The game of freestyle rap or freestyle rapping is a game in which two participants take timed turns to demonstrate their wordplay, creativity, and Speech pattern/ flow ability. These turns are usually done to a beat, but will quite often be done without a beat. Within the turns the freestyle artist will use all his or her capabilities to Boast, brag, insult, or poke humor at his opponent. In the more top tier levels of freestyle rapping, often where money is involved, the insults tend to be more direct and quite a bit more personal, as the artist needs to set the bar higher and higher to try and one up their opponent. Freestyle rapping as a game arose to the national spotlight after the mainstream popularization of rap and other forms of predominately …show more content…
Built around these very rudimentary rules are the many different paths an artist can take when formulating/ theory crafting an approach. To pinpoint these rules I studied the game and searched some online forums. I eventually came upon a a website called the voice in which they layed out the “ten Freestyle rap battle commandments.” These commandments where generally more self-help excerpts, such as “get comfortable with freestyling in the moment,” generally good advice but not what I was searching for. Then I came to the end of the list and took not of their suggestion to “Not be the white guy rapping about being a white guy,” which pointed me to one of the most pertinent rules within the game: Subject matter, matters. Furthermore, in my quest to find the rules for freestyle rap battling, as that would lead me to the answer of how a winner is determined. I started digging through top ten rap battle pages in search for more answers. Soon after I discovered that Complex news, a popular news agency marketed towards 15-25 year olds with a heavy emphasis on music, had such a list featuring 25 of the best rap battles ever. Within these videos I discovered I could pull samples of excellent theory crafting being used in action. Within one of the short excerpts beneath the listed videos I discovered that the author mentioned the artist “doing their homework” a point …show more content…
Alongside the practice of “doing your homework” I found that there were several unique choices that one could use within his or her raps to greatly improve the chance of victory. One of the first theory crafting methods I discovered was that of is alteration and or stylization of flow. This essentially means adding or changing the flow of speech within your rhyming. Some rappers are gifted with a fast tongue and can resort to sheer speed to dazzle his opponent. Other freestyle artists use change of speed. A functioning example of this that I found was that of an impromptu rap battle shot on video, featuring Busta Rhymes against ODB. The now famous rapper Busta Rhymes began his career using freestyle rapping as a platform to build his image from. In one of his battles against ODB in which he displays his natural talent by “going off” rapping with ferocity and intense speed delivering his bars to grant him a clear victory. His ability to deliver more words per second is one of the few reasons he became such a smash success. Whilst researching I also stumbled upon a video explaining the other side of using Speech pattern and speed / flow to deliver lyrics. The source I pulled this from was a another short video of Biggie Smalls Aged 17 rap battling in the streets against his opponent. Within the video he displays the key element that separates god flow from
Music can be reflection of our life experience. Each genre of music invokes different emotions and reactions in it's listeners. Rap has become a very popular genre in today's society. Is today “Gangster rap” and rappers exploiting society, introducing drugs and instigating violence? In the mid-1980s Gangster rap came to be portray images of violence, guns, gangs, drugs, and sexism. By the 1990s rap music became a major part of the industry and topped the charts. As people begin to operate different things; different music was engendered and that contributed to the variety of music that we have today. This is one of the many things that makes America different but is astringently under looked by everyone. There are many types of different raps
There are a lot of Epic Poems written in Literature that intrigue, and capture reader’s attention like; The Iliad, The Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Divine Comedy. Never had the Hip-Hop culture had an epic story of its own until Lupe Fiasco came along. Lupe created a 17 song saga Called “Michael Young History (MYH) also known as The Cool” spread throughout his first two albums, and a few mixtapes. MYH is a frictional rap character who was raised by a single hard-working mother who struggle to raise Michael and his loving sister. With the lack of parental guidance the promising, intelligent young Michael turn into a drug deal. Michaels love for the street, and fame sent him to a road of greed, deception. In no time Michael had control of his neighborhood making money, bribing dirty cops to look away from his crimes. As Michael unethical fame rise his friends get jealous, setting Michael to end his life. Unless a music listener is not a Lupe Fiasco fan they will not be aware of this
Have you heard the phrase “Momma said knock you out”? If so, you've probably heard your parent sing this song. Signing with Def Jams in the 1980’s, LL Cool J showed the world a unique style of Hip-hop and Rap. A kid just 18 years old when his first song came out, LL showed the world he would he would be different. LL Cool J created an influential long-term career with his starting a new hard-hitting romantic style of rapping, influences with popular clothing lines, and paved the way leading rappers to transform into actors and continue to have a successful career.
When listening to rap music we get to experience the environments that the MC lived through. Most MC’s use music as a way of coping with reality, their violent and hard life. In this way they find a kind of shelter in their songs even though these songs describe their life and how hard it is.
Hip-Hop became characterized by an aggressive tone marked by graphic descriptions of the harshness and diversity of inner-city life. Primarily a medium of popular entertainment, hip-hop also conveys the more serious voices of youth in the black community. Though the approaches of rappers became more varied in the latter half of the 1980s, message hip-hop remained a viable form for addressing the problems faced by the black community and means to solve those problems. The voices of "message" hip...
Drill music is a hip hop subgenre originating from the South Side Chicago rappers and producers. This genre is prominent in Chicago’s hip hop culture. Drill is recognized by its grim, violent lyrical content and trap-influenced beats. Drill is a slang term that means to retaliate or fight.
Hip hop has so many subgenres that preach different messages to the listeners. Artists are inspired to sing according to what they experienced when growing up, or what they thought should be done to address a particular issue.
Rapping is simply a single element of hip hop music. Flava Flav of the group Public Enemy, speculates that rap and hip hop are sometimes differentiated by tempo.
Rap is about giving voice to a black community otherwise underrepresented, if not silent, in the mass media. It has always been and remains … directly connected to the streets from which it came. (144)
Rap Music, a genre of R&B that includes rhythmic poetry put over a musical background. The background consists of beats combined with digitally isolated sound bites from other recordings. The first recording of rap was made in 1979 and the genre began to take notice in the U.S. in the mid-1980s. Though the name rap is often used back and forth with hip hop. The name hip-hop comes from one of the earliest phrases used in rap on the song “Rapper’s Delight” by Sugarhill Gang. “I said a hip hop, hippie to the hippie, the hip, hip a hop, and you don't stop, a rock it to the bang bang boogie, say, up jump the boogie, to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat.”. In addition to rap music, the hip-hop subculture also formed other methods of expression like break dancing, graffiti art, a unique slang vocabulary, and fashion sense.
The influence of Hip-Hop has never been as great as it is in this day and age. Often dismissed by a majority of America as simply a fad, hip hop has become a global phenomenon and has arguably been the most popular form of music for the past three decades. Hip-Hop has influenced art, language, fashion, culture, and sports. This music has been used to teach elementary level children, it has been taught in undergraduate universities and serves as a bridge for hundreds of philanthropies. The influence of Hip-Hop has also been felt in films. These films range from fictional works, documentaries, and autobiographies. A film known as, Something from Nothing by famous rapper Ice T sheds light on elements within Hip-Hop that have enabled the genre to reach millions of people.
Throughout American history there has always been some form of verbal acrobatics or jousting involving rhymes within the Afro-American community. Signifying, testifying, shining of the Titanic, the Dozens, school yard rhymes, prison ?jail house? rhymes and double Dutch jump rope rhymes, are some of the names and ways that various forms of raps have manifested. Modern day rap music finds its immediate roots in the toasting and dub talk over elements of reggae music (George, 1998)....
Hip-hop started out in the Bronx in New York City with DJ Clive “Cool Herc” Campbell. A man of Jamaica, he essentially birthed the new genre of music by carrying over the Jamaican tradition of Toasting, which “is boastful poetry or over a melody provided by a deejay.” (ROOTS ‘n’ RAP, rice.edu) Its creation can be accredited to the record spinning DJ’s of the clubs of the 1970s. From this, the Master of Ceremonies (MC) was created. He would come up with creative rhymed phrases that could be delivered over a beat or acapella at dance clubs. They consisted of boasts, insults, “uptown throw downs”, and political commentary. From there, hip-hop only grew more and more popular. Being that it was created in a dominantly African American neighborhood, it became a tool for blacks to express their problems with society and be heard by the rest of the country. Though it was a microphone for African Americans to express themselves to the rest of the country, there were some other things that happened within the black community through hip-hop as well. One of these things was a diss track.
Hip hop culture and its creation of rap music has been stereotypically deemed as mere violent depictions as portrayed by its black artists, and is prejudicially more criticized than white genres that also perpetuate violent language within its lyrics. They are subsequently blamed for the massive rates of homicides within the black community, as blackness is given a dangerous face and linked to criminality, as if innately part of a violent culture. However, violence must be defined through the physical utilization of certain words and actions, along with social manipulations of power and hierarchy to confirm one’s own identity (Hernandéz, Weinstein & Munoz-Laboy, 2012, pg. 595). Rap music was created in the 1970s and originated in the South
Today 's rap music reflects its origin in the hip-hop culture of young, urban, working-class African-Americans, its roots in the African oral tradition, its function as the voice of an otherwise underrepresented group, and, as its popularity has grown,