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:”:
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”:
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:
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:
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.)
For the past few years, I've been analyzing rap. This has led to an exact transcriptions of rap's rhythms. They have led to rhythms which are, quite simply, amazing. I'd like the transcribe reddit to see this not just because I think it's cool, but also to discuss the philosophy of transcription. See the body of the reddit submission for that part. A note on my transcriptions:
There is no standard way to notate rap. Western music notation fails to account for non-semitonal pitch movements, and it's this failing that has led to some to disparage rap. (In fact, I've tried to rectify this by using a modified MIDI piano roll that can move in smaller amounts than semitones. I combined this notation with an Eminem song in this video here.) For this reason, I've notated the rhythms all on a single staff line, to also emphasize rap's percussive nature. The slurs, far from indicating articulation like legato, instead show where semantic meaning (sentences) stops and ends. Rhymes are capitalized. The clef is included not to indicate melodic range, but to emphasize the melodic nature of rap, which doesn't always happen.
Some of these rhythms, understandably, mean nothing to people who view them. That is, they can't be performed by people who see them, for instance, as by people who see more standard scores, with straightforward 16th notes, for instance. This informs my approach. I have notated the rhythms exactly; other people round them off, such as Kyle Adams in his "On Metric Techniques Of Flow." However, I don't believe rapper's rhythms are swung. They are too intricate for that; to reduce them with a legend would give no information beyond how many notes there are too a bar. They're not swung because they don't relate in a straightforward manner to a bass, as they do in a shuffle rhythm.
I've used noctuplet groupings not to reflect how rappers are counting them, but because it's easiest to notate them in this manner, because it affords so many different types of rhythmic subdivisions. This means I can use noctuplet groupings for every bar, which keeps the music nicer. One drawback is that, just reading this music, it's harder to appreciate that every rhythm is different. Game's sound nothing like DMX's, and DMX's sound nothing like Time Bomb, who doesn't sound like Hittman, etc.
I've used note rhythms not to indicate the length of how long the rapper pronounces the words for, but to make the music easier to read.
These rhythms are really unbelievable. I promise they're true though. Earl Sweatshirt's alone took me 20 hours. I also checked them by overlaying video of the actual recorded music being played over a video of Sibelius with the notation being played.
Without further ado, these are my transcriptions, with links to each song. If people ask, I can put up video of Sibelius playing these rhythms, overlaid with the actual music. The six songs are "Some L.A. Niggaz," by Dr. Dre, "Earl," by Earl Sweatshirt, "Aquemini," by OutKast, "Vomitspit," by MF DOOM, "How We Do," by Game, and "Who We Be," by DMX. I've also offered thoughts on their rhythms sometimes. Here we go!
"Some L.A. Niggaz," - Dr. Dre, from Chronic: 2001; notated below are verses from Hittman, King Tee, and Time Bomb; verses from Defari and Xzibit were omitted.
Notice how they almost without fail avoid the 3rd beat, which is noticeably missing in the backbeat. Notice how Hittman is constantly starting and stopping his sentences in different placs. Notice how the sentences run across the barlines, which rarely happens in rap. Notice King Tee's long pauses.
The Game - "How We Do" - complete first verse, and excerpts afterwards from him and 50 Cent
Notice how Game is constantly changing the final note to fall on the beat, and then to fall syncopated off it. Accent marks with < are on the beat; notes with a tenuto are off the beat. Notice how many times he repeats a 3-note rhythmic figure. Notice how this goes throughout his whole verse, and into other verses as well. Notice that rhymes on the vowel sound "-uh" are all we hear for the entire opening 16 bars. Notice his really short sentences, and lack of full sentences.
DMX - "Who We Be" - complete first verse
Notice how he's constantly repeating his 2-note rhythm that falls on the beat. Notice that he lists just nouns, not verbs. Notice how few notes there are. Notice how small his rhythmic subdivisions get sometimes. Notice how he falls behind the beat at places, and places tons of small rhythms to catch up to it.
Notice how slow his rhythms are. Notice how lazy they are. Notice how long his phrases (sentences, indicated by slurs) are. Notice his crazily long rhymes. Notice how many different types of rhythmic subdivisions he uses. Notice his dancing around the downbeat constantly.
Talib Kweli has a deep history of
working with strong talent in its early stages before he or she has achieved
huge popularity; Kanye West’s 3 beats on Kweli’s 2002 effort Quality come to mind most immediately.
With that kind of credibility, any album Kweli co-signs, such as label Javotti
Media’s new project The Cathedral,
deserves a look. While it’s never easy to identify a superstar before they’re
born, the undiscovered star of this show is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the very one
that Kweli himself decided to release an album with a few years ago under the
homonymic moniker Idle Warship.
That musician is singer Res, a
budding star who shines on the 14th track of The Cathedral, entitled “For Who You Are,” which reminds the listener
of an old jazz standard in the best possible way. The comparisons that this
Philly vocalist is sure to draw to Lauryn Hill circa The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, or Aretha Franklin in her prime,
makes a listener wonder why this track was placed towards the end of the album.
The fact that there is no conventional rapping on this song speaks to the more
general fact that there is something here for everyone, no matter their
favorite rap subgenre.
“Purest Heart” is almost a chopped and screwed
beat from Texas, with its unintelligible vocal samples, spastic hi-hats, layered
snare slaps, and double-time tempo. “Manifest Destiny” has a 90s Atlanta-esque
groove that’s supported by truly funky horns before an extreme bebop brass solo
takes over. A classic rap stoner track, “Roll Me Up,” recalls the slower kind of
Dr. Dre G-funk with its expansive keyboards. “Doc Shebeleza Remix” even
features a textbook Memphis triplet flow from Cassper Nyovest. This perhaps
isn’t surprising when the diverse geographical origins of this crew are
recognized: Cory Mo was born in Houston, while débutante Res comes from
Philadelphia originally.
But these references to larger musical
currents in mainstream Hip Hop are always bolstered by a willingness to embrace
the eclectic. “Hypnotized Snakes,” from NIKO IS, makes use of an Middle Eastern
music vocal sample that somehow works perfectly with the Latin percussion
behind it. These musicians also consistently show a willingness to think beyond
just hooks and choruses. There are multiple instrumental interludes, such as on
the aforementioned “Manifest Destiny.” Meanwhile, K-Valentine’s “Chiraq” is a singeing,
searing freestyle that clocks in at almost two-and-a-half minutes. “What’s Real
(Live)” has an extended dynamic crescendo at the end.
This compilation isn’t the Boss Yo Life Up Gang album of 2013,
whose spotlight shown on established artists Young Jeezy and YG. The Cathedral conversely mixes in a
number of appearances from more established talent who will draw in a larger
public to hear their lesser known brethren. Appearances from Pharoahe Monch, Big
K.R.I.T., and the album anchor, Kweli, should be enough to grab many mainstream
underground listeners. Kweli himself leads the way on the first track, setting
the tone for the originality found on the rest of the album by using a
wide-ranging, affected delivery that one doesn’t hear very often from him. The
long block rhymes are still there, however; “foolishness” flipped with “pugilist”
are classic Kweli.
If The Cathedral doesn’t make use of old school sounds as much as one
might expect, directed as it is by an experienced NYC rapper, then it makes use
of an old school aesthetic. That’s a holistic, comprehensive artistic approach.
For example, before Nas’ Illmatic in
1994, most production for an album was handled all by the same producer, as by
Eric B. for Rakim on Paid In Full in
1987. There are no breaks for silence, even for a second, between each track on
The Cathedral, and each track’s own
beat frequently bleeds into the next. Even the host of the album, Affion
Crockett, is a throwback to the original meaning of a rapper’s initials: MC.
Affion is more a master of ceremonies than someone who just introduces and ends
each song with ad libs, instead acting as a comedian who commentates on all of
the album’s action as a fully integrated player. Throw in quotes or samples of
Nas, Wu-Tang Clan, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar, and Fleetwood Mac, and these
artists’ musical consciousness turns out to be strongly unified.
Overall, the refreshingly large ambition
of this musically kaleidoscopic album results in something that is greater than
the sum of its parts. With so many versatile sounds from so many different
artists that all work together as one, prospective listeners would do well to
keep an eye (and an ear) out for these artists’ upcoming solo projects.
Tech N9ne Rap Music Analysis: *As seen on the Composer's Corner super secret weekly newsletter...email mepc36@gmail.com to get the hook up * I just got a chance to listen to Tech N9ne. I gotta say, his music kinda doesn't sound like anything I've heard. I'm not as familiar with it as you are, but after hearing those songs you listed, I think I will definitely listen to more of his music. You can see the lyrics for the song I’m going to look at,”In My Head,” here. You can hear the song on YouTube here. I want to look at these lyrics: kinetic you bet it's something moving your head its prophetic so get it embedded let it control your bodily close to lettuce my head is far from synthetic you credit this vet is poetic that is merely a part of me That is an especially nice line. You'll note that there are a lot of rhymes in a short amount of time (kiNETIC you BET IT's somethin' movin' your HEAD its proPHETIC, etc., where all of the lyrics are capitalized), The thing is, he’s making rhymes while still making sense. I talked about this a little in my Jean Grae post here, but there's something I call the rhyme barrier that all rappers encounter when they try to make rhymes. When a rapper says a word, and decides to rhyme off it, he has by the very nature of rhyming already greatly limited the number of words that are available to him. For instance, when Tech says the word "kinetic", and decides to rhyme off it, he can only choose words that rhyme with that word. There is an infinite number of ways to express the same idea. For instance, take the idea "I am the best rapper ever." You could say, "I am the best rapper ever", but you could also say, "No one can spit it like me", or, "I drop lines harder than you", or "I'm not the next 2pac, I'm the first Tech n9ne." The challenge for a good rapper, then, is to find that version of the idea that is able to rhyme the most, while still making sense. The classic line I point to is a Busta Rhymes line, from the song " Get You Some", which you can hear here. Busta, raps, "A lot of niggas shit sound dated, I'm like Shaq / the franchise player just got traded." Note that the first part of the line has nothing to do with the second. In the first, Busta is saying other rappers rhymes sound old ; in the second, he's saying how his move to a new record label is like an American sports star's. This is where Busta has run into the rhyme barrier; he limited his word choice with "dated", and then couldn't continue the dramatic narrative in a logical way. Eminem is amazing at this - Just listen to the first line of “Still Don’t Give A Fuck", and listen to how many rhymes there are, while Em is still explaining and describing very specific, logical events. Hear the song here. The opening lyrics are the ones we want: i’m zoning off of ONE JOINT STOPPING A LIMO HOPPED in THE WINDOW SHOPPING A DEMO at GUNPOINT You can see that out of 25 syllables, 18 were rhymed. Meanwhile, the theme of a rapper who isn’t getting the respect he deserves is a classic one that Eminem is expanding on further. What I'm saying is that Tech n9ne does this well as well. And that above line is proof. Also, I read an interview where Tech said that tries to base his rap off as a percussion pattern. I kinda think that this is something all rappers do, consciously or unconsciously, and is also the very musical function of rap. I expand on this further in another post, called "The Rapping Voice as An Instrument", which you can find here.
So my editors at HipHopDX
told me that my rap world centered heavily around the East and West Coasts, and
I realized that they were right. I mean, my list of Top 10 rappers is heavily
NYC-centric: Jean Grae…Talib Kweli…Pharoahe Monch….and so on. While I think
it’s for good, justifiable reasons that I’m NYC-centric, I also have a duty and
responsibility to you. The reader.
Yeah, you. Yes, even you,
Greg.
If I’m gonna be your go-to
guy for understanding this rap shit, I gotta be one knowledgeable guy. Can I
really say Jean Grae is a GOAT if I’m not completely familiar with the work of,
say, everyone who comes from Atlanta? I mean, I know OutKast, but what about
their city brethren?
So, like Jordan and Bird in
the offseason, I hit the court and went to add another dimension to my game,
addressing my weaknesses in the process. One of those weaknesses was my lack of
knowledge about Ludacris, another one of André’s and Big Boi’s metropolitan
colleagues.
Oh, Ludacris. You and I have
come such a long way together. From you being the soundtrack to the whitest,
suburbanest grade school “mixers” you’ve ever seen, to you being part of an
Academy Award winning movie, to…The Fast and The Furious…and to you being on
the speed dial of every producer who needs a guest verse, we’ve gone through
our ups and downs. But, once I got past yelling out the closing rhymes of every
line on “Move Bitch,” I can now give you a fair, TCC-Patented rap analysis
look.
Ludacris, along with Big Sean
and T-Pain, might be the most unexpected rap artists that I’m a fan of. I’m not
saying they’re anywhere close to my real Top 10 list, but I’ve been turning my
iTunes to Word Of Mouf and Chicken-n-Beer fairly often recently,
which, along with 30 or so guest verses (comprising only 10% of all his cameos,
probably,) form the basis for my takes on his style here. (A google search of
Ludacris guest verses returns no less than 6 results trying to identify his greatest.)
You might think I’d dismiss Ludacris as easily as, say, Rick Ross, if you’ve
read my other articles, like my one on Biggie here. I mean, Ross' and Ludacris' styles are pretty similar. As a simplification and symbol of
their whole styles, but without making me have to get too technical, let’s just
say that both rappers, for instance, have simple, 1 or 2-syllable rhymes that
always come at the end of sentences. But I’m actually a kinda big fan of
Ludacris. Not necessarily because of the technique of his rap, but because of
the persona he portrays.
Now, I don’t talk a whole lot
about delivery or non-musical artistic styles a lot, because they’re harder to
quantify, and because they’re not necessarily what makes my articles unique and
what you come here for. But while dudes are misusing the use of musical terms
like double-time ALL the time,
I figured I’d try to do their job better than they do mine.
I like Ludacris more than I
expected because I’ve recently been really influenced by old school Hip Hop.
I’ve been turning my ears more towards Slick Rick’s The Great Adventures Of Slick Rick, Run-D.M.C.’s Raisin’ Hell, DJ Quik’s Quik Is The Name, E-40’s Mr. Flamboyant, and Boogie Down
Production’s Criminal Minded. If you
haven’t heard those, I suggest checking out any and all of them. I’ve even dug
the new old school, like Mos Def and Talib Kweli’s Black Star album.
I love the music and the
beats these albums have. There’s still no question in my mind that rappers have
gotten better over the decades of rap’s existence — KRS-One couldn’t have
dreamed of the metric transference André 3000 would use on “Aquemini,” as I
explain here.
But what those old school rappers unquestionably do a better job of is having
more varied approaches than rappers today, and they also do a better job
of…having more fun.
They just have more fun than
rappers today.
I mean, dude, rappers today
are so…serious. You ever turn on the
radio? These guys are just way too focused on being the man. I could never
imagine 2Chainz or Waka Flacka making fun of themselves. Could even modern
Kanye pull off a song with the verbal themes of DJ Quik’s “Sweet Black Pussy?” On this song Quik is just talking about how much he loves girls, but not like how Kanye
does on “I’m In It,” from Yeezus. DJ
Quik’s “Sweet Black Pussy” becomes “I’m In It” in Kanye’s
hands. Kanye’s saying, when you get a girl, don’t flirt and enjoy the chase,
you gotta really, grrrrr, grit your teeth and give it to her:
[uh, picked up where we LEFT
OFF] /
[uh, i need you home when i GET
OFF] /
[uh, you know i need that WET
MOUTH] /
[uh, i know you need that
REPTILE] /
*In my lyrical
transcriptions, the rhymed words are capitalized, the brackets [ ] surround
sentences, and the slashes / represent where one bar ends and the next starts.
If you don’t know what bars are, you’ll still understand almost all of what I
say, but you can also learn what they are here*
Kanye’s hard, growling
delivery really makes the difference between him and DJ Quik.
But Quik’s approach isn’t
like Kanye’s. Quik is saying it’s great to have sex and all, but he’s also
saying how girls themselves are great. Just talking to girls at parties is
amazing. Quik mocks himself as a rapper by making fake mistakes, such as when the beat of "Sweet Black Pussy" drops at 2:20, when Quik can be heard flipping through his
pages:
“Aw shit, hold up man, this
the wrong motherfuckin’ page and shit. Awww shit, I need to start on the...Aw,
okay, here we go.”
Then, the beat drops back in, and the relaxed party atmosphere is back in full swing. Even the superficially joking songs of today are actually deadly serious. For
instance, Macklemore makes fun of himself by saying he wears cheap thrift shop
clothing on “Thrift Shop:”
“Dressed in all pink except my
gator shoes, those are green
Draped in a leopard mink,
girl standing next to me
Probably should’ve washed
this, smells like R. Kelly sheets
But shit, it was 99 cents!”
But make no mistake. He's still the man:
“Fuck it, coppin’ it, washin’
it, ‘bout to go and get some compliments”
Macklemore then backs this up by
saying that his cheap fashion actually makes him cooler than people who spend
big bucks for nicer clothes:
“I hit the party and they stop
in that motherfucker
They be like, “Oh, that
Gucci, that’s hella tight”
I’m like, yo that’s fifty
dollars for a t-shirt
Limited edition, let’s do
some simple addition
Fifty dollars for a t-shirt,
that’s just some ignorant bitch shit"
Ah, gimme a break man. My
life is serious enough — jobs, schoo, girlsl — that I don’t want to listen to songs
anymore and hear about your fucking
problems, or how you’re trying to be
the man.
Quik even has a song called “Tha Bombudd.” It’s not about who can
smoke more than who (“Niggas say smoke me out, yeah, I really doubt it” – Snoop
Dogg, from “Kush”,) or who’s got better weed, (“And I smoke that kill, y’all
blowin’ on begonias” – Lil Wayne, on Birdman’s “Cali Dro”) or not coughing when
you smoke, it’s just about smoking weed, because weed is awesome. Quik also
adopts a fake Jamaican accent for the whole song.
Shit, The Pharcyde even have
an entire song consisting of just "Ya Mama" jokes on their 1992 album Bizarre Ride II
The Pharcyde. Would Game ever do something like that? Drake? Nicki Minaj?
No, no, and no.
This is where Ludacris comes
in. I see him as a continuation of this more carefree theme in rap. Yes,
Ludacris portrays himself as a gangsta. But he emphasizes the mack aspect of
the gangsta persona, and not the criminal aspect. He says what makes him a
gangsta is just a mindset, not any crime he’s committed and got away with.I
couldn’t find any evidence of Ludacris actually having a criminal record. What
makes him a gangsta is that he’s good with girls. Other rappers will emphasize
how they steal and kill people, or deal drugs, but Ludacris will talk more
about how he’s good with girls, and how he likes to have a good time when he
goes out. He’ll make more jokes, and tell less stories about all of his
supposed crimes.
A representative song of this
style from Ludacris is the 4th track from his Word Of Mouf album, which is called “Cry Babies (Oh No.)” It’s just hilarious joke after hilarious joke:
[so put your belly on a PLATE
and watch your WEIGHT] /
[you frosted like a FLAKE and
ludacris feels GREAT] /
[a drug dealer’s dream] [so
fresh and i’m so CLEAN] /
[i’m a grown ass man and
you’re sweeter than sixTEEN] /
[my cars got big tv’s and
SATELLITES] /
[i got a wheel of fortune ‘cause
i flipped o’s like VANNA WHITE] /
[i’m shakin’ your tale
FEATHERS] /
[i got big balls] [i’m a sac-
king like chris WEBBER] /
[i smell puss from fifty
YARDS] /
[y’all not playin with a full
deck as if i jacked out ya jacks and left fifty CARDS] /
The gangsta persona hasn’t
been in rap since 1978, but puns, jokes, metaphors, similes, analogies, and
humor in rap has always been there. Just check out these lyrics from rap's first mainstream hit, "Rapper's Delight:"
"Well like Johnny Carson on the late show Like frankie Crocker in stereo Well like the barkay's (?( singing ohly Ghost The sounds to throw down they're played the most." Ludacris is a throwback rapper like Master Gee, Big Bank Hank, and Wonder Mike in a lot of ways, at least when he's at his best. Shit, almost more than a verse and a half out of 3 on "Cry Babies" is completely jokes, puns, and double entendres:
[catch me in vegas, SPINNING THE GREEN] /
[i re-up with more chips than a VENDING MACHINE] /
[bull’s-eye][i stunt growth and STOP LIVES] /
[you run with niggas that’s more chicken than POT PIES] /
[i kick niggas in they ass][reboot ‘em like LAPTOPS] /
[and they wouldn’t even BOX if i gave ‘em a FLAT TOP] /
[you punks pucker and pout, bicker and BABBLE] /
[now they all lost for words like I beat ‘em in SCRABBLE] /
[when i KICK and RIP and FLIP an indispensable RHYME] /
[my black ass is so hungry i’ll take a bite out of CRIME] /
[i just bought some new guns] [my mama said it ain’t WORTH IT] /
[but i’m at the shootin’ range just ‘cause practice makes PERFECT] /
Great puns; maybe Top 10, as I discuss below. But this kind of harmless fun is what I get out of
Luda’s rap, because there isn’t much to go on technique-wise. Just like those
songs are excellent examples of Ludacris’ puns, they’re also good example of
his pretty average technique. Just look at the lines I quoted above. Not much change
in phrasing or sentences, which all last about half or 1 bar, unlike Notorious
B.I.G. All of the sentences also start and end with the bar line. Like so many good but not great rappers, Ludacris does one thing really
well, but doesn’t bring the versatility of someone like Eminem or Jean Grae.
Most of Ludacris’ rhymes are
external rhymes that come at the end of sentences, and they’re all 1 or 2
syllables long. For example, “i smell puss from fifty YARDS” rhymed with “y’all
not playin with a full deck as if i jacked out ya jacks and left fifty CARDS,”
or “i’m shakin’ your tale FEATHERS” rhymed with “i got big balls, i’m a sac-
king like chris WEBBER.” That’s far away from Jean Grae’s 8-syllable rhymes on
“Casebasket.” “Cry Babies (Oh No)”
also isn’t an isolated incident; much of what I just said about jokes,
phrasing, and rhymes can be applied just as much to the album’s first first
song, “Coming 2 America,” as to the track we just looked at.
This shows us that Luda
couldn’t begin to think of Jean Grae’s crazy syncopated rhythms, like I say here,
or Notorious B.I.G.’s innovative rhymes schemes like I explain in the article I
linked to at the start. Ludacris, unlike my other favorite rappers, doesn’t
fully utilize the musical systems he sets up for himself. For instance, he
clears out a lot of musical space in his rap, but then doesn’t fill it in later.
Check out his song “Move Bitch”and the big pauses in its opening lines: “oh
no…fights out…’bout to punch your…lights out.” But Ludacris doesn’t go back and
fill in that musical space later to insert some variation into his style.
In a way, it seems like
there’s a lot of untapped potential in Ludacris. On “Coming 2 America,” the Atlanta rapper cleverly flips his initially more laid back flow into a
really quick one for the 3rd verse at 2:52, which fits the slower
beat’s double time really well, and which Big Boi has made almost a whole career out of. But Ludacris doesn’t smartly prepare a transition to a
quicker flow like Kendrick does on “Rigamortis,” where Lamar starts slow and then ends quick. Additionally, Ludacris doesn’t do
this sudden flow change enough on other songs. Like so many rappers, he hasn’t
changed his rapping style over the years, such as how Jean Grae did between her
album Attack Of The Attacking Things
and her Cookies Or Comas mixtape.
While no one could’ve predicted that Yeezus
would eventually come from Kanye after his more traditional College Dropout album, what with all of
its soul samples, I can pretty much guarantee that Kanye will pretty much be
rapping the same way 10 years from now, just with different topics.
So where does this leave
Ludacris, when compared to the greatest rappers of all time that I've mentioned throughout this article? When evaluating
rappers as GOAT’s or not, I first grade them on 3 different categories:
Storytelling, Technique, and Puns, as I explain in my 2pac article here.
I’m not an expert on my comedian Top 10, but I’ve got a pretty good handle on
storytelling and a great handle on technique. So from what I’ve heard, Ludacris
is right on the Top 10 Comedian list along with Big Sean and early Kanye West. But
as I said before, his technique doesn’t really pop off the page, and telling a compelling personal
story isn’t as essential to his work as it is for, say, Kendrick Lamar or 2pac.
This means that Ludacris is a really good rapper, as long as you know what
you’re going to get from him: pun, pun, and more puns, without a lot of thought behind them.
Lucky for us, Twitter acts as an immortal showcase of the stupid things we do and say. That goes for rappers too. (I'm just saying, I hope no one ever does a story like this on me. It will probably start with asking why I re-tweet Jean Grae lyrics at 10 PM on Fridays.) But the math behind this article is easy: people do and say crazy shit/rappers especially + Twitter saves it = here are the 5 most outlandish rap stories of the past year as told through Tweets:
Normally, a rapper would want you to find out about them through their music, and not because of something wildly inappropriate they did. Unfortunately, the second scenario was the case for when I heard of French Montana, and kinda made his music hard to take after that. On February 29 this year, Montana performed at the Theatre of the Living Arts in Philadelphia a.k.a. PHIL-TOWNNNN!!! (Okay, no one calls it that.) And as it happens someone got shot and died outside of the concert. Police later stopped Montana to question him about the incident. Montana responded with the above tweet and an instagram photo of him looking pissed off, clearly not going anywhere. Came off as rather dick-ish. Whatever, let's go to a less harmless egotistical rapper act instead:
When this story broke, I had to explain to my non-rap fans, all of who were still familiar with Kanye's antics ("George Bush doesn't care about black people," "Beyoncé had one of the best music videos of all time," etc., etc.,) that this was actually a real story. To promote his recent Yeezus album, Kanye broadcast a music video all across the world at the same time. The video largely consists of Kanye's own face, over dozens of feet of square area, rapping his song "New Slaves." Check it out:
Only Kanye could think of something like that. To be clear, I'm a huge fan of the man. If he is one of the few people in the world with almost endless resources at his disposal for advertising and publicity, why not do something completely outlandish? I am going to have definitely disagree with Kanye's recent characterization of the 2nd verse of "New Slaves" as the greatest verse in the history of music, as he recently proclaimed on music. I'd expect nothing less from Kanye, though.
I'm not gonna give you any context for this one. Just sit with this reality for a while, a quote which hopefully they engrave on Lupe's tomb:
"Dear God! I didn't get kicked off Twitter for talking about Karl Marx! Jesus Fucking Christ....who said that?" - Lupe Fiasco, Born 2/16/1982
On a recent song, "U.O.E.N.O.", Rick Ross has the following lyric:
"Put Molly all in her champagne, she ain't even know it
I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain't even know it"
Understandably, there was a lot of outrage over Ross' apparent glorification of date rape. Ross felt the pain in not just his public image but his wallet as well when he lost an endorsement deal with Reebok worth millions of dollars. However, the message may not have hit Ross right away, as he offered up the above lukewarm apology. Maybe he just meant apologies are awesome with the #boss tag?
The outcry over Ross' lyrics is similar to other public debates over rap lyrics that have taken place recently, such as over Lil Wayne's "Emmett Till" lyric and Kanye West's recent lyric about "keeping it shaking like Parkinson's". While being a sign of current problems in rap's lyrics, the fact that these debates are taking place at all is a good sign. This is because they can eventually lead to change. Rap has had lyrics like this for years, but as rap matures, it is time to move on.
Tim Dog's tweet from 2009 seems damn near a premonition now. In 2011, Tim Dog pleaded guilty to grand larceny for conning a woman. Facing a long prison sentence and having to pay back tens of thousands of dollars to the victim of the scheme, TD reportedly died of complications from diabetes. However, none of the usual events surrounding a death were found: an autopsy, a funeral, or death certificate. An arrest warrant has now been issued for him in Mississippi. As he says on a song off his "Do or Die" album, he may have "Skipped To His Loot" one too many times.
So, what's the equation answer? If you, as a rap fan, are not on Twitter, I highly suggest it.
Below is the sheet music transcription of Talib Kweli's rap verse on the song "Twice Inna Lifetime", performed in his group with Mos Def, called "Blackstar." First is shown a video demonstrating the rhythms, playing them through the computer. Skip ahead to 0:56 for this particular song.
Today I am going to examine a certain argument that is popular in any
hobby or sport: who is the Greatest Of All Time? Usually, discussions
of the GOAT revolve around little more than which Stan can argue more
strongly for his favorite rapper, without actually examining what should
be at the heart of the matter: each rapper’s respective raps. In this
analysis I am going to look at the work of a rapper who is brought up in
any discussion of the GOAT: 2pac. What’s more, I’m going to go right to
the heart of the matter and examine a song of his that I have no
problem calling, objectively, one of the greatest rap songs of all time,
if not the greatest.
First, to explain why “Changes” is a song that should move the ground
beneath our political, moral, and societal debates, would be
self-defeating. To do so would belabor the searing bluntness of 2pac’s
assault on the same old talking points and buzzwords surrounding the
discussion of the war on drugs, which continues to this day, decades
after the release of this song. The crack epidemic, institutionalized
racism, the prison-industrial complex, and police brutality do not
escape his target sights either. The fact that his lyrics, “It’s war on
the streets, and a war in the Middle East / ‘Stead of war on poverty,
they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me”, still apply as
much today as they did about 20 years ago should make us all work to
examine more deeply our automatic-response thoughts to such destructive
forces. And no matter who you are, what class, what race, you can relate
to him: “I wake up every morning and I ask myself / Is life worth
living, should I blast myself?” is something I know I’ve asked myself to
varying degrees, and something we all have at some point in our lives.
I point out 2pac’s clarity of image only in order to start the
discussion of the GOAT. In general, a rapper plays many parts: poet,
musician, comedian, storyteller, actor, and more. In order to account
for these varied roles, I like to separate the discussion of the GOAT
into 3 separate Top 10 lists. The 3 lists are, “Greatest Storytellers of
All Time”, “Greatest Rap Comedians of All Time,” and the “Greatest
Technically Accomplished Rappers.” How a particular rapper ranks
respectively on each separate list can then be used to more accurately
determine how they should rank in the general list of “Greatest Rappers
Of All Time.” The first and 3rd lists are self-explanatory by their
titles, but the title of “comedian” includes all the jokes a rapper
makes: puns, double entendres, jokes, everything.
I do this because it is the rare rapper who can rank very highly on
all 3. For instance, Kanye absolutely is in the top 3 for “Greatest
Comedians”, and probably the top 10 for “Storytellers”, if for nothing
else besides his work on “College Dropout” (the songs “Family Business”,
“Jesus Walks”, “All Falls Down”, and more). But on “Technically
Accomplished”, while still being better than most, he would not make the
Top 10 list at all. Big Sean might show up on “Comedians”, just barely,
but he doesn’t come close to the other 2 lists. Common, meanwhile,
would make the “Storytellers” list (“I Used To Love H.E.R.”), and make
top 15 for “Technically Accomplished,” but as far as “Comedians” goes, I
don’t see him showing up very high. (“Good rappers is hard to find…like
the remote.” Eesh.)
So how does 2pac fit into this? As we’ve already established, he is
an amazing storyteller (the “storyteller” does not have to necessarily
refer to a story like “this happened, then this happened, then this guy
did that thing.”) I think we can establish pretty objectively that he is
the greatest rap storyteller of all time. As his resume, I submit no
less than “Changes”, “Unconditional Love”, “Dear Mama”, “Brenda’s Got A
Baby”, and “Life Goes On,” and those are only the best of the best.
Possibly all of those chart as the greatest Top 10 “Rap Story” songs of
all time.
But his position on the “Comedians” list is a little harder to pin
down. From everything I’ve heard, and 2pac is one rapper who I’ve heard
pretty extensively, I can’t recall off the top of my head any pun,
double entendre, or joke. And, since I’m sure there has to be some, if
there are, they are not very memorable. But 2pac is a special case,
because he simply seems completely uninterested in this aspect of the
modern rapper’s toolbox. He does not try to make jokes…so should we even
evaluate him on this level? If you insist on doing so, first let’s
examine the 3rd list to see where he ranks: “Technically Accomplished”
rappers.
Now, for my list, which evaluates the list from the perspective of
the year 2013, he does not make the top 10. But if we are going to judge
him based on the time period in which he raps, it’s another matter.
What’s more, any flaws or lack of technical acrobatics in his rap are,
contradictorily, transformed by his delivery — the way in which he says
his words — into being hallmarks and even strengths of his style. He is
not going to drop 4-syllable rhymes inside a sentence, like Pharoahe
Monch (who I’ll release an analysis article of on the 21st), and he is
not going to use extensive metrical transference, like Andre 3k as
described here or Busta Rhymes here. And he won’t have complex noctuplet rhythms, like MF DOOM in his rap on “Vomitspit”, or drop 16 rhymes all in a row, like Jean Grae (who I’ll release an analysis of on the 18th.)
What I mean to say is that 2pac’s raps have a certain unfinished
quality to them, but that is part of their strength. If you know
anything of the man, you know that he just rapped, and rapped, and
rapped. No one ever needed rap more than 2pac (Eminem, I think, comes in
second.) You get the feeling if 2pac didn’t have rap, he wouldn’t have
made it past childhood. Because, from listening to rappers, you can
always tell who needs rap. Lil Wayne doesn’t need rap; he needed rap to
get him rich, and you see that once he did his lyrics went to shit.
That’s why I don’t believe the rumors of 2pac still being alive, people
saying his albums are still being released and that’s how – no, he just
lived in the studio. So it is somewhat unsurprising if we find his raps
not as technically finished as some other rappers’ work.
For instance, multiple times he rhymes the same words, one after the
other. For instance, he rhymes “brothers” with “other” 3 times in seven
bars, in the first verse. The capitalized words are the rhymes:
(One instance is the “-other” in “another.”) He’s got a nasty habit
of rhyming the same words over and over, like “brother” and “other”, or,
in verse 2, the word “way.” He rhymes, “easy WAY, “G today,” but then
goes back to “sleazy WAY”. That’s not even that bad, but when you’re
comparing it to the greatest technically accomplished rappers of all
time, it especially hurts that he goes back to the word for a third
rhyme, when he then rhymes “I gotta get PAID / well HEY / well that’s
the WAY it is.” It’s a problem because it’s repetitive. I’ve got no
problem if the same syllable is combined with another rhymed syllable
that changes, and in fact that seems to be a marker of 2pac’s style in
this song. In verse 3, he rhymes, “Don’t let em JACK YOU UP / BACK YOU
UP / CRACK YOU UP / pimp SMACK YOU UP”, where jack/back/crack/smack is
combined with the “you up.” He does it again in verse 1 with the “Huey
said / Huey’s dead” rhyme, or the rhyme “When we KILL EACH OTHER / it
takes skill to be real trying to HEAL EACH OTHER.” But when that rhymed
syllable goes back and forth between the same syllable that has the same
exact definition, it hurts. He does it again in verse 3, with “But now
I’m BACK with the FACTS giving it BACK to you.”
But this is what I was saying before: I could not imagine 2pac as a
rapper with those kind of elements sanitized. I wouldn’t want to hear
it. There is a certain raw, frenetic, uncontrolled energy to the
structure of his raps as well as their delivery. I would love to see
video of him in the booth. You can hear that 2pac had something to say,
and he needed to get it out before he got killed early in life
(something he believed would always happen), any conventions of the
communication medium – rap — be damned.
Furthermore, he moves between different modes of rhyming without any
sort of transition, and there doesn’t seem to be any overarching,
guiding principle to how he’ll move from one rhyme to the next. That is,
the pacing of his rhymes – how many he drops, and how intense they are
in terms of length and placement – is all over the place, and either not
very complex or too complex. For example, he starts off with a couplet
and a single-syllable end rhyme:
“Wake up every morning and I ASK myself / is life worth living,
should I BLAST myself”. Then, he moves to a triple syllable end rhyme
group (“worse I’m black” / “purse to snatch”) with single-syllables
nested inside that group (“hurts”) and before it (“blast”).
Then, he moves to a couplet, 2-syllable end rhyme on negro/hero, with the trigger/nigga rhyme inside it:
There doesn’t seem to be any plan to the pace of his rhymes. There is
no acceleration or deceleration of phrases (shorter or longer
sentences, or more or less of them), any discernable switch between a
high number of rhymes and a low number of rhymes. There isn’t even any
variation on the couplet structure, which would be somewhat laborious
without 2pac’s delivery and strong message. This contributes to what I
hear as the freestyle (off the top) flow of the song – he’s just going,
like you’re with him and he’s coming up with it on the spot.
A better example comes at the start of the 2nd verse. He starts off with a heavy amount of syllables, from “changes” to “races”.
But the rhymes are rather run of the mill, and you can even see some
of the “nursery rhyme” early history of rap coming out here. He starts
off with a huge amount of rhymes: 12 out of 13 straight syllables rhyme
at one point, from “racist” to “races”. But he’s chosen to do this at
the start of a verse in the middle of the song, and it is easily the
most rhyme-intensive section of the song. More rhymes increase the
tension in a rap, and we’d expect to have the most tension at the end of
a song, just like we always have the highest amount of tension at the
end of a movie. Contrast this to the finished nature of Mos Def’s rhymes
in part of his verse from RE: DEFinition, a full analysis of which you
can read here. You can hear the song here:
You can see the section in question notated below:
In Mos’ verse, there is definitely a plan to the pacing of his rhymes
(which are indicated by those less than signs, like on “minimum”). He’s
got a 3 syllable, 1 or 2 word rhyme block, starting with the
minimum/entering/millennium/etc. group and going through the whole 14
bars shown there, until “Ellington”. He varies how quickly they come in
ways that set up your expectations, and then either confirm or
disappoint them. His first bar has the block 3 times, the second bar has
it once, the 3rd has it twice, the 4th has it twice, the 5th has it
twice…but then the 6th bar has it 4 times! And because what’s notated
there as the 6th bar is actually the end of the 14th bar because I’ve
omitted the first 8 bars of his rap, and because his verse is the final
verse on the song, he’s picked a logical place to heighten the musical
tension: more than halfway through the verse, and near the end of the
song. Then, at the very end of the verse, he reduces it to 3 blocks in
bar 12 above, 2 blocks in bar 13, 1 block in bar 14, and finally 2
blocks in bar 15. He’s brought us down from the musical climax of the
verse that came at that bar with the 3-syllable block 4 times.
This is a rather subtle point, but think about it for yourself: in a
movie, where does everything happen? Where does everything get resolved?
Towards the end, about ¾ through. Or where do you get the biggest chord
in a symphonic piece of music? At the end!
But with 2pac, you don’t get much of that planning-out. And as I said
before, this is not a knock on his style, because it works for him. Not
many rappers could pull this off. That’s because after the “racist
faces…” to “disgrace to races” lines, he drops the amount of rhymes off a
ton. Meanwhile this whole time, throughout the whole rap in fact, the
structure of his sentences and how long they are have been almost
tediously consistent: they are almost all 1 bar long, and they almost
all start and end at the start and end of the bar.
When you combine that uniformity of sentence structure with the
predictable rhythme structure of being extremely couplet-heavy, you
better understand what I’m trying to describe here – his unfinished,
unpolished style.
What’s more, consider his mode of rhyme linking – how he moves from
one rhyme group to the next. He just skips from one to the next, with no
combination or intertwining of them, like Notorious B.I.G. does here.
For instance, 2pac rhymes on chill/kill/skill/real/heal in verse 2,
then moves right on to the rhyme group with heaven sent/president, then
the group –ceal the fact / packed / filled with blacks, and so on. If
the first group is labeled A, the second B, and the 3rd C, his form of
rhyme linking would be ABC. This is very simple, especially when
compared to Eminem’s first verse of “Lose Yourself”, as you can see at
this link here, where his rhyme linking between different rhyme groups is ABCCCABCABBCABCDDDDABCAA. Pretty complex, right?
And perhaps 2pac could still place higher on the “Technically
Accomplished” list if his rhymes were of a more complex nature. But they
are mostly 1 syllable rhymes, both internal and external. We have this
born out by our statistics of our past 3 articles:
You can examine it as much for yourself as you want, but the important points for Pac’s stats are:
He has the shortest words used – from his lowest syllables per word.
He has the lowest rhyme density – from the lowest % of syllables rhymed
He has long, uniform sentences – from almost a 1 to 1 ratio of sentences to bars.
Those three statistics are roughly indicators of technical
complexity. Thus, we see that Busta and MF DOOM are very technically
complex, because DOOM has a higher syllable per word and a higher % of
syllables rhymed, and Busta had 24 3-syllable rhymes in his rap on
“Holla.” Therefore, we see that 2pac’s rhymes are generally on the
simpler side.
But as I said before, I don’t think this reflects negatively on 2pac.
This is because that style fits his aggressive message and delivery
very well, and not just in this song. For instance, there is the epic
“Hit ‘Em Up.” Besides, by no means is he a bad rapper. The weak points
I’ve just described separate the extremely technically complex – Jean
Grae, Pharoahe Monche, Mos Def, Eminem, Black Thought, Nas, Talib Kweli –
from the run-of-the mill technically complex. I mean, 12 out of 13
straight syllables in 2pac’s rap here is pretty impressive. And he does
use some metrical transference, even if it is of a very, very simple
nature, and mixes in a few multi-syllable rhymes, like acting right/
black than white / crack tonight, which is a good rhymes series.
But there are 2 camps of differing thought on 2pac: 1 side says he’s
only famous because he died young and that made him a martyr, and the
other side hold him up to be the greatest of all time in every category
ever, and there does not seem to be room for much middle-ground. Here, I
think we have some proof to move the discussion forward.
My final assessment would be this: we don’t assess him on the
comedian scale, because he doesn’t even strive for it mostly. Second, he
is more technically complex than some people give him credit for, and
for his period he is one of the more technically complex. But compared
to today’s rappers, he isn’t. However, his storytelling is so strong and
so powerful that he is number 1 on that specific list by far, far, far.
So, I think 2pac rightly deserves his general reputation as one of the
greatest of all time. Where you want to specifically put him on that
list is up for debate.
