Rapping, Deconstructed

Narrator: A few weeks ago, I interviewed one of my favourite rappers, Open Mike Eagle, and immediately we started kicking out over the masked MC MF Doom.
Mike: His flow... I have to be careful with his flow, because his flow lives in my mind and, like, in my heart. I can almost get into his mind in terms of how he writes, you know.
N: This is what MF Doom sounds like, just listen:

[MF Doom, 'That's That']:
Cornish hens switching positions, auditioning morticians
Saw it in a vision, ignoring prison
Ignoramuses enlist and sound dumb
Found 'em drowned in cow's dung, crowns flung

Mike: He'll have, like, entire bars that rhyme, like, the entire setup bar rhymes with every syllable in the punchline bar, and it's, like, it's incredible!
N: It made me wonder, what can I learn from rappers simply by looking at how they rhyme with the beat.
Rakim: I try to start off with sixteen dots on the paper.
N: That's Rakim. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential MCs of all time.
Rakim: If four bars were this long, I'd see like a graph in between these four bars. I can place so many words and so many syllables, I can take it to the point where there's no other words you could put in that four bars.
N: So, before we get into rhymes, we need to know what beats and bars are.
Connor: I always try to find the beat of the music first.
N: That's Martin Connor, he has analyzed the most rhythmically dense rap songs down to the last syllable, and he writes about it.
Connor: A bar is a grouping together of four beats.
N: Before guys like Rakim came along, rhymes in rap songs were pretty basic, take one of the first commercially successful rap songs from 1980, 'The Breaks' by Kurtis Blow:

[Kurtis Blow, 'The Breaks']:
Breakes on a bus, brakes on a car
Breaks to make you a superstar
Breaks to win and breaks to lose
But these here breaks will rock your shoes
And these are the breaks
Break it up, break it up, break it up!

N: This simple AABB rhyming pattern with no wordplay or puns is pretty predictable, lyrically and musically. But fast-forward to 1986 and you've got songs like 'Eric B. Is President' from Eric B. and Rakim:

[Eric B. and Rakim, 'Eric B. Is President']:
But can you detect what's coming next from the flex of the wrist?
Say indeed and I'll proceed 'cause my man made a mix
If he bleed he won't need no band-aid to fix

N: Compare this to 'The Breaks' and it's clear that frequency of rhymes is greater, but not only are you seeing more rhymes, you're also starting to see different kinds of rhymes: 'indeed' and 'proceed' are internal rhymes, because they happen inside the sentence, 'man made a mix' and 'band-aid to fix' are multi-syllable rhymes. The other thing Rakim does later in the verse is cross the bar line, and he does it in a tremendously clever way.

[Eric B. and Rakim, 'Eric B. Is President']:
I hurry up because the cut will make 'em bleed to death
But he's kicking it cause it ain't no half stepping
The party is live, the rhyme can't be kept in-
Side, it needs erupting just like a volcano

N: Crossing the bar happens when a sentence like 'the rhyme can't be kept inside' doesn't end when the bar ends. If you listen closely, you'll hear that the second syllable of 'inside' lands on the first beat of the next bar. Rakim even references this in the lyric, and it's pretty clever.
 Now, fast-forward eleven years, and Notorious B.I.G.'s 'Hypnotize' cleverly used Rakim's techniques to make one of the smoothest rap songs ever.
Connor: What I like most about this is that it's not predictable and then it's always changing, so sometimes Notorious B.I.G.'s sentences are long, sometimes are short.
N: Like the moment in this verse here:

[Notorious B.I.G., 'Hypnotize']:
Dead right, if the head right, Biggie there ery'night
Poppa been smooth since days of Underroos
Never lose, never choose to, bruise crews who
Do something to us, talk go through us
Girls walk to us, wanna do us, screw us
Who us? Yeah, Poppa and Puff

N: He's also completely confortable delivering a sentence across the barline. But, what makes this song stand out the most to me is that before one rhyme scheme ends, another one begins. Like this moment in verse 2:

[Notorious B.I.G., 'Hypnotize']:
All Philly hoes go with Moschino
Every cutie with a booty bought a Coogi
Now who's the real dookie?
Meaning, who's really the shit?
Them niggas ride dicks, Frank White push the six

N: The first group of rhymes is the 'oo' sound and it links the first and second sentence, which then begins the 'ih' sound and so on. It's a huge reason Biggie sounds so smooth here.
 Now, as much as Biggie daisy chained an entire song together with rhymes, he was, for the most part, using single syllable and single word rhymes. And this is where artists like Mos Def push things even further. His verse on 'Re:Definition' from 2002 hits nearly every note within the bar with four-syllable rhymes, and he does it across a whopping fourteen bars:

[Mos Def, 'Re:Definition']:
Born inside the winter wind, day after December 10
These simpletons they mentioned in
The synonym for feminine
Sweeter than some cinnamon
The Danish rings by Entenmann's
Rush up on adrenaline, they get they asses sent to them
(Gentlemen) you got a tenement, well then assemble it!
Leave your unit trembling like herds of moving elephant

N: In Re:Definition, Mos Def is very clearly rhyming each word with the beat.
 This is where Andre 3000 shakes things up with his verse in 'Aquemini'. Focus on the beat first.
 Now listen to each syllable, with the beat in mind:

[Andre 3000, 'Aquemini']:
Twice upon a time there was a boy who died
And lived happily ever after, but that's another chapter
Live from home of the brave with dirty dollars
And beauty parlors and baby bottles and bowling ball Impalas
And street scholars that's majoring in culinary arts
You know, how to work bread, cheese and dough

N: Most rappers would have 'dollars', 'parlors', and 'bottles' all rhyme similarly on the beat. But Andre is accenting each rhyme within different places relative to the beat and bar.
Eminem: People say that the word orange doesn't rhyme with anything. And that kinda pisses me off because I can think of a lot of things that rhyme with orange.
N: In fact, Eminem, does this exact thing on his 2002 song 'Business':

[Eminem, 'Business']:
Set to blow college dorm rooms doors off the hinges
Oranges, peach, pears, plums, syringes
Yeah, here I come, I'm inches
Away from you, dear, fear none

N: Eminem doesn't just pack in tremendously dense multi syllable rhymes, he also tells incredibly vivid stories. And for a lot of people that wins in a battle.  This is where 'Lose Yourself' comes in. It was the first rap song to win an Academy Award.
Oscar announcer: The Oscar goes to Eminem, for Lose Yourself from Eighth Mile.

[Eminem, 'Lose Yourself']:
His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There's vomit on his sweater already, Mom's spaghetti
He's nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready
To drop bombs, but he keeps on forgetting
What he wrote down, the whole crowd goes so loud
He opens his mouth, but the words won't come out
He's choking how, everybody's joking now
The clock's run out, time's up, over, blaow!
Snap back to reality. Oh, there goes gravity
Oh, there goes Rabbit, he choked, he's so mad, but he won't
Give up that easy nope, he won't have it, he knows
His whole back's to these ropes, it don't matter, he's dope
He knows that but he's broke, he's so stagnant, he knows
When he goes back to his mobile home, that's when it's
Back to the lab again, yo! This whole rhapsody
He better go capture this moment and hope it don't pass him

Martin: I'll see the line and I'll separate it all into not just words or sentences, but into their syllables, you know.
N: When you group all of these rhymes together, this incredibly complex rhyme scheme emerges. It's unpredictable, it's complex rhythmically and lyrically but it's not just that you're rhyming -
Martin: It's that while you're rhyming you're still telling a good story. And, like, 'Lose Yourself' is like that.
N: Today, rappers like Kendrick Lamar are carrying on the tradition of artists that are able to use the musicality of rhymes to create really memorable songs. Let's look at Kendrick Lamar's 'Rigamortus':

[Kendrick Lamar, 'Rigamortus']:
The sun is under my feet
And I come in peace to compete
I don't run if you rather leap
My statistics go up in weeks
And I go visit the nearest creek
And I get busy on many MC
Really ballistic, anybody can see
Any assistance, everybody done see,
Some persistence, recognize I be

N: The first thing you'll notice is that Kendrick has created a very clear motive with his rhymes. What's a motive? Well, it's a short musical idea. A musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in a composition. Here's probably the most recognizable motive in the history of music:
[Beethoven's 5th symphony]
N: That 'da da da duummm' is carried out through the entire piece. It's three quick notes followed by a long note. The musical motive in 'Rigamortus' is two short notes followed by a long note, stringing the entire song together.

[Kendrick Lamar, 'Rigamortus']:
Better partition, better dot your T
And I gon' mention, how the far you see
Putting my dick in the rap industry
Everybody bitchin', getting mad at me
Recognize Kendrick, in the battery

Martin: It's one of the few songs that, like, you can't physically rap along to it.
N: When Kendrick goes into fourth gear he keeps the motive going, and the motive keeps him in check.

[Kendrick Lamar, 'Rigamortus']:
And I get busy on many MC
Really ballistic, anybody can see
Any assistance, everybody done see,
Some persistence, recognize I be
Really too vicious, the permanent beast
And the demolition, breaking up the streets
Better partition, better dot your T
And I gon' mention, how the far you see
Putting my dick in the rap industry
Everybody bitchin', getting mad at me
Recognize Kendrick, in the battery
And I'm charged up, and the catastrophe
Is charged up and the audacity

N: As much as Biggie's 'Hypnotize' sounds completely different from 'Rigamortus', there are a lot of musical similarities. Remember how Biggie daisy chained rhymes? Well, Kendrick does that too here. And in 'Hypnotize' Biggie also creates a motive with the sequence of rhymes here:

[Notorious B.I.G., 'Hypnotize']:
At last, a nigga rappin' about blunts and broads
Tits and bras, menage a trois, sex in expensive cars

N: Okay, now let's get back to MF Doom. Two years after 'Lose Yourself' won an Academy Award, MF Doom released three full-length albums, including 'Madvillainy' – which is widely considered one of the best underground hip hop records, period. Mos Def can't even contain his excitement talking about Doom.
Mos Def: I'd bet a million dollars on Doom against Little Wayne.

[MF Doom, 'Beef Rapp']:
What up?
To all rappers, shut up
And while you're shuttin' up
Put your shirt on, at least a button-up

N: For the most part, MF Doom rhymes on the beat but he uses multi syllable rhyming phrases up with wazoo often rhyming entire lines together. This is called a holorime.

[MF Doom, 'Meat Grinder']:
The worst hated God who perpetrated odd favors
Demonstrated in the perforated Rod Lavers
In all quad flavors, Lord save us

Mike: He'll do setup-punchline. Like his following bar will be referencing the punchline, but not in a way that he's, like, setting up another one, he just starts to go in another direction, but just acknowledges where the last bar was.
N: This is what Mike is talking about:

[MF Doom, 'Great Day']:
And I wish they fixed the door to the matrix, there's mad glitches
Spit so many verses sometimes my jaw twitches
One thing this party could use is more *ahem* booze
Put yourself in your own shoes

N: MF Doom understands the power of rhyme and the beat and completely manipulates it in a humorous way. As Pitchfork points out 'the rhyme's pattern and rap's topical stereotype demands the word "bitches", yet Doom hilariously says "booze" and uses that rhyme to connect the next sentence'. Where artists like Kendrick Lamar, Eminem and Andre 3000 are telling very vivid stories with their rhymes, MF Doom is using his dense rhymes like a villain would use his superpower. Before you know it, you're being hit with a killer punchline, double entendres and clever wordplay.
Martin: I love rappers with that syncopated uneven phrasing where the sentences don't line up with the bars because, like you said, than you can't predict what's going to happen. The point of appreciating it is to see what the very most clever human beings are capable of doing, that you didn't think possible.
N: One Interesting story that came up when I was talking to Martin concerns another song on Blackstar's 1998 album, and it's actually a cover of sorts of Slick Rick's song called Children's story from 1988. Now, the reason it isn't exactly a cover is because all the lyrics pretty much are different, but the way Mos Def references this song is through the rhymes. So, if you look at the two songs side by side, bar by bar, Mos Def is rhyming the same exact syllables as Slick Rick, but he's changing up the lyrics. Both of these songs are on the Spotify playlist that I created, it also includes all the songs in this video and about thirty extra songs that I wasn't able to include, but I really think represent some phenomenal rhyming and rap music.