Styles
There are many different styles of flow, with different terminology used by different people –
stic.man of
Dead Prez uses the following terms –
- "The Chant", which he says is used by Lil Jon and Project Pat[70]
- "The Syncopated Bounce", used by Twista and Bone Thugs N Harmony[70]
- "Straight Forward", used by Scarface, 2Pac, Melle Mel, KRS-One circa Boogie Down Productions era, Too Short, Jay-Z, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Dogg[71]
- "The Rubik's Cube", used by Nas, Black Thought of The Roots, Common, Kurupt, and Lauryn Hill[72]
- "2-5-Flow", a pun of Kenya's calling code "+254", used by Camp Mulla[73]
Alternatively, music scholar Adam Krims uses the following terms –
Rhyme
MCs use many different rhyming techniques, including complex rhyme schemes, as Adam Krims points out – "the complexity... involves multiple rhymes in the same rhyme complex (i.e. section with consistently rhyming words),
internal rhymes, [and] offbeat rhymes".
[69] There is also widespread use of
multisyllabic rhymes, by artists such as Kool G Rap,
[76] Big Daddy Kane, Rakim,
Big L,
Nas and Eminem.
It has been noted that rap's use of rhyme is some of the most advanced in all forms of poetry – music scholar Adam Bradley notes, "rap rhymes so much and with such variety that it is now the largest and richest contemporary archive of rhymed words. It has done more than any other art form in recent history to expand rhyme's formal range and expressive possibilities".
[77]
In the book
How to Rap,
Masta Ace explains how Rakim and Big Daddy Kane caused a shift in the way MCs rhymed: "Up until Rakim, everybody who you heard rhyme, 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... now here comes Big Daddy Kane — instead of going three words, he's going multiple".
[78] How to Rap explains that "rhyme is often thought to be the most important factor in rap writing... rhyme is what gives rap lyrics their musicality.
[1]
Rhythm
Many of the rhythmic techniques used in rapping come from percussive techniques and many rappers compare themselves to
percussionists.
[79] How to Rap 2 identifies all the rhythmic techniques used in rapping such as
triplets,
flams,
16th notes,
32nd notes,
syncopation, extensive use of
rests, and rhythmic techniques unique to rapping such as West Coast "lazy tails," coined by
Shock G.
[80] Rapping has also been done in various
time signatures, such as
3/4 time.
[81]
Since the 2000s, rapping has evolved into a style of rap that spills over the boundaries of the beat, closely resembling spoken English.
[82] Rappers like
MF Doom and
Eminem have exhibited this style, and since then, rapping has been difficult to notate.
[83] The American hip-hop group
Crime Mob exhibited a new rap flow in songs such as "
Knuck If You Buck", heavily dependent on triplets. Rappers including
Drake,
Kanye West,
Rick Ross,
Young Jeezy and more have included this influence in their music. In 2014, an American hip-hop collective from
Atlanta,
Migos, popularized this flow, and is commonly referred to as the "Migos Flow" (a term that retains contention within the hip-hop community).
[84]
Rap notation and flow diagrams
The standard form of rap notation is the flow diagram, where rappers line-up their lyrics underneath "beat numbers".
[85] Different rappers have slightly different forms of flow diagram that they use:
Del the Funky Homosapien says, "I'm just writing out the rhythm of the flow, basically. Even if it's just slashes to represent the beats, that's enough to give me a visual path.",
[86] Vinnie Paz states, "I've created my own sort of writing technique, like little marks and asterisks to show like a pause or emphasis on words in certain places.",
[85] and
Aesop Rock says, "I have a system of maybe 10 little symbols that I use on paper that tell me to do something when I'm recording."
[85]
Hip-hop scholars also make use of the same flow diagrams: the books
How to Rap and
How to Rap 2 use the diagrams to explain rap's triplets, flams, rests, rhyme schemes, runs of rhyme, and breaking rhyme patterns, among other techniques.
[81] Similar systems are used by PhD
musicologists Adam Krims in his book
Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity[87] and Kyle Adams in his academic work on flow.
[88]
Because rap revolves around a strong 4/4 beat,
[89] with certain syllables said in time to the beat, all the notational systems have a similar structure: they all have the same 4 beat numbers at the top of the diagram, so that syllables can be written in-line with the beat numbers.
[89] This allows devices such as rests, "lazy tails", flams, and other rhythmic techniques to be shown, as well as illustrating where different rhyming words fall in relation to the music.
[81]
