How to Rap 2: Advanced Flow and Delivery Techniques

274 Pages·2013·2.42 MB·English

by  Paul Edwards

music
How to Rap
Praise for :
“Filled with real tools and overflowing with inspiration. . . . A good read even for
nonartists interested in learning more about hip-hop creativity, personalities, and
history. . . . Highly recommended.”—LibRaRy JouRnaL
“The first comprehensive poetics of this new literary form. Clear, concise, and immensely
useful, How to Rap alternates a practical introduction to the subject with the comments
of leading rap artists. Combining literary criticism and street smarts, Paul Edwards has
made his bid to become the Aristotle of hip-hop poetics.”—Dana Gioia
“How to Rap is classic in an art that is just coming into a definition of itself.
Everyone who wants to go to the next level needs this book: it’s the inside and
outside of the trade.”—nikki Giovanni
“A fresh approach to hip-hop lyricism that’s remarkable for its depth. . . . Edwards offers
both an immensely practical introduction for would-be rappers, as well as the first
detailed poetics of ‘the pulse of the rhyme flow’ in hip-hop. This is a foundational text.”
—russell Potter, author of pyg anD
SpectacuLaR VeRnacuLaRS
“Hip-hop luminaries from Big Daddy Kane to B-Real share the tricks of their trade with
Edwards . . . and the flow diagram is clever enough to make any aspiring MC feel that
becoming the next Biggie or Ghostface is only a matter of practice.”
—saul austerlitz, author of Money foR notHing:
a HiStoRy of tHe MuSic Video
this sequel to How to Rap breaks Down anD examines
techniques that have not Previously been exPlaineD
—such as triplets, flams, lazy tails, and breaking rhyme patterns. Based on interviews
with hip-hop’s most innovative artists and groups, including Tech N9ne, Crooked I,
Pharcyde, Das EFX, Del the Funky Homosapien, and Big Daddy Kane, this book takes
you through the intricacies of rhythm, rhyme, and vocal delivery, delving into the art
form in unprecedented detail. It is a must-read for MCs looking to take their craft to
the next level, as well as anyone fascinated by rapping and its complexity.
Paul eDwarDs is a writer and a leading expert on hip-hop and rap music. He is the
author of How to Rap. Gift of Gab is a member of the group Blackalicious and is noted
as one of the most dexterous and versatile MCs of all time.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Edwards, Paul, 1982–
How to rap 2 : advanced flow and delivery techniques / Paul Edwards ; foreword
by Gift of Gab of Blackalicious.
pages ; cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-61374-401-7
1. Rap (Music)—Instruction and study. 2. Musical meter and rhythm. I. Title.
II. Title: How to rap two.
MT67.E382 2013
782.421649'143—dc23
2013015169
Cover design: Philip Pascuzzo
Cover photographs: iStockphoto
Interior design: Jonathan Hahn
Copyright © 2013 by Paul Edwards
Foreword copyright © 2013 by Tim Parker (Gift of Gab of Blackalicious)
All rights reserved
Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
814 North Franklin Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
ISBN: 978-1-61374-401-7
Printed in the United States of America
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Contents

Foreword by Gift of Gab of Blackalicious vii
Introduction ix
1 Advanced Rhythm Techniques 1
Vocal Percussion 3
Writing from the Rhythm 4
16ths 6
32nds 12
Triplets 16
Flams 28
One Syllable on Each Beat 32
Sliding Off the Beat (Lazy Tails) 33
Rolled Rs 37
Rests 38
Punctuating the Offbeat 46
Repeating Phrases with Different Rhythms 51
3/4 Time and Other Time Signatures 53
2 Advanced Vocal Techniques 55
Section A | Overall Voice Sound 58
Tone and Quality of Voice 58
Accents, Impressions, Characters 81
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Section B | Specific Techniques 95
Pitch Techniques 95
Stretching and Shortening Sounds 108
Stuttering and Repetition 115
Vibrato 122
Section C | Sounds Without Words 123
Scatting and Random Rhythmic Sounds 123
Vocal Sound Effects and Beatboxing 125
Grunts, Shouts, Laughs, and Other
Miscellaneous Sounds 130
Inhaling, Exhaling, and Out-of-Breath Techniques 134
Vocal Trademark Sound or Phrase 137
Section D | Melodic Deliveries 138
Mixing Singing and Rapping 138
Half-Sung Delivery Techniques 145
Section E | Character, Personality, and Emotions 150
Character and Personality 150
Having Fun with Vocals to Bring Out Your Personality 153
Emotions 154
3 Advanced Rhyme Techniques 159
Runs of Rhyme 160
Alternate Rhyme Scheme Patterns 166
Joining Rhyme Schemes Together 169
Popular Couplet Rhyme Placement Patterns 172
More Complex Extra Rhymes 178
Breaking Patterns 181
Three-Bar Loops 189
Poetry Terms Versus Rapping Terms:
A Note on Terminology 191
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4 Enunciation Rudiments 195
Basic Enunciaton Guidelines 196
Consonant Sounds 200
Consonant Combinations 205
Vowel Sounds 213
Vowel Combinations 216
Final Words 219
Interviewed Artists 223
Index 239
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Foreword
The first experience I had with rhyming was when this one cat
would always come down to the building I lived in back in those
days—he was older than all of us and he rhymed. He would go off
on one person every time he would come through. He would just
pick one victim and just start rhyming about them and destroy
them, every day. And one day, it was my turn.
He just started coming off the top, talking about my clothes
and talking about my hair and all kinds of stuff. After he did that,
I went home and wrote a rhyme to battle him. Me and my friend
used to ride our bikes to his house every day with papers in our
hands, the actual rhymes in our hands, at his front door, and just
battle him. So my first rhyme was in self-defense.
He kept killing us, kept killing us, kept killing us—but as I got
older and my skill developed, one day I got to a point where I
was better than he was. That was really kind of the point where
my confidence boosted, like, yeah, you know what, I can do this.
That’s how I started rhyming.
I think that hip-hop is going in different directions and I think
that some younger MCs have different reference points. A lot of
the MCs don’t know who the Cold Crush Brothers are, don’t know
who Grandmaster Flash is, some people don’t even know who
EPMD are, or who Kool G Rap is!
To be a better MC, you need to study people who came before
you, and study people that are great, and practice . . . practice. If
vii
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viii Foreword
you’re an MC, you gotta write, you gotta create, if you’re an artist
you have to create. Study people and work hard at it and find your
own style, find your own way of how you do it and keep going.
Look to build a body of work, don’t look for one hit, look at the
bigger picture, look at artists like 2Pac, artists like Miles Davis who
just have rows and stacks of records in stores. Look at your career
as a body of work, don’t look at it as, “I gotta make this hit, if I don’t
make it, that’s it for me, I gotta go do something else.”
It’s gotta be a lot more than the money—the people who do it
long term are the people who love it. If you’re looking at it from
a long-term perspective, whether you’re mainstream or under-
ground, then you have to love it, you have to love what you’re
doing.
Gift of Gab, blackalicious
Gift of Gab, of the group Blackalicious, is noted as one of the most
dexterous and versatile MCs of all time, using tongue-twisting and
varied flows to continually push the boundaries of the art form on
each new release, whether on his acclaimed solo records or his clas-
sic Blackalicious material. His mastery of flow and delivery put him
in an elite category of MCs who can shift effortlessly from one style
to another, tirelessly innovating and developing new styles for oth-
ers to follow.
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Introduction
I like listening to cats that have something to say, but if they’re not
saying it in a stylistic or rhythmic way, it’s boring and they’ll lose
my attention. If we’re talking about music, then style outweighs
[content], because music revolves around style and rhythm.
≤ Myka 9, Freestyle Fellowship ≥
Flow and delivery—these are two of the most important ele-
ments of MCing, and yet they often remain the least studied and
the least understood. Many people can discuss rap’s content and
understand the plot of a story or how clever a metaphor is, but few
people understand things such as triplets, flams, vibrato, staccato
delivery, and other percussive and vocal techniques that are used
in hip-hop music.
Although there is often a focus on content in hip-hop—analyz-
ing it, reviewing it, and criticizing it—for many listeners, fans, and
MCs, content is actually secondary to the flow and delivery, which
give MCing its immediate musical interest. The flow and delivery
are the first aspects of an MC that the listener hears on a song, and
they can make or break an MC.
Brother Ali
I think flow is more important than great lyricism. I think if
you had to have one and not the other, I would always go
with flow over lyricism. There are people whose lyricism
is great, but their flow makes it so I can’t listen to them.
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