timline on how rap evolved over the years in terms of rhyming article.

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The Evolution of Rhyming in Hip-Hop


Creative Context and Run- DMC

From 1983-1985 song concepts were expanding. Songs like “Haunted House of Rock” by Whodini created a first person story in which the emcee encounters imaginary ghoulish creatures, while “Radio” by LL Cool J personified his boom box as his friend. While the creativity was expanding the rhyme schemes and flow were still formulating and had yet to have that breakthrough emcee who changed rhyme patterns completely. With the classic 1986 album Raising Hell, Run DMC took rap music to its rhyming pinnacle, up until that point. With the single “Walk this Way” which featured legendary rock group Aerosmith, helped Run DMC and hip-hop’s audience suddenly spread to broader races and cultures. The production is well noted, “Sonically there was more going on with this record than any previous rap record- more hooks, more drum loops (Woodstra, Bush, Erlewine, pp. 77).” What is not documented as thoroughly is the internal rhyme schemes which they used so often on Raising Hell.

“Heard in the heavens are the sounds supreme/so clear to the ear it is sometimes seen/so loud to the cloud it is sounds like lightening/so proud to the crowd it is somewhat frightening”

While internal rhymes had been done before, never had it been done so consistently and over a whole album. Two forms of internal rhymes are delivered here, first the ABBA sequence where supreme and seen sandwich (A) clear and (B) ear. In the next line, Run DMC accentuates the internal rhyming point with the AAB rhyme scheme in two consecutive lines.

Loud (A) Cloud (A) Lightening (B) Proud (A) Crowd (A) and Frightening (B).
 
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No More Simple Rap” & Rakim

At the end of 1986 the majority of emcees were still crafting lyrics considered simplistic by today’s standards. Albums released in 1987 included Yo! Bumrush the Show by Public Enemy, Move Something by the Two Live Crew, Rhyme Pays by Ice-T and Criminal Minded by Boogie Down Productions. All of these albums have a place in hip-hop history but none are considered the ground breaking, game changing, and even life altering (for other emcees) classic that Eric B. & Rakim’s Paid in Full became. Eric B. was the DJ and the emcee was Rakim. Rakim not only raised the bar for lyricists, he actually took rhyming to a level that was so high that it would take years for other lyricists to even get close. Paid in Full showcased Rakim’s multi-syllabic lyrical delivery which would be later adapted by numerous rappers —introducing the idea of a rapid, continuous, free-rhythmic flow, based around deeply woven rhyme structures (incorporating internal rhymes and sophisticated metaphors). Before Rakim, rhymes were used at the end of a sentence to punctuate the point. Respected emcee Planet Asia states that, “When you are talking about Rakim you are talking about the next level, the shift…like BAM, no more simple rap (Edwards, pp. 97).” Here is Rakim from his “Paid in Full” in 1987;

“I learned to earn cuz I’m righteous

I feel great maybe I might just

Search for a nine to five,

If I strive maybe I’ll stay alive

So I walk up the street, whistling this

feeling out of place cuz man do I miss

a pen and a paper, a stereo, a tape of

me and Eric B and a nice big plate of

fish, which is my favorite dish

but without the money, it‟s still a wish…”

In the first line Rakim uses and internal scheme of AAB, with “learn” and “earn” as the (A) rhyme and “righteous” as the (B) rhyme. While the AAB had been done before, it was how he rhymed “righteous” and “might just” which cemented compound rhymes as the way of the future for rap lyrics. “A compound rhyme is created when the rhyme is more than one syllable long (Edwards, pp. 87)”. In the noted verse Rakim uses the perfect compound rhyme of “righteous” and “might just”. This was a first at the time because he was taking one word and perfectly rhyming it with two words. As if that was not enough, by ending the sentence with “might just”, the listener was left hanging, wonder what “might just” Rakim do? By putting together all of these original pieces Rakim left an unparallel mark which still has emcees like the legend Masta Ace talking about him, “Everyone’s mind was blown because nobody had ever put three words that rhyme together in a sentence and that just opened up so many doors (Edwards, pp. 98).” In the same verse Rakim duplicates his brilliance by again using the inter-sentence compound rhyme moments later.

Feeling out of place cuz man do I miss/a pen and a paper, a stereo, a tape of/me and Eric B and a nice big plate of/ fish, which is my favorite dish…

As seen in the above quote, many of the lines lead into the next,. “Man do I miss…” has got the listener hanging, wondering what Rakim misses. He then creates assonance (vowel sound rhyme) with “paper” and “tape of” and then with “a nice big plate of…” which again has the listener wondering what exactly is on that nice big plate. When one puts the compound rhymes, the assonance rhymes, the inter-sentence rhymes and multi-syllabic rhymes with his perfect timing and delivery, it is no wonder that Rakim was crowned by The Source magazine as the #1 Hip-Hop Lyricist of all-time (2012). Masta Ace sums up Rakim’s influence, “Up until Rakim, everybody who you heard, the last word in the sentence was the rhyming word, the connection word. Then Rakim showed us that you could put rhymes within a rhyme, so you could put more than one word in a line that rhymed together, so it didn’t just have to be the last word (Edwards, pp. 105).”
 
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Rhyme Expansion & Big Daddy Kane

1988 also proved to be a monumental year for rap and is considered by many to be the start of the “Golden Age” of hip-hop (some claim 1987) which spanned until 1994 (some claim 1993). More than a dozen influential albums were released, including Eric B & Rakim’s verbally viscous sophomore album Follow the Leader, Public Enemy’s political bomb It Takes a Nation of Millions, Eazy E brought humor and the west coast gangster lifestyle to the forefront with Eazy Duz It, Rob Base had fans dancing to It Takes Two and DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince created a song called “Parents Just Don’t Understand” which won the first rap Grammy. The content was rich, the lyrics were meaningful and the rhyme schemes were now opening up in ways that no other music ever had. Big Daddy Kane was one of the emcees who helped to achieve that. With his 1988 release of Long Live the Kane was “one of the most appealing creations from the new school of rap…The Big Daddy Kane who had the verbal facility and razor-clean dexterity to ambush any MC (Woodstra, Bush, Erlewine, pp. 7)”. Indicative of the times when emcees would use the art as a way to “slay emcees” (in the figurative, not literal), Kane spends the majority of his debut album boasting about his rhyming skills and abilities on the microphone but the way that he did it opened new doors in rhyming. While emcees like L.L. Cool J were telling you that they were the “baddest” by lines like, “During this episode vocally I explode/My title is the king of the FM mold”, Big Daddy Kane delivers his rhyming words back to back and fast, again reiterating the change from the slow and careful deliveries from previous emcees.

“Any competition/wishing for an expedition/I’m straight up dissing and dismissing/listen…”

And then in the same verse

“Confuse and lose, abuse and bruise the crews who choose to use my name wrong, they pay dues”




hyming five, six, seven or even eight words within two bars was a deliberate way to redirect the listener’s ear to the rhyming itself and became one of Big Daddy Kane’s signature techniques. In more recent times the rapper Fabolous has paid homage to the technique with lines like;

“We’ve been (1) creeping (2) and sneaking (3) just to keep it (4) from leaking (5) We so deep in (6) our freaking (7) that we don’t sleep on (8) the weekends (9)”.
 
CHICAGOrilla

CHICAGOrilla

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:scust:why you didn't speak on rappers who matter like Wayne or somebody? Neva heard a big daddy Kane or rakim song in my life n don't plan to
 
CHICAGOrilla

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BaronX said:
breh if it ain't old lil wayne i don't care about it fuuck out of here with that wayne bullsh1t.
Click to expand...

:what:thats what I'm talking about goofy. Wayne changed the whole game even got nikkas trying to record off the dome but he get no mention in this. The man got a whole essay talm bout these fossil ass nikkas tho
 
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