vox4: Rapping, deconstructed - The best rhymers of all time

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A few weeks ago, I interviewed one of my favorite rappers, Open Mike Eagle. And immediately

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we started geeking out over the masked emcee, MF Doom.

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His flow I have to be careful with his flow because his flow lives in my mind and in my

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heart. I can almost get into his mind on how he writes. You know?

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This is what MF Doom sounds like. Just listen.

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He’ll have entire bars that rhyme. Like the entire set up bar rhymes with every syllable

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in the punchline bar. It’s incredible.

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It made me wonder:

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What can I learn from rappers simply by looking at how they rhyme with the beat?

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I try to start off with 16 dots on the paper.

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That’s Rakim. He’s widely regarded as one of the most influential MCs of all time.

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If 4 bars was this long. I see like a graph between them four bars. I could place so many

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words and so many syllables. I could take it to the point where there were no other

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words you could put in those 4 bars.

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So, before we get into rhymes we need to know what beats and bars are.

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Martin: I always try to find the beat of the music first.

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That’s Martin Connor. He’s analyzed the most rhythmically dense rap songs down to

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the last syllable. And he writes about it.

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Martin: A bar is a grouping together of 4 beats.

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Before guys like Rakim came along, rhymes in rap songs were pretty basic.

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Take one of the first commercially successful rap songs from 1980, “The Breaks” by Kurtis Blow

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This simple AA BB rhyming pattern with no word play or puns is pretty predictable, lyrically and musically

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But, fast forward to 1986 and you’ve got songs like “Eric B. Is President” from

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Eric B. & Rakim.

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Compare this to “The Breaks” and it’s clear the frequency of rhymes is greater.

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But not only are you seeing more rhymes you’re also starting to see different kinds of rhymes.

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“Indeed” and “Proceed” are internal rhymes because they happen inside the sentence.

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“Man made a mix” and “band-aid to fix” are multisyllable rhymes

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The other thing Rakim does later in the verse is cross the bar line and he does it in a

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tremendously clever way.

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Crossing the bar line happens when a sentence like “The rhyme can’t be kept inside”

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doesn’t end when the bar ends.

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If you listen closely you’ll hear that the second syllable of inSIDE

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Lands on the first beat of the next bar.

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Rakim even references this in the lyric. And it’s pretty clever.

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Now, fast forward 11 years and Notorious B.I.G's “Hypnotize" cleverly used Rakim’s techniques

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to make one of the smoothest rap songs ever.

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Martin: What I like most about this is that it’s not predictable and it’s always changing.

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So sometimes Notorious B.I.G.s sentences are long. Sometimes they’re short.

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Like the moment in this verse here:

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He’s also completely comfortable delivering a sentence across the barline.

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But, what makes this song stand out the most to me is that before one rhyme scheme ends, another

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one begins.

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Like this moment in verse 2.

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The first group of rhymes is the “oo” rhymes and it links the first and second sentence

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which then begins the “ih” and so on.

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It’s a huge reason Biggie sounds so smooth here.

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Now, as much as Biggie daisy chained an entire song together with rhymes, he was, for the

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most part using single syllable and single word rhymes.

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And this is where artists like Mos Def push things even further.

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His verse on “Re:Definition” from 2002 hits nearly every note within the bar with

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4 syllable rhymes.

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And he does it across a whopping 14 bars.

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In Re:Definition, Mos Def is very clearly rhyming each word with the beat.

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This is where Andre 3000 shakes things up with his verse in Aquemini. Focus on the beat first.

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Now listen to each syllable, with the beat in mind.

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Most rappers would have dollars, parlors, and bottles all rhyme similarly on the beat.

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But Andre is accenting each rhyme within different places relative to the beat and bar.

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People say that the word orange doesn't rhyme with anything. And that kinda pisses me off because I can

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think of a lot of things that rhyme with orange...

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In fact, Eminem, does this exact thing on his 2002 song “Business”

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Eminem doesn’t just pack in tremendously dense multi syllable rhymes, he also tells

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incredibly vivid stories.

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And for a lot of people that wins in a battle.

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This is where “Lose Yourself” comes in. It was the first rap song to win an Academy

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Award.

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Whew the Oscar goes to Eminem, for Lose Yourself from 8 Mile.

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Martin: I’ll see the line and I’ll separate it all into not just words or sentences,

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but into their syllables.

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When you group all of these rhymes together, this incredibly complex rhyme scheme emerges.

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It’s unpredictable, it’s complex rhythmically and lyrically but -

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It’s not just that you’re rhyming, It’s that while you’re rhyming you’re

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still telling a good story. And "Lose Yourself" is like that.

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Today, rappers like Kendrick Lamar are carrying on the tradition of artists that are able to use the musicality of rhymes

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to create really memorable songs.

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Let’s look at Kendrick Lamar’s “Rigamortus”

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The first thing you’ll notice is that Kendrick has created a very clear motive with his rhymes.

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What’s a motive? It’s a short musical idea. A musical fragment or succession of

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notes that has some special importance in a composition.

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Here’s probably the most recognizable motive in the history of music.

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That “du du du dummmmm” is carried out through the entire piece. It’s 3 quick notes

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followed by a long note.

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The musical motive in “Rigamortus” is two short notes followed by a long note,

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stringing the entire song together.

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When Kendrick goes into 4th gear he keeps the motive going. And the motive keeps him in check.

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As much as Biggie’s “Hypnotize” sounds completely different from “Rigamortus”

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there are a lot of musical similarities.

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Remember how Biggie daisy chained rhymes? Kendrick does that too here. In “Hypnotize”

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Biggie also creates a motive with the sequence of rhymes here:

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Now, let’s get back to MF Doom. Two years after “Lose Yourself” won an Academy Award,

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MF Doom released 3 full albums including

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Madvillainy - which is widely considered one of the best underground hip hop records period.

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Mos Def can’t even contain his excitement talking about Doom.

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For the most part, MF Doom rhymes on the beat but he uses multi syllable rhyming phrases

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up with wazoo often rhyming entire lines together.

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This is called a holorime.

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Mike: He’ll do setup punchline. Like his following bar will be referencing the punchline

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but not in a way that he’ll be setting up a another one, he just starts to go in another

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direction, but just acknowledges where the last bar was.

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This is what Mike is talking about.

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MF Doom understands the power of rhyme and the beat and completely manipulates it in

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a humorous way.

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As Pitchfork points out “the rhyme's pattern and rap's topical stereotype demands the word

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"bitches," yet Doom hilariously says "booze" and uses that rhyme to connect the next sentence.

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Where artists like Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, and Andre 3000 are telling very vivid stories

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with their rhymes, MF Doom is using his dense rhymes like a villain would use his superpower.

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Before you know it you’re being hit with a killer punchline, double entendres, and clever wordplay.

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Martin: I love rappers with that syncopated uneven phrasing where the sentences don't line up with the bars

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because, like you said, you can't predict what's going to happen.

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The point of appreciating it is to see what the very most clever human beings are capable of doing

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that you didn't think possible.