Paul Edwards - How to Rap 2: Advanced Flow and Delivery Techniques

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Edwards, Paul, 1982

How to rap 2 : advanced flow and delivery techniques / Paul Edwards ; foreword by Gift of Gab of Blackalicious.

pages ; cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-61374-401-7

1. Rap (Music)Instruction and study. 2. Musical meter and rhythm. I. Title. II. Title: How to rap two.

MT67.E382 2013

782.421649143dc23

2013015169

Cover design: Philip Pascuzzo

Cover photographs: iStockphoto

Interior design: Jonathan Hahn

Copyright 2013 by Paul Edwards

Foreword copyright 2013 by Tim Parker (Gift of Gab of Blackalicious)

All rights reserved

Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN: 978-1-61374-401-7

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

Index

The first experience I had with rhyming was when this one cat would always come down to the building I lived in back in those dayshe was older than all of us and he rhymed. He would go off on one person every time he would come through. He would just pick one victim and just start rhyming about them and destroy them, every day. And one day, it was my turn.

He just started coming off the top, talking about my clothes and talking about my hair and all kinds of stuff. After he did that, I went home and wrote a rhyme to battle him. Me and my friend used to ride our bikes to his house every day with papers in our hands, the actual rhymes in our hands, at his front door, and just battle him. So my first rhyme was in self-defense.

He kept killing us, kept killing us, kept killing usbut as I got older and my skill developed, one day I got to a point where I was better than he was. That was really kind of the point where my confidence boosted, like, yeah, you know what, I can do this. Thats how I started rhyming.

I think that hip-hop is going in different directions and I think that some younger MCs have different reference points. A lot of the MCs dont know who the Cold Crush Brothers are, dont know who Grandmaster Flash is, some people dont even know who EPMD are, or who Kool G Rap is!

To be a better MC, you need to study people who came before you, and study people that are great, and practice practice. If youre an MC, you gotta write, you gotta create, if youre an artist you have to create. Study people and work hard at it and find your own style, find your own way of how you do it and keep going.

Look to build a body of work, dont look for one hit, look at the bigger picture, look at artists like 2Pac, artists like Miles Davis who just have rows and stacks of records in stores. Look at your career as a body of work, dont look at it as, I gotta make this hit, if I dont make it, thats it for me, I gotta go do something else.

Its gotta be a lot more than the moneythe people who do it long term are the people who love it. If youre looking at it from a long-term perspective, whether youre mainstream or underground, then you have to love it, you have to love what youre doing.

G IFT OF G AB, B LACKALICIOUS

Gift of Gab, of the group Blackalicious, is noted as one of the most dexterous and versatile MCs of all time, using tongue-twisting and varied flows to continually push the boundaries of the art form on each new release, whether on his acclaimed solo records or his classic Blackalicious material. His mastery of flow and delivery put him in an elite category of MCs who can shift effortlessly from one style to another, tirelessly innovating and developing new styles for others to follow.

I like listening to cats that have something to say, but if theyre not saying it in a stylistic or rhythmic way, its boring and theyll lose my attention. If were talking about music, then style outweighs [content], because music revolves around style and rhythm.

Myka 9, Freestyle Fellowship

Flow and deliverythese are two of the most important elements of MCing, and yet they often remain the least studied and the least understood. Many people can discuss raps content and understand the plot of a story or how clever a metaphor is, but few people understand things such as triplets, flams, vibrato, staccato delivery, and other percussive and vocal techniques that are used in hip-hop music.

Although there is often a focus on content in hip-hopanalyzing it, reviewing it, and criticizing itfor many listeners, fans, and MCs, content is actually secondary to the flow and delivery, which give MCing its immediate musical interest. The flow and delivery are the first aspects of an MC that the listener hears on a song, and they can make or break an MC.

Brother Ali

I think flow is more important than great lyricism. I think if you had to have one and not the other, I would always go with flow over lyricism. There are people whose lyricism is great, but their flow makes it so I cant listen to them. Because its musicat the end of the day, its music. Youre listening to it because of the feeling you get from it and the way that it makes you move and what it does to your soul and your spirit when you hear whats going on. Its music, and [so] before words are even involved in music, it really is about the feel.

Professional MCs have known for a long time how important the flow and delivery are to the actual sound of the musicthats why many of them begin the writing process by coming up with the flow and delivery first.

Royce Da 59

I come up with the flow before I write anything down. Once I figure out the flow, then I gotta figure out the words and I just have to figure out how to fit the words into that flow. I usually pick the flow before I even start writing the verse.

Pigeon John

Thats definitely the way I do it. A lot of times the melody and rhythm of it comes first, then the [content]. I might hum something, then chop it up in my mind, then fill it in with syllables [later]. So for me, its more of a musical thing versus a wording thing.

Advanced Techniques

How to Rap 2 provides an in-depth look at flow (rhythm and rhyme) and delivery, giving them the much-needed focus and explanation they deserve, to help MCs take the sound of their MCing further and to help hip-hop listeners break down the technical flow and delivery techniques that their favorite MCs use.

This book builds on topics covered in How to Rap, greatly expanding and developing them, introducing a huge range of techniques not covered in the first book. How to Rap 2 is for people who really want to master flow and deliveryMCs who truly want to become another instrument on the track.

Buckshot, Black Moon

Why my flows and my rhythms come out the way they come out is because I become an instrument. If there are five pieces on that beat, Im gonna be the sixth piece.

This book will give you, the listener, a much more thorough understanding of the level of complexity in MCs flows, so that you can fully appreciate the level of craft that goes into rhythm, rhyme, and delivery.

This lets you discuss MCing more accurately, so that flow and delivery are looked at as closely as content. Some MCs have a huge level of intricacy in their flow and delivery but have basic contentthese MCs should be more fairly judged based on a solid knowledge of flow and delivery techniques.