I figure this is mainly due to the internet giving artists more freedom to craft songs they want since labels have lost the strangle hold they had over artists, but can someone point out to me exactly who and when the trend from the standard three verses with hooks/choruses between each verse got changed to artists only doling out two verses, and hell sometimes only one verse?

To be clear, I am strictly referring to rap artists.

"Sean sparks like John Starks, nah, Sean ball like John Wall" - Rest In Power Forever Sean Price.

The solo albums in particular. I don't think Meth ever kicked more than two verses a track on the "Tical" album; Then, with OB4CL, I think there was only two songs on the album the Raekwon kicked more than one verses (Knowledge God and Scarfaces). GZA had a few more two verse tracks on Liquid Swords, but none with three. And so on.

With them, it seems like it started as the product of more guest appearances, elaborate hooks, intro, outro, bridges, lengthy instrumental sections at the end of songs, etc.

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at least on the indie/"alternative" tip. Action Bronson an'nem.
I could be wrong, but I feel like Madvillainy was the godfather of that 1 1/2 to 2 minute, no hook/minimal refrain, one verse, "or is that two verses because he paused for 3 bars?" type style.
But yeah I think DOOM's unconventional "song" structures were influenced by Ghost and the Wu.

Even before "Madvillainy," he was drop one verse songs; either really long verses ("Doomsday" or "Is He Ill?") or short verses ("Final Hour'). The only other people I feel like were doing the one verse/under two minutes song thing in the early '00s were Quasimoto (the other half of Madvillain) and Count Bass D on "Dwight Spitz" (who said that album was directly influenced by DOOM).

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I think the post is talking about mainstream songs changing their format and I wouldn’t count either Wu or Doom mainstream at all.

Yes, Wu is iconic and was mainstream back in the 90s but it wasn’t the same at all.

I don’t think there is a clear path of when it changed either.

OutKast usually only had two verses but then MCs like Em, 50, Luda, TI etc would spit three and they all came later.

And I could be wrong but since the post mentioned labels running the show it seemed to be geared toward mainstream acts.

make it brief son, half short and twice strong" -genius

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Let's not get too crazy about discog ranking and personal taste, because to me, I Am has a handful of classic/great joints, and Nastradamus almost didn't exist to my memory...
But during that period -- IWW, the I Am sessions, all that stuff -- Nas had a TON of records (many unreleased) where he spit 3 virtually flawless verses, and cats would be like..."verse 2 is amazing, verse 1 is dope, verse 3 is cool, but compared to the other two, he coulda just left it at two verses".
I'm not saying that's unfair critique at all...but as an artist, if that's the way you're bound to be received, why not maximize the potential of each verse by giving them the space they may need to shine like they should?
So yeah...I mean, sure, a lot of what you're talking about comes from the declining importance of dense lyricism in rap, but I also think spitting 3 verses per song comes with similar problems as releasing 2 mixtapes every year.

"Online, kids pitch a bitch 'cause my songs short." - "The Mingus Sextet" off of 'BegBorrowSteel' (2003)

Pre-Madvillain, if I'm correct...

... Charter member, but I don't post much. LAZERS.

Came on the radio, and while I was rapping to it I realized

"Heey.....theres no other verse on this"







Bottoms up....and the devil laughs..




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or at least two connected with no hook with an obvious punch-in where he says "...i'm the microphone fiend / after 12 i'm worse than a gremlin..."

Few sample stabs in there but no hook or chorus

<-- Dave Thomas knows what's up...
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Kane, Biz, Ace would do four

within our crew. We called it "the attitude verse". Not saying that he started it, but, it hit us so hard one day that after what was already a tremendous song and you thought you couldn't take anymore...Chuck D. comes in on verse 4 with "Attitude...when, I'm on fire...". Like...this dude is going hard still...on Verse 4. We were tickled to death after that, anytime someone spit 4 verses in a song.

...I'm from the era when A.I. was the answer, now they think ai is the answer - Marlon Craft

Not too many rappers even spit a forth verse expect for those who we all know are storytelling rappers and even then most of them are good for three most of the time, I use to love it when Prodigy & Havoc would do a songs together cause one of them will always have two verses while the other would just do one and you kind of figured who initially started the song first and told the other to write a verse for it.

With the Wu I think the reason why most of them only had one to two verses cause in the beginning stages of their songs, they said that almost every song had more than one person rhyming and RZA or the initial rapper who rhymed first would edit the others off who they felt didn't do best for that song, so many times they would just keep it to one or two verses and not waste writing a third verse for a song they might not even get to keep on the track.

But back to the infamous forth verse songs, I liked it a lot when the song was good back in the early late 80's to 90's almost all the songs had forth sometimes even five verses cause rap songs length was six to ten mintues and then the record label would do a edit which edited the song to just two or three verses for radio play.

I think when artists wanted maximum impact and wanted to make every song ready for radio play they saw it was easier to just keep it down to three verses and eventually two verses, I still laugh every time I hear Meth & Red's "Rockafella" cause it's probably the shortest radio rap song with one verse from both rappers with no real hook, it's comes under two minutes and got ton of play cause of the length even though most won't admit that's why the song got so much play.

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I've always felt like the correct format is 3 verses. It just makes a hip hop song feel balanced. A two-verse song feels incomplete to me.

The exception would be a really long verse (or verses) so dope that you can't complain...like Thought at Work, 75 Bars, Mural, etc.

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I was raised with a good 95% of songs having three verses, so to have the majority of songs only having two verses seems like I'm getting less bang for my buck when I buy albums these days.

"Sean sparks like John Starks, nah, Sean ball like John Wall" - Rest In Power Forever Sean Price.

That beginning-middle-end. The first verse sets the tone, the middle verse expands on it, the 3rd verse is the conclusion/summary/whatever. I always loved when a song would have each verse gradually get better or more intense, culminating in that 3rd verse "blackout"

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