FruitOfTheVale
Superstar
Y’all ever think that that shyt ruined your listening experience when it comes to rap music? Lol. Like a regular average fan, they hear/listen to bars and shyt totally different, some shyt they think is just super mind blowingly “lyrical” be some “ehh” ish to you. You’re listening for rhyme patterns and flow pockets and not-so-obvious wordplay and cadences and the words themselves that are being used, etc… the average fan don’t know or care about none of that,.
Of course this doesn’t apply to all writers and rappers, I’m talking to y’all who are on that rap rap shyt, you know exactly what I’m talking about, lol. I don’t rap but I used to and I’m still on this, so I know y’all that rap currently are too. I lowkey wish I could go back to before I learned about all that technical shyt just to see what my definition of “lyrical” was back then,
Short version for me is no, being able to write & rhyme in a technical type of way didn't ruin my listening experience. If anything, it made me listen more intently to artists who mastered shyt I wasn't good at.
Even when I was younger, I never felt no type of way about hearing "simple" lyrics if they fit the point & feel of the record. A lot of mobb music, g funk, etc. falls into that category for me.
1st and foremost if the artist makes you feel it, the lyrics are clearly working no matter how "basic" they are. I've been heavily inspired by some highly technical rappers and, when the music reflected a period when the culture was much more competitive, it produced a lot of the GOAT "technical display" type records where you really felt the energy that folks was actively tryna outwrite & outrap each other. While I miss that energy, I'd be lying if I said that most of my favorite Hip Hop records embodied that specific energy. Most of my favorite Hip Hop records got more introspective, self-reckoning type energy than they do one-upmanship. IMO the common thread the best lyricists in the genre share is the ability to make familiar themes, topics and etc. feel new and meaningful the way they spin it.
That being said, some themes and topics are so played out to the point that, even hearing a lyrically competent rapper do it, I still lose interest. That, or a lyrically competent rapper runs their own subject matter into the ground too many times to the point where I'm legit questioning why they're still rapping about it. Rappers like Black Thought, Common, etc. fall into that category for me. Personally, I would quit rapping altogether before I would retread some shyt I already expressed in a more meaningful way. Obviously there's a market for the retreads but that's probably the shyt I hate the most about rap and one of the reasons I loved that Kool Keith, Ghostface, DOOM, etc. never pandered to their fanbases and just did them.
