- When I hear the word "conviction," I think, "fire," which in turn makes me think, "anger." But I just checked the definition (took me 27 years to do that LOL), and it means, "to be convincing." But I like that description: Conviction. So, it's something I will keep in mind more when I record again.

- One of the things I am noticing is that being able to capture subtle, low-intensity^ convictions requires a sensitive mic. Being able to capture high-intensity convictions like anger, require mics that are not too sensitive. (My mic is crappy for both, so it captures either too little or clips when when I scream too much; so I end up holding back a little bit just to get enough sound quality)

- When I am not pissed off on a track, my natural personality is closest to Andre 3000. Sometimes, it's more like Kanye West. (Note that I said personality -- not necessarily delivery-style; although, personality would usually influence delivery style, of course). When I am pissed off on a song, I emotionally come off like another artist, whom I would not mention. I am still learning to control myself and my delivery when I am pissed off cos I end up missing the beat a lot. It seems that I tend to have more conviction in my delivery when I am pissed off, but I am still working on controlling myself properly over a beat. Currently, I do get standing ovations when I do spoken word/acapella raps. So, my problem is really when it comes to rapping over a beat. Not to mention, that over a beat, my breath-control sucks MAJOR ass. I mean, damn, the breath control of Andre 3000 on "B.O.B." Or Common's breath control on "Universal Mind Control." Or Tupac's breath control, when he is pissed off? DAMN! How do these folks do it? Am about to start running again. Hell, imma rap WHILE running. I wanna ride ANY beat.

- So, if you listen to Andre 3000's spit on "What A Job," you would notice he was rapping with a low-intensity, but yet the conviction is there. I am saying that I THINK my delivery here will sound 100% convincing when I record it with a better mic. (I will find out soon enough and post the whole thing here)

- Or maybe I don't FULLY understand what you mean by conviction; not really trying to give excuses cos maybe it's ALL me and has nothing to do with the mic in THIS particular flow.

SO, can you point out some of YOUR favorite artists AND songs with really good conviction? Ideally, you would mention people that would illustrate different *kinds* of conviction; that is, conviction with-respect-to anger; conviction WRT happiness; conviction WRT love. conviction WRT any other emotions. (Anyone else, feel free to add to this). It's really important to me that I am emotionally versatile cos relatively speaking, I have wide-ranging topics.


Again, thanks a LOT for taking out the time.



^When I say low-intensity, I mean, low vocal volume. High-intensity would be screaming.