EPTNow, I don't know if I should be writing this, because apparently this is just a list of things that I like to do because I think I have high apm, AKA I'm showing off.
Part I: How to Freestyle Rap
This is a guide on how to freestyle. Not to battle rap.
You ever hear those rappers just spit rhymes off the top of their head like its nothing? And be insanely good at it?
Anyone can do it. All it takes is practice. You can achieve this one day:
Insane, right?
I'm quite mellow, a white fellow, my pee is bright yellow, I like jello, I'm like hello...
Rule #1: All rap is slant rhyme.
Literally, just look at rap. None of it is a true rhyme; it is all slant rhymes.
"Better call the Fire Department, I've hired an arsonist to set fire to carpet and burn up your entire apartment."
Ignore the multisyllabic rhymes for now, and just look at the ends of the words.
-ment
-ist
-pet
-ment
Under the rules of true rhyme (where both the consonant and vowel sounds line up), this isn't doesn't rhyme.
Under the rules of slant rhyme (where only vowel sound counts), this rhymes. The sound is the short e, like the one found in the words sex, bet, let, mesh, etc.
So, let's try this.
Hey guys, I like to tell lies, I'm real fly, I like guys, I'm quite nice...
Every bolded word contains the long i sound. Which is the sound that I am rhyming here.
Beware of consonants that twist vowel sounds, such as r, m, n, and l. All these consonants manipulate vowel sounds to sound different, so try to rhyme them to each other.
Hey and air don't sound even remotely alike, do they?
Ram and at don't really sound alike, but if you twist the word enough, they do. So beware of those.
Rule #2: Forget what you've heard; just take a beat and kill it.
Forget all of the crap you heard about people choking and failing; it doesn't matter. In fact, I recommend you start freestyling by yourself, and then gradually work towards doing it in front of people once you're comfortable.
If you never try something because you're scared of it, how can you expect to get any better at it?
Okay, so go on YouTube and find an instrumental that you like. Then, try to freestyle with the following 3 rules in mind:
1. It doesn't have to make any sense...at all.
2. It doesn't have to be in time
3. It doesn't even have to rhyme
You want to know what the first freestyle I ever spat was?
Hey guys, people think I'm gay
My name is Ray, this is what I'm sayin'
I like to play, this game named Starcraft
Wait, I weigh like way too much, hey,
You see what I did there? Eh?
I like to spray my spit in peoples face
I want to get with a smoking hot babe
I forgot to shave, oh yay
I recorded it myself, and it was so dumb and ridiculous, but it was a start.
From then on, you just keep practicing. You will eventually develop a flow, or a natural tendency to just say things.
After a while...
Rule #3: Thinking Ahead
So once you get good enough at just spitting rhymes off the top of your head, it is now time to start to think ahead. The point of practicing the spitting rhymes off the top of your head was to get you to be able to subconsciously say things, while leaving your mind to dwell on other things.
When you rap, your mind should always be thinking about the next line, while your mouth subconsciously spits out the one you are currently saying.
The trick to this is to just think of something you want to say, and then working your way from there.
So let's say my first line is
"Someday I'm going to be the world's best rapper"
So the moment we realize that the line will end with the word rapper, we think of anything and everything that rhymes with it.
Rapper
Bastard
After
Laughter
Have her
Smack her
Raptor
So then we just try to tie it on from there.
"Someday I'm going to be the world's best rapper
And person who tries to battle me will be dead after"
Try it slow, and don't even try to line the rhymes up with the bars of the beat, just say it whenever you can. Say as much of it as you can.
If you ever lose your flow, throw in a filler.
Some of my fillers are:
"You know?"
"Get what I'm sayin?"
"Yeah"
"Hey guys"
Rule #4: Once you can rhyme, then try to make sense.
Once we can rhyme, it is time to make sense. This comes with practice.
Your goal is to be as clever as you can with your rhymes.
1. References to current things
2. Puns
3. More puns
4. Really good puns
5. Similes and metaphors...no matter how absurd
Lil' Wayne, as much as I hate his voice, is an amazing lyricist, and he is notorious for this.
"Life is the bitch and death is the sister
Sleep is the cousin, what a fuckin' family picture"
-Lil' Wayne, 6 foot 7 foot
This isn't really a pun or anything, but it's a great way to string those together, and more importantly, it rhymes.
"Paper chasing, tell that money I'm right behind ya
Real G's move in silence like lasagna"
-Lil' Wayne, 6 foot 7 foot
Most people think that Lil' Wayne is just talking nonsense here; he's not.
The first line sets him up for an incredibly clever pun.
The G in lasagna is silent...and thus real G's move in a manner as quiet as the G in lasagna. Pretty clever in my opinion.
So yeah...you get the point. :D
"Bitches be quick to give me brains while I post the range
Going up and down my dick like the stock exchange"
-Xzibit, X
I don't think I need to go over this one.
But it means that the women are "giving him brains" (giving him a blowjob), and they go up and down his dick, similar to the way stocks rise and fall in the market.
Rule #5: Now stack as many rhymes on there as you can.
"And maybe if I just drink half I'll be half buzzed for half of the time
Who's that mastermind behind that little line?
With that kind of rationale man I got half a mind,
to have another half a glass of wine sounds asinine"
Eminem, Deja Vu
You'll notice, a lot of things are bolded.
Eminem's style is very heavy on the assonance, it is what he is known for; his incredibly ability to multisyllabic rhyme.
Now, in that little excerpt, what he is doing is assonance on the short and and long i vowel sounds.
He uses the word "half" as many times as he can in the first phrase, then "half of the time" sets the rhyme.
Half, half, half of the time
Mastermind, that little line
That kind, half a mind
Have, Half a glass of wine, Asinine
I'll go over this more in the rapping section.
Rule #6: Practice!
Practice! Just whisper it to yourself if you're in a public place. Whenever I'm not talking to someone or not doing anything, I'm usually freestyling. Make sure not to annoy the shit out of your friends though.
If it helps, get some of your friends involved, and just freestyle together. Have one of you go off, and when you're about to lose your flow, let the other guy start freestyling, so that you have time to think about what you're going to say.
Good luck and have fun!
I spat this in a freestyle once while doing dishes:
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, my name is Ray Chou
I want to play now, just say how
You want it, I'm on it, any day now
I'm at the supermarket and it's time for me to pay now
A pretty bad rep, but that's a sexy ass chick
I'm slick, I pick this one to go lick my dick
Oh, shit, I'm way in over my head
I walked my skinny asian ass over to her and said
Hey, I'd like to pay with a check, and I'm amazin' at sex
Hey, I'm obsessed, let's go play in the bed
I said to the checkout girl at the fifth counter
I want to pound her, and she said let's bounce sir
Yeah, get her back to the bed, she attacked with the head
I'm like crap, this is it (pronounced more like "et"), don't laugh, this is sex
Don't be such a retard, come on kiddo, be smart
But as she does what she does I feel my little knee start
To wiggle, I giggle, my fat jiggles, I have a little
Problem, this is really bad, my bladder's brittle
I start to pout and shout as I try not to let it out
But my luck goes south and I release it into her mouth
She told me get out, I said sorry about the splatter
I have a weak bladder, what's the matter? I said with laughter
Then she called me a bastard, now I want to attack her,
Slap her, bash her, with my glory stick until she passers
Out and like put this shit on Brazzers, after
I'm done with the chick and her pride and stuff shatters
And after that I go home with my back hurtin'
And go on Facebook and share this rap with Matt Burman"
Me
Well, I guess you all know my name...
Part II: Writing Raps
Writing raps means that you actually have time. It's not all in the moment. So you can just sit down one day, and just write as good of a rap as you can.
1. Listen to a lot of rap
This is the most important part of rap. Listen to other people, see what they do, so you can eventually pick things up and develop your own style.
Too many these days only listen to one or two artists, and thus they sound exactly like that rapper, which is why most rappers today sound the exact same.
I used to be an Eminem poser, but my friends got me to open up to other artists, and now I have developed my own unique style.
A style is made up of many things.
-Tempo
-Amount of assonance
-Amount of rhymes
-Complexity (amount of syllables) of rhymes
-Tone of Voice
-Pronunciation
Some of the artists I recommend are:
Eminem, Tupac, Notorious B.I.G., Big Pun, Xzibit, Jedi Mind Tricks, Wu Tang Clan, N.W.A., Busta Rhymes, Nas, T.I., Jay-Z, Method Man, Redman
2. Sit down and write!
Carry a notebook around with you, and whenever you think of that impressive rhyme, write it down! Then, eventually, you can use it in a song...
"The only way you ejaculate is when you masturbate
Oh wait, you have a girlfriend, but you're half her weight..."
I wrote that in English yesterday. I burst out laughing when I thought of it.
3. Stacking Rhymes/Multisyllabic Rhymes
Multisyllabic Rhymes are incredibly difficult. Work your way up to them.
Multisyllabic Rhymes (I call them stack rhymes), are rhymes where more than only the last syllable of a word or phrase sound alike.
One syllable: Suck, truck
Two syllables: Rapist, Hate this
Three syllables: Cranium, uranium
Four syllables: Chop a fella, Mozerella
Five syllables: (Heli)copter propeller, Locked in a cellar; Sucks to me the fan, bucks to be the man, luxury sedan
You get the point. Around 4-5 is when it's ridiculously hard.
What I do is I just write things down that are multisyllabic rhymes with each other, so I can either use them in a freestyle, or use them in a song later.
Jedi Mind Tricks is ridiculously good at multisyllabic rhyming as well.
"This is raw, all across the board, Liquid Sword Chamber
If it's coming from my jaw, then it's pure anger
Heavy metal rap, with a 44 banger
We can settle that, let the mic cord hang ya
I pay homage to the best of 'em, like Christopher Wallace
And bring drama to the rest of 'em, with biscuits from coppers
I'm with the Allah Justice, and we roll gritty
Pits of hell, Illadelph to New York City
I brought a four with me, we can capture the ring
And now we more merciless than the Statue of Ming
And y'all are more purposeless than a pacifist king
You gon' die, like a brawl with a gat in the Bing
It's a passionate thing, the way we make classics
Genuine brilliance or innate maddness
yeah, we all spin on the same axis
and this chrome thing here leave your frame backless
the police always trying to aim flame at us
so I don't mind when a pig brain splatters
I don't mind that we all gonna die soon
I return to the silence of God's tomb"
-Jedi Mind Tricks, On the Eve of War
Techniques of doing this:
-Don't rhyme all of the syllables. Vinnie Paz does it here a few times here:
Capture the ring
Statue of Ming
Pacifist King
Gat in the Bing
-Use the common vowel sounds, like schwa and short i.
Listener, fistin' her, kissin' her, kickin' a...
-Twist words so that they rhyme.
Eminem does this a lot.
The following is an excerpt where literally every little phrase is a triple rhyme...
"Sick, sick dreams
Of picnic scenes,
Two kids sixteen,
With M16's
And ten clips each
And them shits reach
Through six kids each
And Slim gets blamed
In Bill Clint's speech
To fix these streets?"
-Eminem, Remember Me
-Throw as many as you can in there...
"Give me eleven Excederin my head'll spin. Medicine'll get me revvin' like a 747 jet engine"
Eminem, Fucking Crazy
If I tried to bold it...the whole thing would be bolded basically...
4. Refine your rhymes!
Like Day[9] tells you, think how you can improve, and then go back and make those changes! If I'm writing a song, I refine it at least 20 times. I make so many corrections...if you look in my notebook, there are scribbles and replacement texts everywhere...
5. Ever get stuck?
It's okay to use a rhyme dictionary, but they aren't very good for finding more than single rhymes.
What I like to do is to just say the vowel sounds of the multisyllabic rhyme in my head, and wait for my mouth to fill in the blanks in front and behind of the sounds, and then I've come up with some pretty funny things that rhyme with each other.
And it's okay to copy rhymes from your favorite rappers. I do this all of the time. Just don't copy the entire line.
No, I'm not going to share any of my rhymes with you.
So remember: Listen to lots of it, and freestyle and write a lot, and you'll get good in no time.
That's all for now. Happy rhyming!
