So we can end all the Biggie and Jay never used pen and paper talk :

[Braman]

Jay Z said himself in an interview, that he asked a rapper(we now know it to be Nas) to appear on "Can I live" and when the rapper refused he had to quickly write another verse(on paper) to the rest of the song. Now, ask yourself, why didn't he just write those 16 lines in his head like the rest of the album?

It is very much possible to memorize 4 bars here, 4 bars here, over and over. That's possible. I can do that. There is absolutely nobody writing full songs as ill as Jay Z and Biggie over the course of an hour or 2 and spitting full songs in 1 take. There is no way any of you believe this nonsense. I refuse to believe you are this gullible. Stevie Wonder also writes and reads in braille.

I’m so confused at your confusion. You act like we talking about a 2 minute mile or a 2 second 40. The question isn’t is it humanly possible (lol tf), bc even trash rappers can do to.

The question is can you do it with quality. And that comes down to skill, repetition, life experiences, themes. If you give a talented spitter, with that skill, a theme….it’s easier than you think. And then it’s much easier when you’re talking about real life situations. If I asked you to think up a song about the day you was shot, or the day your son was born, or tell ‘em about your childhood, etc, would it be hard? You’re just recalling and making 1 word at the end rhyme

Ie Jay’s verse on Regrets. If these are real events and people he’s talking about, it’s simple recall. Making the words rhyme is the easy part!

Or one that pops up on my head is the rocafella freestyles Beans and free back and forth. They been in those situations, it’s easy to come up with it on the fly. And making a song in your head is easier than that bc it’s not on the spot

 

[FunkDoc1112]

I’m so confused at your confusion. You act like we talking about a 2 minute mile or a 2 second 40. The question isn’t is it humanly possible (lol tf), bc even trash rappers can do to.

The question is can you do it with quality. And that comes down to skill, repetition, life experiences, themes. If you give a talented spitter, with that skill, a theme….it’s easier than you think. And then it’s much easier when you’re talking about real life situations. If I asked you to think up a song about the day you was shot, or the day your son was born, or tell ‘em about your childhood, etc, would it be hard? You’re just recalling and making 1 word at the end rhyme

Ie Jay’s verse on Regrets. If these are real events and people he’s talking about, it’s simple recall. Making the words rhyme is the easy part!

Or one that pops up on my head is the rocafella freestyles Beans and free back and forth. They been in those situations, it’s easy to come up with it on the fly. And making a song in your head is easier than that bc it’s not on the spot

Yup. At Legendary Cyphers I've seen nikkas do back and forth freestyles, playing off the other nikka's lines, on the spot off the top of the dome. When you have a lot of words and concepts kicking around in your head it becomes a game of practice and recall

 

[Rekkapryde]

CEASE SAID BIG WROTE SONGS
FOR LAD WHEN HE WAS
IN THE HOSPITAL SO I
NEVER TOOK IT TOO LITERAL



​

Nope impossible you lyin!!! He never wrote down shyt!!!!

 

[Jaguar93]

Bruhs believe anything

 

[KillKenny]

People have romanticized this shyt to ridiculous levels. Writing in your head is not as hard as people make it seem. Anyone can do it. Now will you rhyme as good as Jay or Big? Probably not because they became good for different reasons

People today have really bad memories because we've outsourced so much of our memorization abilities to technology. The first piece of technology to diminish our memory was books

Before books were invented and mass distributed we often had to memorize huge chunks of information. We still have this ability and the techniques are publicly available but our brains have atrophied regarding this skillset

I agree, when I was working in a 8 hours security shifts, I could easily "mental" write a full verse without picking up a pen, many times more than one verse.

 

[Tommy Gibbs]

Yup. At Legendary Cyphers I've seen nikkas do back and forth freestyles, playing off the other nikka's lines, on the spot off the top of the dome. When you have a lot of words and concepts kicking around in your head it becomes a game of practice and recall

yeah, but Jay Z can't freestyle. We saw that at the WKCR session with Big L. And if he could freestyle, he wouldn't have been using the same verse for years and years in freestyle sessions. I'm sure you know what verse I'm referring to.

 

[FunkDoc1112]

I agree, when I was working in a 8 hours security shifts, I could easily "mental" write a full verse without picking up a pen, many times more than one verse.

Yup, same shyt with me back when I was amanager at Domino's. I'd spend hour upon hours on my feet with no time to write shyt down and so memory became a necessity. That's when I would come up with entire bits in my head, hence where the story example came from. During times where there were no orders I would literally just stand and work out prose and dialogue and then keep it floating around so by the time I got home I'd get every detail right. I haven't been nearly as sharp since I stopped working that job tbh lmao

 

[FunkDoc1112]

yeah, but Jay Z can't freestyle. We saw that at the WKCR session with Big L. And if he could freestyle, he wouldn't have been using the same verse for years and years in freestyle sessions. I'm sure you know what verse I'm referring to.

Both of those verses were writtens, he simply fukked up one of his lines the second one. But that second verse was one he'd been doing for years up to that point, he even brought it up right beforehand....but even still, off the top freestyles and writing in your head are two different things...again, the writing in your head is simply just the same way we'd come up with a more focused concepts but without pen & paper. Jay actually writing the Can I Live verse may have been because he was short on time and found it more effcient to just sit down and physically write it

 

[O.Red]

Do you understand how intricate a song like 22 two's is to have been written in someone's head and completed in 1 take? Jay Z is not a good off the top of the head freestyler. We know this due to his radio session with Big L(who wasn't freestyling either) in which he ran out of rhymes and tried to go off of the head. For someone who have claimed to write his entire career in his head on the spot and can't freestyle makes no sense. Think about this, Jay Z dropped out of high school and so did biggie. They couldn't do the basic curriculum at a public high school, but are memorizing 48 lines in their head over the course of an hour or 2. Did it ever occur to you that someone with that kind of ability would be a goddamn genius and test out of high school with their diploma by the age of 14 or 15?

You might've actually picked the worst example from Reasonable Doubt 22 Two's is not really that complex. It's clever, but not that intricate. It's fly street corner talk. That's why the song has a crowd setting

A more relevant example would be Bring It On, which might be the most technical Jay verse on the entire album. Even then my points still stand

You really want this to be an impossible feat, despite multiple examples in this thread illustrating the accessible abilities of human memory. Have you even tried writing a verse in your head? Have you tried learning any memory techniques? Or are you just dedicated to being right

Dropping out of high school is not an automatic indicator of intelligence. Some of the most successful people I know dropped out of high school. There are people that drop out of school because they know exactly what they want to do and are ready to get started

Also it's a mistake to conflate brain writing with freestyling. Both utilize two completely different parts of the brain. There are studies on this

Slaves couldn't read or write and created entire songs with hidden meanings based on geography with no maps. But Jay can't create verses in his head?

The human brain is greater than you can imagine. This is not some genius ability, anyone can be taught to do it. We didn't always have pen and paper

 

[O.Red]

This is a great book on the topic of memory by the way. A journalist entered the world of competitive memorization

 

[Tommy Gibbs]

You might've actually picked the worst example from Reasonable Doubt 22 Two's is not really that complex. It's clever, but not that intricate. It's fly street corner talk. That's why the song has a crowd setting

A more relevant example would be Bring It On, which might be the most technical Jay verse on the entire album. Even then my points still stand

You really want this to be an impossible feat, despite multiple examples in this thread illustrating the accessible abilities of human memory. Have you even tried writing a verse in your head? Have you tried learning any memory techniques? Or are you just dedicated to being right

Dropping out of high school is not an automatic indicator of intelligence. Some of the most successful people I know dropped out of high school. There are people that drop out of school because they know exactly what they want to do and are ready to get started

Also it's a mistake to conflate brain writing with freestyling. Both utilize two completely different parts of the brain. There are studies on this

Slaves couldn't read or write and created entire songs with hidden meanings based on geography with no maps. But Jay can't create verses in his head?

The human brain is greater than you can imagine. This is not some genius ability, anyone can be taught to do it. We didn't always have pen and paper

it is very possible to write a song in your head. Write 4 bars here, 4 there, etc. What Jay said he was doing back in the day seems reasonable on the block. But deep down, do you really believe someone is crafting a full song in their head in an hour or 2, and spitting it in one take with no mistakes? I'm 100% possible everyone here if given the time can write a song in their head through repetition, but not creating 48 bars from scratch in 2 hours and spitting it in one take. You've got to find another fool to believe that bullshyt.

 

[Tommy Gibbs]

Both of those verses were writtens, he simply fukked up one of his lines the second one. But that second verse was one he'd been doing for years up to that point, he even brought it up right beforehand....but even still, off the top freestyles and writing in your head are two different things...again, the writing in your head is simply just the same way we'd come up with a more focused concepts but without pen & paper. Jay actually writing the Can I Live verse may have been because he was short on time and found it more effcient to just sit down and physically write it

Once again, I'm trying to use the common sense thing here . If he's writing entire songs in an hour plus, how long could it possibly take him to write one verse in his head? And not that it matters too much for this particular conversation, but Can't knock the Hustle was the last song recorded for RD. And the entire album as recorded in D&D.

 

[Cladyclad]

Once again, I'm trying to use the common sense thing here . If he's writing entire songs in an hour plus, how long could it possibly take him to write one verse in his head? And not that it matters too much for this particular conversation, but Can't knock the Hustle was the last song recorded for RD. And the entire album as recorded in D&D.

Jay got you thinking he a wizard lol

Ok say you find out 1000% its true

Do it changes how you view him?

 

[O.Red]

it is very possible to write a song in your head. Write 4 bars here, 4 there, etc. What Jay said he was doing back in the day seems reasonable on the block. But deep down, do you really believe someone is crafting a full song in their head in an hour or 2, and spitting it in one take with no mistakes? I'm 100% possible everyone here if given the time can write a song in their head through repetition, but not creating 48 bars from scratch in 2 hours and spitting it in one take. You've got to find another fool to believe that bullshyt.

You're overcomplicating all of this that's part of the problem

Jay is like any other rapper that cares about and enjoys his craft. I think someone like him has rhymes and concepts going through his head all day. And because of him practicing the techniques for years and years, he has a sturdier file cabinet than most people.

What rapper creates every single thing from scratch on the spot? It's more like a nikka lives, has ideas, writes, and revisits. Jay is like any rapper with a notebook, the notebook is just in his head

So when Jay says he did The Blueprint in a weekend that doesn't mean he sat there and made up verses from scratch in the weekend, it means he's been living and playing with ideas and now he has to get the shyt off his chest. So Jay hears a few beats, goes through his mental file cabinet, "Oh I got something for this one" and a theme comes together. It's no different than any other album ever made

So it's both. There are times when he recalls bars/verses from his file cabinet, and there are times when he hears something and "writes" on the spot

I ask if you've ever tried any of this or memory techniques yourself because I have, and when you do it enough you'll be surprised at how much shyt sticks after enough practice. There have been times where I had to make myself stop remembering so much

When I taught myself Spanish I was using mnemonics to learn 30 new words a day, and the words stuck

When you look at an operating system like Windows understand that it's based on the human brain

 

[Cladyclad]

For instance he wrote PSA while doing a press junket. He would write bars in his head. Take a break from press. Drop those bars. Continue the junket. Write more in his head. Leave junket again. Lay down more bars.