Work got hectic before I could finish it. It's about 1/4 of the way done.

But maybe we can put together something nice from this skeleton.


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You’re using an outsider/academic perspective, and I think you, and anyone else who wants to study rap, should study the music in context. And that means you can’t come from an anti-septic/objective/non-hip hop pov to break down what makes the music work. It means talking to rappers, hearing what they think is important, and then looking at the music, the audience reaction, the sales, et cetera to determine if what they’re saying about the craft is true.

And that ultimately means you can’t just study the artifacts/the recordings, but study the people who produce and the people who consume. You can’t pull a Jeff Chang, if you want the truth. It means you have to be constantly testing and uncovering the premises upon which people stand. It’s recognizing that no one person, no one record, nothing alone is authoritative. All you can do is present a coherent and consistent idea of what you think is happening, and hope that the next man can come along and prove or disprove what you think.

This is how you set up your argument. You’ve got four headings, and then several related sub-headings

1. pattern
2. timing.
3. flow control.
4. pacing
5. cadence
6. volume.
7. regularity
8. melody
9. energy.
10. enunciation
11. intonation.
12. accent
13. rhyme scheme.
14. accuracy.
15. assonance/alliteration

One can argue that some of these things should be combined, things are missing, et cetera, but that’s why the list itself is moot. (moot means arguable, not that argument should cease) But the real problem is not really the list.

The list can be expanded, contracted, and reorganized. Ultimately if you’re coming up with criteria on how to explain and analyze rap, you’re going to have to run it through a bunch of songs to figure out what is workable and what isn’t workable. Almost like having a Planet Infinite/M2 excel spreadsheet to rate the rappers, and then add more columns of consideration.

The (well my) real problem is not the list, not the definitions, nor ignoring the interaction between the various elements. My problem is the conclusion that follows your definition

This is how you do it.

Element – definition of element – damaja’s rule on interpretation of the element

2 Examples

accuracy. how well the two words rhyme. in hiphop the rhymes are allowed to be pretty loose (compared to Broadway musicals). hard to make any rules about... but seeming lazy is not good.

Element - Accuracy – ok,
Definition - how well the two words rhyme
Damaja’s interpretation – “seeming lazy is not good”

That’s my problem.

First, It’s really untrue and counter to everything we know about hip hop. The vast majority of our best songs from now back into the essence incorporate all sorts of “lazy rhymes”. (based on your previous definition of laziness)

Second, and more importantly, you’re either not thinking hard about it, or you trying to push your “lazy rhyming” agenda with in post that should be neutral. (dictionaries try to be neutral)

Given, judging rappers will always be subjective and relative, but even with that murky setting, we want a language/framework to discuss rap that tries to be less subjective rather than more subjective.

Why less subjective than more subjective?

If we can agree on language, we can talk. If we can’t agree on language, we can’t talk. The whole delivery/flow discussion or lack thereof comes down to an inability for everyone involved to discuss it, because we don’t even agree with what “flow” actually is.

Getting into it further, “seeming”, “lazy”, and “good” are the real operative words.
There is something to be said about the idea that people don’t like rhymes as simple as simon, but you notice that it’s not something people pay very close attention to, given what makes the top of the charts for both Billboard and the Critics. We’ll discuss the inherent nature of writing 16 bars that leads to simple/lazy rhymes, filler lines, and the war among content, flow, and direction. To preview it, it’s very difficult to write a hot 16, where every line is necessary to be in the rap to 1) have it make sense 2) have it rhyme.

The 2nd example of Damaja’s not so good/biased conclusions after his neutral definitions.

---> pacing. rapping ahead of the beat or behind it. what does that mean? the results are complex but the principle is simple - someone like Canibus tends to rhyme exactly on the beat, so his lines start exactly on the first beat of the bar each time and the rhythm fairly steady; Slim Shady era Eminem would start all his lines midway into the bar, creating a feeling of aloofness from the beat which he would then compensate for accelerating to catch back up or/then decelerating to do the same next line

This is slightly different than the last, but the following
“creating a feeling of aloofness from the beat which he would then compensate for accelerating to catch back up”

That’s the kind of crap I expect from people who’re in undergrad and trying to impress their creative writing prof that hip hop is worthy of academic study. (FYI, the academy is not hip hop worthy…but moving on). Or type of thing you say as a 5th year senior to a freshman chick you meet in the library. (she of course sees through it)

It goes without saying that I disagree with your conclusion that changes in ‘pacing’ create a feeling of aloofness.

More importantly, is that you’re positing that a certain technique is able to cause a feeling in the listener.

That idea, “if I the rapper do X, the listener will feel Y” is beyond problematic. That may be a common sort of analysis in poetry, but it has no place in rap music. Honestly I’m not sure how English/Literature/Poetry people can discuss anything substantively when they go back and forth with that kind squishy reasoning, but as a matter of policy, we shouldn’t be importing bankrupt concepts like that into rap analysis.

But going back to looking @ rap from a functional perspective, that would be an interesting discussion. It may go beyond the fruitless, Magic Words idea.
“If I say these magic words in my rap, people will like me/do what I say”


So let’s re-cap at this moment
- I like the idea
- But I don’t like your execution of the idea
o I don’t like your general non-contextual approach
 Your focus on the sound of rapping exclusively will ultimately undermine your analysis of the vast majority of rappers.
o I don’t like the importation of foreign/alien/hostile schools of thought in interpreting the divine art.
o With regard to the elements you lay out –
 WRT to the definitions, some could be added, others clarified, some subtracted, and all reorganized with a nod to the interplay
 I don’t agree with your conclusions,
 and I don’t agree with your move to make conclusions from your definitions.

Let me propose an alternate model.

“many people break down hiphop into 'beats and lyrics.' this is careless though, it should be 'beats and rapping'

right now i'm concerned with the SOUND of rapping, as opposed to what the actual message of the words is”

The idea that Hip Hop music is essentially about dope beats and phat rhymes is correct, but you’re correct it is sloppy.

We should just immediately jump from that sloppy definition to a focus on the sound of rapping.

In my view, there are 5 major forces on “the sound of rapping”
- the rapper
- the producer/the beat
- the media outlet/the dj
- the industry
- the audience

We will concern ourselves with the first 2, as the latter 3 can wait for another post for full explanation. (I really think the latter 3 are as important as the first 2, but call me an elitist, time and time again I see folks read stuff that presents a new idea but they just spout off some cliché they heard someone else say. But y’all know my frustration already, so I’ll stop the lamentation.) <- watch your boy use them 10 dollar words.

Let’s first describe what we mean by the sound of rapping.

In the midst of a rap track, the vocal element interacts with the music.

Interaction is the key, because as we will explore below, raps are meant to be set to a drum beat if not fully fleshed out beats. A lot of shining moments in rap history don’t translate well on paper. To quote the great Ike Moses, a lot of hip hop is “how you say it”, not what you say.

That interaction happens on several levels
- the voice as a melodic instrument
- the voice as a percussive instrument
o lyrical content is a constraint on the percussive essence of the rapping

When you hear a great track, it’s often that the beat and the rapping come together in a way that you find pleasurable, but hard to describe.

So that’s the base line.

And to do some more housekeeping, some other premises that guide what I will say next.

The continuum between talking and singing, where as you move from left to right, you’re increasing musicality. © Chuck D’s idea

Talk – giving a speech – orating/preaching - spoken word/slam poetry – rapping – singing – scatting.

How I think most people process hip hop music – this is their hierarchy
1) They listen to the beat first
a. the beat is what hooks them into listening to the rest of the song.
b. I’d say for the bulk of a rapper’s career (in terms of making money and gaining fame), his ability to pick a dope beat - one that the audience will like, is more important than his ability to write a hot 16.
2) the way a rapper swings through the beats
3) the chorus/rap-a-long ability
4) what the rapper is saying in terms of punch lines and repeatables/quotables
5) what the rapper is saying in a literal sense
6) what the rapper is saying in a broader context

I’m not going to argue these premises. They are all reasonable, and in order to understand the rest of my argument, you have to accept them.

Let’s start with the Rapper
- Voice – What does the person’s voice sound like? Nasal like Eminem? Deep like Tone Loc? Young like Chi Ali? High? Lisp?
o Change in voice
 Doing impressions – Big Daddy Kane
 Studio Magic – Nas and Scarlett, Biggie and Short, Del and Unicron
- Volume- whisper to a shout
o Studio magic
- Breath Control
o Punch in’s
o Long flows without a breath being taken - kane
- Speed – how fast are they rapping
o Directly tied to 1) what they are saying content wise, 2) what the beat is like
- Energy, Mood, Tone, Emotion
o Angry – young buck – yelling, voice cracks/distorts,
o Crying – Song Cry
o Smug – Jay Z
o Preaching
o Boasting
- Written interaction
o Rhyme pattern - multis
o Rhyme scheme – abab, aa,bb, aabcc,
o Exactness of the rhyme – A lot of things said on beat, don’t always rhyme.
- Accent
- On beat, between the beat,
- Melody
- Harmony – if with other rappers
- Poetical devices
o Impressions/Impersonations
o References
o Similies, metaphors
o Onomatopoeia
o Multi syllables


Re__mber,
k. orr