microphone and then brag about it. Rappers are largely the only pop artists to not only adapt completely new names for their work but also completely new personas, with histories and everything, that often have nothing to do with their previous life in the real world.  They adapt these personas to such extents that they are even called these names in conversation by their friends, family, and new acquaintances, as if there was no Curtis Jackson before 50 Cent, or at the least, Curtis Jackson is simply another persona for the same rapper.

And so critics deal with an imagined version of rap that is made up of only text and words, or, if the critic happens to be somewhat attuned to the changing tides of modern literary criticism, modern-day poetry (Heaven forbid!) As we shall see though, that is only half of the rap equation. More than just text, rap is the rhythms that the rapper speaks on the mic. More specifically, rap is the rhythmic structure that arises from the interaction between a rapper’s words and the strictly musical rhythms of those words as he or she says them.

And the perception of that rhythmic structure is exactly what this book will teach you.

Because if all you hear when you listen to the opening of Busta Rhymes song “Holla” is, “Team select, please collect, Gs connect these niggas direct with trees to the smoke fest,” well then a criticism of stupid subject topics in rap would be completely valid. But if instead you hear, “team seLECT / please COLLect / Gs connect / THESE niggas DIRect with TREES…to the SMOKE fest,” where all of the words are separated into different groups simultaneously by italics (rhymes on “team”), underlines (rhymes on “select”), capitalized letters (the underlying beat of the song), and slashes (the grammatical phrasing), you start to understand why rap is both a poetic AND musical phenomenon. And you will understand why the rapper’s words only make sense in the context of the rhythms, not the other way around.

            This book will begin by giving you all of the tools you need in order to follow along to a rapper’s rhythms in a song. We’ll then describe the 5 major factors that altogether are able to quantitatively describe a rapper’s flow. There will then be some case studies of different famous rappers, like Eminem, Nas, Kanye, and some more underground ones like Jean Grae and Talib Kweli as case studies that will put our newly gained vocabulary into use. After that, we’ll finish up with some extensions of this system in order to describe more unique instances of flow, and the perception of rap in general.

            So sit back, and prepare to show all those people just how wrong they are.

hosting for rapgenius rapper's encyclopedia article

"My Adversaries" Freestyle

This is me (Martin Connor) rapping, and I made the beat too:

You can download it here: soundcloud

Mister Master - "Gloves On"

This week's featured rapper is "Mister Master", a 16 year old rapper. You can find the answers to how he writes his rhymes below, and check out the song "Gloves On" at the video above. I just love how much heart this kid put into the song, rough edges around it be damned.

When you start writing rap, do you start with the rhythm or the text (the words themselves)?

1. Rhythm, definitely. When I start a new track, I always start by just babbling, like saying doobity dabada doo, and then trying to find a good rhythm to the notes. At the same time, I am trying to think of words that could go there, but I feel the sound is just as important. I usually start by doing the doobity dabady thing and then filling in words after. The start is always the hardest part though.

How/when do you write your rhymes?

2. All the time. Like ALL the time. Haha. If I'm not dedicating free time in class to just sitting and thinking, I'm always just doing the doobity dabady thing and thinking of things that I could turn into similes and whatever. Especially in school. Being in high school helps 'cause I'm always being hit with new things to learn, and new things to learn means more things I can mention in my lyrics. In ninth grade, when I wrote Gloves On, I had this notebook that I'd whip out whenever I happened to have an idea. Teachers wouldn't care 'cause it just looked like more work. Now I mostly do the same thing but with my phone. I have this app, Colornote that I've been using pretty much since I got my smartphone in the summer between ninth and tenth grade. I'm thankful for lenient teachers who're okay with phones in class.

What musical training do you have?

3. I don't have professional training at all. I just paid attention to rap that I listened to and took it from there. I also dabble in producing sorta. On of the most viewed videos on my channel is a remix of the Andy Griffith theme song. That somehow got traction and people have done songs with the beat. But yeah, I taught that to myself too. Everything I do with music is on Audacity. That means with beats, importing songs, cutting up sections of tracks, layering samples and drums on top of each other, speeding up and slowing down to fit tempo. Whenever I start telling people about beats, I always point to my remix of a song called Broken Brights by Angus Stone. That was completely done in Audacity. Took the longest out of everything I've done, I think. I digress. Point is I taught myself. Haha. I mess around with the piano. I tend to use it more for trying to make up my own songs then learn other people's. I can barely read sheet music. I like singing. I'm huge into the Sinatra type of swing music. But I normally keep my singing in the shower. Haha. People who have heard me sing say I have a good voice. But I haven't gotten the balls to record myself on a track with it. I also try to write actual sing songy songs, which is where both singing and piano come together. Emphasis on try though. I don't think I've ever finished a song completely.

Who's your favorite rapper? Who's your favorite producer? 

4. Picking one favorite is hard. One huge dude for me is this guy Wax on YouTube. When I started writing, I only listened to this subgenre of rap I found called nerdcore hip hop, which is basically rap for nerds by nerds. I stumbled onto Wax and his video 2010 'Til Infinity and it helped cross over from nerd rap to rap as a whole. Since then, I've never stopped listening to him and his music. He's a singer too and that made've played a part in me singing, maybe. Haha. That's the biggest dude for me, I could name so so so many others. When it comes to producers, I like always have to say Premier. I'm huge into boom bap stuff. I also like big stuff, big being the only word I could think to describe it. Haha. Just big. Horn and string samples, loud crunchy drums, that compilation of sounds that turns into a sort of melody. I'm huge into that and Premier is like all about that. I've written to a couple of his beats. Again, could name any others but he's the one that comes to mind.

When you write rhymes, do you always write them to the beat? Or do you write the rhymes, and then try to find a beat to match them?

5. Mix of both. Usually writing for a beat though. That's how it's been, I mean. Now, as I get deeper into high school and free time lessens, it gets harder to just sit down and look for beats. So I usually end up writing and then finding nowadays.

When you put the rhymes and beat together, is that it? Or do you back and forth between the two to make them work better together?

6. For me, I usually one-shotting everything. Like what I write is what goes in, what I record is what goes in the final cut. It's like checkpoints. I work on writing, edit it and then I pretty much pronounce it officially done. Then when I get to recording, I might change a couple words and the tempo because I get a feel for what it's actually gonna sound like with me SAYING it instead of just thinking it. But still. I have my little recording session, record a couple acapellas. And I mean a couple. One song I had, I recorded four one takes of it, like four different recordings of me doing the whole song all the way through. And with those four tracks, I edited them around and made the final track. That's how I usually do it. With stuff that's more complex in recording, like I decide I'm gonna make it more complex in the actual track, multiple tracks and adlibs and all, like one of my newer tracks Don Pianta (self produced, by the way), for example, I do multiple takes. But that's as far as that goes. I just go head on. Something that may be a flaw for me. But that's how I do it.

In your opinion, is rap music, poetry, or both?

7. Both. Especially the way I do it. I'm majorly into English. Not just rap. I write stuff that's specifically meant to be freeform poetry, I take pleasure in writing essays for my English class. Just words fascinate me, they're my favorite things to play with. I feel like a freak 'cause all of my classmates hate essays and I'm always like alright, let's do this. Haha. But yeah. My rap, specifically, is really about both. Adding elements of poetry like the multiple meanings and flowery language and good grammar and syntax and wording things nicely, all of that goes into it. And as much as English in general does, music does. Like I said, I always think of the rhythm first. And it can come from anywhere. I might here a little melody in a song that I find nice to me so I might take inspiration from that. And it definitely comes into play with the beat making. Like with Don Pianta. I made sure to go big on the lyrics and I made sure to go equally big on the beat. They were written separately, by the way. Beat first, then lyrics a while later. But still, musicality and finding a good way to turn the original sample, which is this, if you wanted to know, into something that can work as a beat. Because making a beat specifically for a rap is something else. Which says something about rap and hip hop, that making it means making something FOR HIP HOP and nothing else. Like there's a distinct musical style to it. So short answer, for my music specifically - Oh and that too, that I always refer to it as my MUSIC when I talk about it, I don't say it's my raps. But yeah, short answer, for me, it's both. And they both have an equally powerful role in making the whole the way I want to.

A G.O.A.T. Rapper's Advice To New Rappers

Jean Grae Interview

            On December 27^th, I had the chance to live out a personal and professional dream of mine when I got to interview rapper legend Jean Grae. Besides from being an extremely genuine and nice person (sorry, does that ruin Style Wars for you?), I can also confirm her work from the “Cookies or Comas” mixtape: she’s funny as shit, and yes, does use the word “fuckery” in every day conversation. However, it was a dream not to be able to express my appreciation, but also being able to ask her the questions that I always wonder about when I approach rap music as a craft: how much of her work is inspiration, and how much comes from actively working on it? What idea comes first: words or rhythm? What do they know of music theory? Hopefully the interview below helps dispel some misconceptions around rap music being a “poor man’s music”, so to speak, because “anyone can rap”, but also it hopes give a window into something that we all, as rap fans, get too little information on: how a rap takes its final form on the record. Thus, my mission was to trace the development of the musical idea from its first conception, through to its editing in the studio, to its final manifestation on the CD. Thus, this interview touches on a little bit of everything. Rather than offer my analysis here, I want to present the interview in as raw a form as possible, and let you make of it for now what you will.
 

What is the first advice you’d give to a start rapper music-wise?

           

Learn an instrument, it doesn’t matter which one: recorder, piano, whatever. You need that different musical perspective in your work. Always rap a loud too – some things that look good on paper might not work in performance.

When you generate your rap, how much of what you come up with is inspiration, and how much of what you come up with initially do you have to shape and work on further?

It’s never reworking. There’s only one piece that ever took longer than an hour. I work best completely under pressure. The one song that didn’t work like that was ”you and me and everyone we know.” I try to write beforehand, but it just doesn’t work. I write usually directly before I record, and that’s it. I record a lot of stuff at home in my studio, or if we set a studio date…but yeah, I don’t have a really big process beforehand. My process beforehand is more I need to have a bunch of experiences in life. I never do first draft, second draft. I self-edit as I go along. I write really fast.

How did you, Mos Def, Pharoahe, Talib Kweli, Jean Grae, all 4 extremely technically complicated and accomplished rappers, find each other, and come to have such close personal as well as professional relationships?

I think for myself and Kweli and Mos it was just generally New York. We just kind of knew each other, and it was the same time and era, and we just never stopped being friends…outside of all of the rapping, you’re friends first. Pharoahe I met years ago and I guess we really started to be friends a couple years when I started working with some partnerships with him, and when we started hanging out, we were like, “Oh shit, I know who you are!” I call it finding the other mutants – “Oh man, I know exactly how you think!” But in a good way. But people who see me writing and creatively generally come the same way…so that’s how I look at it. We do hang a lot, but mostly we are never coming up with amazing raps. When you write, and I think as frequently as all of us write, all of that hanging out and experiences is exactly what goes into the rhymes, not happenstance, not random – it’s your experiences, what you heard, where you’ve just been. It’s absolutely all in there.

What is your compositional process? Do you have a schedule, or do you just write as it comes along?

I absolutely set up a schedule, but whether or not I’m sitting there writing music? Hahaha…sometimes it happens, but usually not.  Something I wouldn’t have done before, I set aside time: “These are my hours when I’ll focus on this project or this project.” I can do a lot of organizing beforehand, but the writing seems like the smallest part to me. Sitting down and saying everything about the album is one thing…but it never happens until it’s the last second and I have to hand it in. My brain doesn’t get that spark until I’m under the gun.

When you start writing, do you start with words or music?

I don’t think that they’re different. I don’t separate the rhythm from the actual word. The word is exactly what is creating the timing…I guess I look at them as beats and notes in themselves. So I’m very conscious of what sort of patterns feel right…and you know it’s the best rhyme when you’re fucking the beat. You’re not competing, you’re not lying somewhere there, you’re getting in there, finding all the spaces where you’re supposed to be. It’s choosing the right words…the first idea, the one I always have and that takes the most time, is the opening line. And it all grows from there…there are people who are absolute masters at writing opening lines, that’s what you want, that’s how you know a song, that’s how it goes…Prodigy [from Mobb Deep]. Might be my favorite. There are so many fucking great ones…and when you find it, it’s absolutely an introduction for people who have never heard you before, it sets the tone for the song – it does so much, it’s a first impression. It happens really quickly – you can decide how many bars it will take – 1 bar, 4 bars, 8 bars – and once that goes, everything else finds its place.

So does the word suggest a rhythm?

Again, it doesn’t suggest, it is the rhythm. It suggests an emotion, whether you’re using triplets or whatever it is, I think certain patterns and certain syllables convey emotions, and that’s really my goal at the end of it. It’s not only using the right word, it’s selecting a word and usually one I haven’t used, words that draw emotions out of people. Words that are relatable are the most important things.

Do you have any favorite words? What kinds of words do you like?

           

I’ve always really liked words, and syllables are great. Words that feel good in your mouth! There’s a saying that, when we find one word that rhymes or a statement that rhymes, I know this is true for my friends and I, you can’t stop coming up with more words – we’ll just keep texting each other back and forth. I remember, talking to Pharoahe, finding out that we both have the same favorite word: it’s amalgamate, or amalgamation, is just an amazing word. I don’t write those kind of words down, but I’ll save them somewhere.

So you’re overarching guiding principle is the emotion you elicit in the listener?

I’d say so.

Is your approach top down or bottom up? For instance, it could be like making a hammer, where you start with a blueprint of a hammer and then put all the parts together until you have one? Or is it like legos, where you start with blocks, just start putting them together, and see where you end up?

It is more like the legos…I can’t visually see a whole puzzle, I’m not great at word searches. What I can do take the word search and make it something new. I work backwards, I work from the future. In my mind when I start with a song, I’m already at the video and accepting awards for the video. I can see the song and the video, it’s all done – what I have to do then is figure out how to go back and time and make the song. It’s like taking a giant ceramic pile. This is already a whole thing, I like this. I take the hammer, smash it, and then have to reconfigure it back into a whole picture. I need to know the innerworkings of it. I absolutely work backwards. When I start with an album, the album is already done. I know what I want it to sound like, I know what I want it to feel like, I just have to go figure out how to do it. I know what it looks like, I know how I want the videos to look – absolutely everything. It’s working from the future.

Based on that answer, and for you this question might not even have an answer, so I just want to hear whatever you have to say: Do you purposefully structure sentences to fall across the bar line to create a better flow, but I guess for you is the answer very case specific?

The rap has to make you feel a certain way. Whether it’s something like “Style Wars”, where it’s supposed to feel a little threatening, and unhinged, and energetic– and even if it’s something that’s the same tempo, you can’t go into “Love Thirst” threatening and unhinged because that would be fucking weird! Yeah, there are secrets that the general consumer doesn’t understand, that rhythms and chords all make you feel a certain way, words too. Even pop songs – hits are hits. These songs make you feel a certain way. I absolutely have finally come to understand that in music – I can play around as much as I want. There are songs I can go back to and listen to as an adult. Like, I heard Katy Perry’s “Fireworks” for the first time the other day, and this is kind of how I know people who appreciate music, like oh, you get it, and that song is fucking brilliant! Like fucking fireworks, are you kidding me? There’s a really deep technicality to making those kinds of songs so I think it’s going into that world understanding it, and when people are like, “This is underground, that is underground,” I’m like, well, a lot of people don’t actually know what they’re writing. If there’s a song I want to be an underground song, I know exactly how to write that. I’m not trying to sell it or license it. But if I want it to be in a specific kind of movie or TV show, then I’m going to include those words, those emotions, those feelings.

You went to La Guardia, a school for the performing arts. There, you learned music theory, both harmonic and rhythmic. Can you read music?

Yes, I can. I learned music when I was much younger, from my parents and I took a gang of piano lessons. I have my dad’s piano now since my parents moved, which is great, I was like, “I really need to go back in and play,” I play somewhat and play it by ear, and I just started going back into reading sheet music again. But it’s been a long time. I stopped doing formal training when I was younger, and really used to like going to places, like Carl Fisher, and picking up sheet music and learning how to play stuff. I love musicals, “Annie” for instance, I would get those books and really, really learn how to play those songs. I think there’s a certain amount of technicality that’s great, but I think mine also just came a lot of genes. It was just kind of innate feeling of knowing things, and then going into music theory class and being like, “oh, that’s what that’s called! I totally know how to do that!” They just gave it a name. That’s kind of how I’ve approached most of myself when I go to learn, I’m like I have ADHD, and this is a lot of money, thank you for telling me these 3 things I needed to know, now I’m going to go do that.

What’s your notation scheme?

I don’t write as much by hand anymore, but when I do, it’s usually in slashes, for instance for a double beat it gets a double slash, but I also tend to space them on the page. I have to be super neat about it. Computers have been great for me because I write so much more and it looks like so much less and when you go back in, you’re like oh shit, that is not 16 bars, that’s 64 bars! So I need to relax. And because 64 ars on a note pad looks very very different.

So you know all that theory, counting bars and so on?

Yes, it’s really important for me.

In most public discussion of rap, that all usually gets glossed over. If you’ve never tried to rap, it is really difficult!

There are nuances and subtleties, and it is fucking difficult…you do have to learn how to count bars, and for some people, it’s just a term, saying “bars”… you know, like a hot 16. It’s absolutely necessary, and some people won’t even recognize it that much.

There’s this conception that “anyone can rap” because all you need is a voice, and a brain, and a microphone, and there’s this conception that rappers, since they don’t go to a formal educational musical setting to learn to rap, that rap is somewhat of “a poor man’s music”.

There is that conception out there, and again, I’d like to thank you. Not enough people recognize it.

So you don’t notate your rhymes in “traditional” music notation?

No, I think I probably do that more so in my head. You know there’s times when I go back. Say when you’re going back and doing the ad libs, and you’ve already got the verse down, it would be easier to go in if you wrote it down and if you’re doubling something with pro tools, a lot of people go in and do one ad lib, and they’re like let me throw in another one on top of it. So it’s to go back in and say in bold, “These are things I’m going to emphasize.” These words are the words that need emphasis, or syllables…I probably focus more on nailing the ad libs. To me, it’s accents…the words that you should be getting right. Usually it’s the first time I’m hearing it, and if I did this right, then here is where I go in and figure out what needs to be accented.

So when you bring accent to a rap, it matters where they fall?

Absolutely, and it comes from having in my early career been super monotone about things, that I was reliant a lot on rhythms and accents but not necessarily doing it with my voice. Not on purpose, I think I was generally young and literally had not found my voice. So yeah, I think all of that forced me into it. It’s learning how to do stuff with a blindfold on, and then when you’re good enough you take the blindfold off, you’re like, “Oh shit! Well now I can fucking play around.” This would have been around “Attack of the Attacking Things” [from 2002], and going back and listening to it, it doesn’t sound young material-wise, but voice-wise, I can hear it. I didn’t really know what to do. I was definitely playing around more in the poetry world than the rap world. Really, really breaking rules and rhythms in a real conversational tone, and definitely not as technical, even just starting with the next album, “This Week” [from 2004].

How much of your rhythms at the microphone are improvised, or is it the same take every time?

Interesting for me, because it’s so new for me when I get in there, it just happened, so it depends. A lot of times where I go in and I absolutely nail it first take, and sometimes when you do that first take you go back and listen to it and you’re like, “Nope, don’t change a fucking thing.” Even though there are some imperfections, there’s magic in there. Usually, it’s a couple times, like 4 or 5. Just to kind of play around with it and get the energy right. I think that’s what it is, trying to figure out what I already have. I know the words are there, I know what it’s supposed to sound like, I can hear it in my head. But I try to justify the words, give them the life they deserve. You don’t want to let them down now because they look so good on the page. Not much editing or revising is going on though, generally really small stuff…figuring out vocally what I need to do. You put Frankenstein together, and bring him to life!

So when you start to write, you always have the beat first?

Yes, I definitely need the beat first.

How does that play out over the whole recording process? For instance, once you have the beat, do you just add the rap to it? Or will you go back and forth between the two – start with the beat, add rap, change beat to fit, then change the rap, and so on? How much do you coordinate with the production side of things?

I am really involved on that side. It’s a continual back and forth, not changing the beat, but definitely adding things…again, probably things that the general public doesn’t notice a lot. When we’re picking drops, even if you’re just dropping off the snare, or the hi-hat, or the kick, or everything for a second, it’s a huge part of constructing a song. It’s the backdrop, it’s the reason you’re going to feel the way about something, it’s the reason you’re going to take a breath and then come back in when you’re listening. And adding instruments, live instruments, or whatever sounds right…there are times when my manager comes back in the studio, and they’re like, “Yeah, Jean put a glockenspiel on it”, laughs, and he’s like “Really?” and then he’ll listen to it and he’s like, “This is why I hate you, because you’re right! Now it feels better.” It’s just wanting to have the right ear. If I’m going to add something, what is it going to be, where is it going to go, and how do I arrange it so that I’m pulling the same emotion that these words are driving at? So I’m really, really involved as far as that goes.

So you won’t ever mix and match raps to a beat?

Sometimes there’s a great moment when that happens. You might have something that goes with a certain beat…I don’t really write a lot of extra stuff, because I’m not just writing to write, but there are definitely times when you’ve written for something else and it might not ever get used or come out, and then you hear something, and you try that over that beat, and you’re like, “Oh shit, it’s perfect! Absolutely perfect! I” think that’s the only time that happens for me just because I don’t have a surplus of rap.

Sometimes, you listen to an entire verse from a certain rapper, and you just get the feeling that it was put together piecemeal. The first 4 bars all fit together, they’re a unit, they all go together musically, thematically…

 [Cuts in:] And then something else happens, and you’re like wait, what? That doesn’t go there!

Yeah, and you wonder how that jump got made…to me, that just means the creative process was they carry around a book, put together a lot of one or two liners, until you get a full 16 bars.

Sometimes, that happens. I definitely know rappers who do that. I sometimes call it “rappity rap” – you’re just rhyming cat with hat, nursery-rhyme stuff. I don’t do that. No, for me, everything is tailor made, with that really small exception that I can’t remember the last time that happened. I thought of that today, I had a verse, and I was like, “I’m sorry that song never came out”, but for me it’s different, because then I can go and create a different beat for it. But you know there are a lot of emcees who do that. I think there are some rappers who are better at doing that seemlessly, because I don’t know 2 people who write the same. I write differently than Kweli, and Pharoahe…I go in and if I’m in the studio session, I’ll be like, “let me see how you write.” And there are people who write in paragraph form, using ABCD phrasing. It’s really interesting to see everyone’s writing process, and even if they don’t think it’s a process, it’s fascinating.

So much discussion of rap centers around flow: what it is, how to create it, who has it, and so on. What is good flow to you?

Flow is different for each particular person – everybody has their own flow. What doesn’t work for one rapper might work for another. You have to get to know your voice as if it was an instrument. Know what you can get away with – how you sound, almost what the frequencies of your voice are. I hear beats that I really like, but pass on them because I know my voice won’t fit. I hear other rappers say certain words and raps that I really like, but I know that I couldn’t get away with it. It’s like certain accents, like Southern, can use certain words that others can’t. I think rappers should think more about what words they can use in a certain order. For instance, if you change the rapper of a verse, but keep the rhythms and words the same, the feel of the verse completely changes.

Alright, let’s try a small composition experiment. I’m going to give you a line and you tell me how you’d continue it. How about the final line of your song “Style Wars”: “Slit your neck open from your chest/ who’s next to duel?”

I actually don’t think that was the end of verse, I think I cut it off for the song. I would do the obvious thing and continue that 3-syllable pattern, “next to duel”, which I was doing right before that point on the song, with lines like “Catch you hiding in a darkened VESTIBULE”…Maybe mix it up by using 2 words to fit that 3 syllable pattern, just like vestibule was 1 word for 3 syllables. Eminem is great at doing stuff like that.

How about a line you didn’t write: “Give me some more reason to have the women in your mama’s church…” (From “Oh No” with Pharoahe Monche, Mos Def, and Nate Dogg”)

Well, the words that stand out are “gimme”, “women”, and “mama”…I’d probably continue the pattern of the m sounds. I like when Mos sticks in one place for a while, which he doesn’t do too often…his verse on “Thieves in the Night” [from Blackstar] is one of those times.

Do you have any other favorite verses?

Pharoahe’s on “Extinction Agenda” [from Organized Konfusion’s album “Stress: The Extinction Agenda.”]

The Infinite - 1, 2...Pass It

This week's group is "The Infinite", AKA James Lanning. James is 22-years-old, and although from Maryland, he attended New York University, where he doubled major and graduated magna cum laude (Where featuring classical pianists from Berklee, double majors with honors from NYU...what is this?!?!) He just moved back to NYC. Here his song, "1, 2...Pass it", below, and find out how he writes his rhymes below. His verse is the first one.


The Infinite - "1, 2...Pass it"

1. When you start writing rap, do you start with the rhythm or the text (the words themselves)?

I usually start with the rhythm I want to use. Sometimes I freestyle for 16 bars or so, but more often I do something comparable to scatting. This helps me decide which sounds and rhythms work best for the beat.

2. How do you write your rhymes?

There is no specific time I dedicate to writing. I am constantly thinking of compound rhymes in my head—while at work, on the subway, in the grocery store, wherever. It definitely looks like I’m talking to myself, but I’m always trying to come up with new material. That being said, if I’m not inspired, I don’t force it. I’ll use that time to work on polishing some of my old material. I prefer writing in a notebook, though I don’t carry one around with me. I use my hand, a napkin, or my phone to jot down any rhymes I think of when I don’t have access to my book of rhymes.

3. What musical training do you have?

I play piano. My favorite composer is Rachmaninoff, and my favorite peace to play is prelude in C sharp minor. I have played for around 8 years.

4. Who's your favorite rapper? Who's your favorite producer?

My favorite rapper of all time is Rakim. My favorite producer is DJ Premier.

5. When you write rhymes, do you always write them to the beat? Or do you write the rhymes, and then try to find a beat to match them?

I always write to a specific beat. I think this is a good practice ensuring that your flow does not become redundant over a series of records. Every beat gives me a different feel, which I attempt to match in the delivery and lyrics I use.

6. When you put the rhymes and beat together, is that it? Or do you back and forth between the two to make them work better together?

I write with the beat. I look at my vocals as another instrument. All of these instruments have to work together to create something that is sonically appealing. I think writing to each beat is the most effective method in meshing the emcee’s instrument with those of the instrumental.

7. In your opinion, is rap music, poetry, or both?

Rap is both poetry and music. As previously stated, the emcee is an instrument in him or her self. You can rap a cappella and still hear the rhythms and music in the words themselves. These words, their meanings, and their evocations of emotion (that is, their ability to move the emcee and the audience—move the crowd) are the poetry.

How to Have Better Flow

Here is a 2 part video on how to have better flow. First, you need to know how to count beats, so if you don't, learn how to at this video here.

Part 2:

Here are the handouts: