Flow: The Rhythmic Voice in Rap Music

290 Pages·2019·15.845 MB·English

by  Mitchell Ohriner

Flow
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OXFORD STUDIES IN MUSIC THEORY
Series Editor Steven Rings
Studies in Music with Text, David Lewin
Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music, Kofi Agawu
Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart: Chamber Music for Strings, 1787–1791,
Danuta Mirka
Songs in Motion: Rhythm and Meter in the German Lied, Yonatan Malin
A Geometry of Music: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common
Practice, Dmitri Tymoczko
In the Process of Becoming: Analytic and Philosophical Perspectives on Form in
Early Nineteenth-Century Music, Janet Schmalfeldt
Tonality and Transformation, Steven Rings
Audacious Euphony: Chromaticism and the Triad’s Second Nature, Richard Cohn
Mahler’s Symphonic Sonatas, Seth Monahan
Beating Time and Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era, Roger Mathew Grant
Pieces of Tradition: An Analysis of Contemporary Tonal Music, Daniel Harrison
Music at Hand: Instruments, Bodies, and Cognition, Jonathan De Souza
Foundations of Musical Grammar, Lawrence M. Zbikowski
Organized Time: Rhythm, Tonality, and Form, Jason Yust
Flow: The Rhythmic Voice in Rap Music, Mitchell Ohriner
Flow
The Rhythmic Voice in Rap Music
Mitchell Ohriner
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1
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CONTENTS
List of Examples vii
List of Tables xvii
List of Acronyms xix
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction xxiii
On Reproducible Research in the Humanities xxxiii
Conventions xxxvii
About the Companion Website xli
Part I Representing Flow
1. Flow in Rap Music: Sources of Confusion and a Strategy for Clarity 3
1.1 Defining the Scope of Flow 3
1.2 Sources of Confusion in Representing Flow 5
1.3 A Source of Clarity: Flipping the Flow 16
1.4 Representing Flow 28
2. A Corpus for Rap Music Analysis 31
2.1 Motivating the Need for a Corpus 31
2.2 Building a Corpus of Rap Verses 34
2.3 Representing Flow’s Primary Constituents 40
3. From Rhythm to Accent, from Sound to Rhyme 47
3.1 Representing Accent 47
3.2 Representing Rhyme 63
4. From Accent to Vocal Groove 71
4.1 Comparing the Demo and Released Versions of Eminem’s “Lose
Yourself” 71
4.2 Comparing Groove and Vocal Groove 75
4.3 Seven Vocal Groove Classes 83
4.4 A Fuzzy Model of Groovy Listening 94
4.5 Groove- Class Usage in Rap’s Flow 99
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5. Features of Flow in the Genre and the Artist 104
5.1 Stylistic Analysis: Global Features of Flow 104
5.2 Critical Analysis: Situating Black Thought of The Roots
within the Genre as a Whole 124
Part II Three Flows
6. Flow, Metric Complexity, and Text in Eminem 135
6.1 Vocal Groove: A Refresher 136
6.2 Groove and Metric Complexity in Eminem’s Flow 137
6.3 The Complexity– Competency Nexus in Selected Verses
and Tracks 141
6.4 The Complexities of Complexity 156
7. Flow, Groove, and Beat in Black Thought 160
7.1 Beat to Flow and Back Again 160
7.2 Flow– Beat Divergence 164
7.3 Flow– Beat Convergence on a Formal Process 167
7.4 Flow– Beat Convergence with a Temporal Difference 171
7.5 Cycles of Interaction 175
8. Flow and Free Rhythm in Talib Kweli 182
8.1 Does Talib Kweli Rhyme Off- Beat? 182
8.2 Visualizing and Measuring Flow– Beat Non- Alignment 184
8.3 Types of Non- Alignment 188
8.4 An Off- Beat Flow 200
8.5 Non- Alignment and Rupture 203
Appendix 1. Artists in the Genre- Wide Corpus 205
Appendix 2. Annotating Non- Quantized Flow 209
Glossary 211
Discography 217
Works Cited 229
Index 243
LIST OF EXAMPLES
Example A. The positions within the measure (indicated as “|”) and
within the beat (numbered from 1) under moduli 16, 4,
and 2. xxxviii
Example B. Salt ‘N’ Pepa, “Whatta Man” (1993, 0:36– 055). xxxix
Example C. Groove segmentation of “Go to Sleep” at two rates
of effort. xxxix
Example 1.1. Classified, “Still Got It” (2009, 0:40– 0:52). Boldfaced
numbers refer to metric positions (i.e., “sixteenth- notes”),
indexed from 0. Italicized numbers refer to measure num-
bers, indexed from 1. Circles represent syllables of rap
delivery in my own interpretive quantization. 7
Example 1.2. Ice- T, “I Ain’t New Ta This” (1993, 1:14– 1:20). 12
Example 1.3. “I Ain’t New Ta This,” recomposed to align copy and sloppy. 13
Example 1.4. Eminem, “Business” (2002, 0:42– 0:52). Shading of circles
indicates rhyme. 14
Example 1.5. OutKast featuring Jay- Z and Killer Mike, “Flip Flop Rock”
(2003, 1:42– 2:02). 17
Example 1.6. A$AP Rocky featuring ASAP Nast and Spaceghost Purrp,
“Purple Swag: Chapter 2” (2011, 0:54– 1:03). 18
Example 1.7. Eminem, “Take from Me” (2011, 2:03– 2:16). 18
Example 1.8. Lil’ Wayne featuring Nikki, “Weezy Baby” (2005, 0:37–0 :50). 19
Example 1.9. Twista, “Say What?” (1992, 1:16– 1:21). 20
Example 1.10. Fat Joe featuring The Game, “Breathe and Stop” (2006,
2:18– 2:30). 20
Example 1.11a. Flobots, “Airplane Mode” (2010, 3:14– 3:40). 21
Example 1.11b. Flobots, “Airplane Mode,” inter- rhyme intervals (IRIs). 22
Example 1.12a. T.I. featuring André 3000, “Sorry” (2012, 2:11– 2:26). 22
Example 1.12b. T.I., “Sorry,” inter- rhyme intervals (IRIs). 22
Example 1.13a. KRS- One, “Don’t Get So High” (2008, 1:05– 1:17). 23
Example 1.13b. KRS- One, “Don’t Get So High,” inter- rhyme intervals (IRIs). 23
Example 1.14. KRS- One, “Don’t Get So High,” recomposed to maintain a
consistent three- beat duration between rhymes. 24
Example 1.15. Krizz Kaliko featuring Tech N9ne, “Strange” (2012, 4:08–
4:31), mm. 9– 14. 25
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Example 1.16. Krizz Kaliko featuring Tech N9ne, “Strange,” mm. 9– 14,
re- quantized to unified C metric space (i.e., without
32
swing). 26
Example 1.17. Krizz Kaliko featuring Tech N9ne, “Strange,” mm. 9– 14,
with larger circles representing accented syllables. 27
Example 1.18. Krizz Kaliko featuring Tech N9ne, “Strange,” mm. 9– 14,
schematic outline of inter- accent intervals (IAIs). 27
Example 1.19. The derivation of flow from primary and derived
constituents. 29
Example 2.1. Six lists of “the best emcees” used in the construction of
the corpus. 38
Example 2.2. Histogram of chronological and geographical distribution
of the corpus sample (n = 225) and subsample (n = 75). 40
Example 2.3. Lil’ Wayne, “Weezy Baby” (2005, 0:37– 0:44), with repre-
sentation of syllable duration (below). 42
Example 2.4. Lil’ Wayne, “Weezy Baby,” beginning, wave form (top)
with four levels of annotations, marking (1) the onsets of
vowels, (2) the onsets of syllables implied by my quantiza-
tion, (3) the onsets of C positions implied by the boom-
16
bap, and (4) the onsets of the boom- bap (i.e., bass drum
and snare). 43
Example 2.5. Bubba Sparxxx, “Deliverance” (2003, 1:05– 1:15). 44
Example 2.6. The Roots featuring Erykah Badu, “You Got Me” (1999,
0:29– 0:39), emceed by Black Thought. 45
Example 3.1a. Jean Grae, “My Crew” (2003, 0:45– 0:50). 48
Example 3.1b. Logic, “Under Pressure” (2014, 0:36– 0:43). 48
Example 3.2. Transcriptions of m. 10 of Eminem’s second verse on Jay-
Z’s “Renegade”: (a) studio version at left (2001, 1:32– 1:36)
and (b) live performance at right (2010, 1:43– 1:47), in
conventional Western music notation. Notated pitches in-
dicate the closest equal- tempered pitch to the highest fre-
quency within a syllable. In syllables without note heads,
the accompanying parts obscure the pitch of the voice. 49
Example 3.3a. Distribution of event durations less than four beats in
Beethoven, Opus 18, no. 1 (n = 4,467). 50
Example 3.3b. Distribution of event durations less than four beats in the
genre- wide corpus (n = 13,973). 50
Example 3.4. The phonological hierarchy of the spoken sentence “The
music theory course was entertaining,” as spoken by the
author. Boldface indicates a primary accent beginning at
Level 3 (feet). Italics indicates a secondary accent begin-
ning at Level 4 (words). 52
Example 3.5. Distribution of primary accents, secondary accents, non-
accents, and monosyllabic words among the four metric
positions of the beat in the rap corpus. Syllables not on
List of Examples ix
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a sixteenth- note position (6.6 percent of the corpus) are
discarded. 53
Example 3.6. The Roots, “I Remember” (2011, 0:22– 0:34). Numbers
in circles indicate rhyme class; horizontal lines connect
syllables of a rhyme class. 54
Example 3.7. The Roots featuring Dice Raw, P.O.R.N., and Truck North,
“Walk Alone” (2010, 1:43– 1:58), verse 3, emceed by Black
Thought. 55
Example 3.8. The Roots featuring Dice Raw and Phonte, “Now or
Never” (2010, 1:14–1 :20), verse 1, emceed by Black
Thought. 56
Example 3.9a. Jean Grae, “My Crew” (2003, 0:45– 0:50), with accent dis-
covery algorithm applied. 58
Example 3.9b. Logic, “Under Pressure” (2014, 0:36– 0:43), with accent
discovery algorithm applied. 58
Example 3.10a. Logic, “Under Pressure,” pruned of adjacent syllables. 60
Example 3.10b. Logic, “Under Pressure,” without spans with no accents
(note new accent on position 13 of m. 5). 60
Example 3.11. Logic, “Under Pressure,” with manually corrected accents
indicated by triangles. 60
Example 3.12a. Esham, “Sunshine” (1993, 0:12– 0:19), with accent dis-
covery algorithm applied. 61
Example 3.12b. Esham, “Sunshine,” with manually corrected accents. 61
Example 3.13. Kurtis Blow, “Basketball” (1984, 0:20 – 0:39). Large dots in-
dicate syllables accented by both the algorithm described
here and Condit- Schultz (2016). “>” indicates further an-
notation of accent in Adams (2009). Triangles show the
author’s corrections to the algorithm. 62
Example 3.14a. The Roots featuring John Legend, “The Fire” (2010, 1:56–
2:01), emceed by Black Thought. 63
Example 3.14b. The Roots featuring Dice Raw, “Lighthouse” (2011, 2:20–
2:27), emceed by Black Thought. 63
Example 3.15a. The Treacherous Three, “Feel the Heartbeat” (1981, 0:34–
0:43). 69
Example 3.15b. Salt ‘N’ Pepa, “Whatta Man” (1993, 0:36– 055). 69
Example 4.1. (a) Eminem, “Lose Yourself” (2002, 0:54– 1:40), lyrics
of the first verse in released version. (b) Eminem, “Lose
Yourself” [demo] (2014, 0:21– 1:04), lyrics of the first
verse in the demo version. 72
Example 4.2. Eminem, “Lose Yourself” [demo] (2014, 0:21– 1:04).
Example 4.3. Eminem, “Lose Yourself,” first verse, demo version
(2014 [2002]). (a) Instances of accent on each position.
(b) Tabulation of instances of accent on each position.
Note that “0” accents occur in three positions, i.e., 3, 9,
and 13. 73