“Lyrically, I’m supposed to represent”- Notorious B.I.G.
“I’d walk on water, spit fire and shit Haagen Dazs/ Idolize no man like Conan, and stand beside the gods”- Big Punisher
“If I ruled the world and everything in it/ Sky’s the limit…”- Nas
“Parting your soup is not a miracle, Bruce” – God, Bruce Almighty
“Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”- Bruce Lee
The question every purist, backpacker, 90’s kid, and old head has been asking since about 2005 (some earlier) is “Why do rappers suck now?” The answer is fairly simple to me but explaining it is the premise of this post. Rap as it stands now has no objective standard. One person says “that’s hot” someone else says “that’s wack.” All the “that’s hot” people say that the “that sucks” people are “haters. ” The “that sucks” crowd say that the “that’s hot” people are idiots who have no idea what good rap should sound like. This argument continues ad infinitum and goes nowhere. Because what we like is subjective. So maybe if we want this argument to actually progress somewhat, and for us “true schoolers” to be understood, then what we need to ask ourselves (and the new dudes who love the progressively simplistic rap that has taken over) is one question: Why do we Like this and Not that?
It’s a real question, not at all rhetorical. It deserves consideration on every level. I can answer this anytime I’m asked. Very few others I know can say the same without thinking pretty hard and giving a barely articulate response. The difference between us comes down to one thing, a standard. I have a concrete one, whereas most fans have one that is quite ephemeral, and in most cases undefinable. It’s probably exactly like a judge once described obscenity; “I know it when I see it.” Well, I decided to organize my thoughts on the concept and came to a distinctly different conclusion. Let me ask a quick question before we begin. What is the difference between a competition and a sport? To most people they are synonymous. Whatever differences they have come down to semantics. I decided to categorize them separately based on one thing that will be obvious when I mention it. A sport is objective and a competition is subjective. For instance, football is a sport. The team that gets the most points through field goals and/or touchdowns wins. Cheerleading, strenuous as an activity as it may be, is a competition. Judges decide which team had the best routine and performance, then award them the victory. Those are extremely separate ways of winning, or being the best. There is no judging in basketball. If you get dunked on no one can decide that you didn’t get dunked on. It happened and that’s all there is to it. If you get knocked out in a boxing match, the judges can’t decide that you kept going and won the fight based on how much more they like you. You got left kissing canvas, therefore you lost. Hockey, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, billiards all have to be won objectively. No one decides the winner, you have to do better than your opponent. No one can like you into winning. Gymnastics, diving, skiing, snowboarding and figure skating are subjectively won. Judges can decide that this gymnast, or that figure skater is not as good as this or that other one that they chose. No matter how qualified they are, you can never truly know what process is affecting the judges’ criteria which brings them to their conclusion and the match to it’s outcome. Rap is a competition right now, but what would it be like if it was a sport? What would it take to make it a sport? Would the state of Hip Hop be better off if it was? My answer is an unequivocal yes.
You see, I like it when I can tell there has been a certain amount of time, effort, energy and ingenuity put into constructing a rhyme. It makes me feel like it’s worth my time to listen to, the money I spent on it and my investment in the artist’s talent. It becomes part of my connection to them. I employ the aforementioned standard whenever I write rhymes and therefore can hold it up to any rapper’s music and see if it cuts the mustard. Once upon a time many did. Now that many has been whittled down to few and far between. So what is this standard? And just as importantly would it aid your quest to avoid wack rap music? Would it help you win an argument with some ridiculous fan of [Insert Shitty Rapper Here]? Will it help you win a battle with some subpar Trap Rap Sucka? Why don’t I lay it out for you and you can tell me.
The Standard is twofold; A scale to measure four elements of a given MC’s material and a fifth element evaluated by a question to ask of the MC’s approach as a whole. The scale measures the following four elements; Content, Delivery, Rhyme Scheme and Vocabulary. The scale isn’t numeric or graded (unless you want it to be.) Merely a general sense of what a rapper is capable of talking about and with what level of skill. The bottom I have given to this scale (or least amount of skill) is subjective in the sense that when I use it, I use it by comparing what I was capable of by a certain age or point in time after starting. Not everyone progresses as fast as I did and some progress faster. What you choose to be impressed by is still up to you but this kind of thing helps provide a baseline. I think it’ll be easy to follow along. Now before I go any further I once heard it argued that rap can be boiled down to two principles, “what you say and how you say it.” There’s some truth to that but it’s overly simplistic. But the following four elements can’t really be broken down any further because every single rap verse contains them; Content, (what you say) Delivery (how you say it) Rhyme Scheme (how many syllables you rhymed) and Vocabulary (what words you used to express the idea.)
Content: Put simply, what is this guy talking about? 99% of rap that makes it to the radio and the majority of underground songs will fold comfortably over into five subjects. Adversity (Life Hardships), Drugs, Money, Sex and Street Violence. There’s nothing specifically wrong with this but the ability to jump outside this circular subject matter speaks volumes about one’s creativity right off the bat. Now I can name some MC’s who are widely considered all time greats who NEVER stray outside these subjects. 2Pac, Biggie, Jay-Z, Big L, The LOX, Mobb Deep, Ice Cube, Scarface, Snoop Dogg, Lil’ Kim, and Lil Wayne to name a few. That should tell you that A) No one has a monopoly on any of these subjects B) There is no shortage of material to be found in them and C) If you choose to limit your career by talking only about “these streets” or “real shit” or “only the things you’ve lived” you’ll be in pretty good company. But notice I said “limit.” The list of MC’s who can jump outside of this box whenever they want to is pretty long and illustrious as well, e.g. KRS-ONE, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, Hopsin, Mos Def, Lupe Fiasco, Talib Kweli, Black Thought, Rakim, Redman, Pharoahe Monch and of course, Eminem, just to name a few. So the choice is yours there. No one is telling you what you can or can’t write but using your imagination certainly takes more skill. How could it not? On the one hand all you have to do is remember something (because it already happened) and on the other you have to use your brain to make something up from scratch. I think we can agree that THE VERY BEST MC’S ought to be able to do both.
Delivery: There are many approaches to this one. First off I think we can all agree that keeping time (being on beat) is a prerequisite and anyone who can’t is not as skilled as someone who can. Arguing the opposite is like arguing that someone who can’t dribble deserves to be in the NBA. (Sorry for all you E40 fans.) Emphasis is a big factor, meant to get the listener to focus on a specific set of words. This can be achieved many ways through production, like beat drops and voice dubbing but many rappers will just use ad libs and/or yell. None of these is wrong, it just depends on what works for the song. The hardest way to achieve emphasis is to emote. To tap into one’s emotions while speaking on the mic and convey them through the use of voice alone is a spectacular feat. I could easily argue that this ability alone is what gave 2Pac his massive following and lasting legacy. It’s similar if not identical, to a form of method acting (which would explain why 2Pac was able to capture it so well. He went to a performing arts school.) At any rate, we can all agree that emoting takes more skill than using a flat monotone delivery, yes? While some people prize speed in this area (Bone Thugs & Harmony, Tech N9ne, Twista), it’s rather a niche thing as evidenced by the waning market for MC’s who use this double time “chopper”style by itself as opposed to alternating. If you have it to flaunt by all means do so, but many people try unsuccessfully and end up not understood by their listener(s) which is rather purpose defeating. To be honest this doesn’t strike me as a skill one could learn as much as an ability one has (or does not) so I don’t use someone’s ability to do this as a measure of whether they are “better” than another rapper. There’s no limit to what one could talk about, but there is a limit on how fast one can say it and there most definitely is a limit on how fast one can speak and still be understood. What one can learn is a more objective measure than what one just is. You are a fast rapper, but did you learn to be a good rapper? You could rap faster than anyone on Earth and be the least lyrical person to ever put pen to paper. One you can control, the other not so much. Kobe is an inch taller than Jordan but it doesn’t make him a better player. Stats don’t lie.
Rhyme Scheme: How many syllables can you rhyme? Let’s be honest, any given first grader can rhyme “cat” and “hat” or be lazy and use assonance to rhyme “block” and “hot.” If we’re really going by industry standards then we can say “Illmatic” set the new standard to at least three per bar. It’s not always necessary of course, but the ability to do so should be evident in a rapper’s chosen word usage. Not everyone can be Big Punisher or Kool G. Rap, but a modicum of ability should be exhibited here. Is it really that hard to rhyme “basically” with “tastefully,” “racially,” or “graciously?” A little goes a long way. Remember if it’s harder to do, then it shows more skill.
Vocabulary: What kind of language are you using to tell your stories and battle your opponents? This is where rhyme scheme displays a sort of intersectionality because the more words you know, the more you can rhyme. And the more precise your language, the stronger the mental image will be in the mind of your audience. Did you say “very sad” when you could have said “morose” or “despairing?” Did you say “pretty as hell” when you could have said “visually captivating?” You could adhere to your listener’s limits or you could challenge them. The choice is yours but I think once again we can agree, it takes more skill to raise the lowest common denominator than to simply appeal to it. If you feel like you’re not as strong as you could be in this area, just get a thesaurus, dude. It’ll be your new best friend.
So those are the four elements and I think we can already see how using them to judge any given rapper’s material can show you how strongly they exhibit their talents and/or how consistently they’ve worked toward bettering their craft. So let’s move on to the fifth element. IMAGINATION which can be evaluated objectively with the following question: If anything you talked about doing in a rhyme became something you could do in real life, then what would you be able to do?
This is a question I used to use whenever I wrote battle raps back in the day. Now if we circle back to content and put the list of rappers in The Circle against the list of those named who fell outside of it, is it any wonder who will win? In the world of rhyme imagination becomes POWER. The power to do whatever you can think of. This is why it speaks volumes about one’s lyrical ability and creativity. The microphone is the Green Lantern’s ring and rappers are using it to make guns, cars, necklaces, jars of weed, bottle service girls and stacks of cash. That’s it. It’s like watching Jim Carrey part his soup in Bruce Almighty, a mildly entertaining display of completely wasted potential. But imagine if this standard is what every rapper was judged by when battling. Weaving punchlines together with syllables like Fabolous or Cassidy is still a task that requires some skill with wordplay. But the right amount of imagination still crushes it. Could any rapper spitting gun bars handle Eminem when he shoots them with his “shoulder missiles?” or Canibus with “state of the art lyrical lasers that’s razor sharp?” Could any rapper talking about how iced up they are handle Redman “punching a hole in the Earth to escape through?” You could apply this question to all the regular rap tropes and still see improvement. Who gets icier? Who gets flyer? Who gets richer? Who gets sexier? Once the standard is in place the answers are obvious. What we just did when it’s all said and done, is find a rapper’s STYLE. If you alter any of these elements, a rapper’s style switches up. Most often you’ll see this done with delivery (Notorious B.I.G. on “Notorious Thugs” or Busta Rhymes on “Break Ya Neck”) but really any of these would count if you think about it. Andre 3000 suddenly coming with serious battle bars would be switching his style up. Rick Ross making songs that tackle income inequality and the school-to-prison pipeline would be switching his style up. Beanie Sigel using college level chemistry in his metaphors would be switching his style up. Bow Wow using seven and eight syllable rhyme schemes would be switching his style up. Once a certain type of style has been established a rapper can’t go outside of it or their fanbase will be alienated. This counts even if what they do is largely an improvement. Imagine Master P dropping a new song where his content and rhyme schemes sounded like Canibus In His Prime. No one who likes his music would take that seriously because it’s so inconsistent with his character. But if you heard a new Master P song that sounded like Jay Z circa Hard Knock LIfe, you’d probably just be saying to yourself “Oh ,P got his weight up!”
There’s an old saying that Bruce Lee once lived by that epitomized the philosophy of the Martial Art he invented, Jeet Kune Do; “Having no way as way, and no limitation as limitation.” Without being limited to Karate, Kung Fu, Tae Kwon Do, Muay Thai, Capoeira, Wing Chun, Wushu, Boxing or any number of other Martial Arts, yet incorporating from anything he came across that was useful and best served his purpose, Lee was able to establish a technique that was devastating, unpredictable and used properly, unconquerable. Applied to rap this could mean simply, “the ability to rap with any style.” Imagine being able to rap about any subject, with any delivery you see fit, with as many syllables and as much vocabulary as the song will allow. How many MC’s can you think of that actually fit this description? There are a very talented few who actually could switch their style up into literally anything and have it be accepted by their fanbase. Nas isn’t even one of them at this point. He probably would be if he made a song like “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” on every album but he strayed pretty far from that kind of material early on.
Apply the principles and see who is actually better. Does this rapper use the same four subjects as everyone else or is he outside the circle? Who is doing more as far as delivery is concerned? Simple rhyme scheme, or complex pattern? Elementary word usage or something a bit more challenging? Same old real shit, or exercises in imagination? Who has the stronger style? Who is doing more than their opponent? After that breakdown you’ll see a lot of fans holding onto favorites with wishful thinking because they don’t actually pass the tests. Most will throw out their own set of highly subjective criteria that doesn’t really count for much if you’re trying to establish who is better or who has more skill.
There are still a few elements I haven’t named yet that many people, purists and dilettantes alike, will argue can trump the standard I have set. That is their right but I will discuss those elements (and why I don’t think they should be included) in the next chapter., For now marinate on what we just explored and see if this answers your questions, and ask yourself this…do you think this would help rappers get better? Could we be on to something here? Why or why not?
Actualogy 