Tuesday 11 December 2012

How To Write A Rap: 3 Tricks For Writing Good Rap Lyrics

By Christopher Washington


Want to take your rap game to the next level? Start by writing hot, professional rap lyrics. Use these tips to boost your rap skills and write lyrics like the pros.

The Content

What you talk about with your raps, the subject material, is known as content. The Content of your rap can be a personal experience, something you overheard, or just something you dreamed up. You can talk about anything from politics to social issues, to nice cars and fancy clothes - it doesn't matter.

Whatever it is you decide to write about, it's important that you know your subject matter well. Don't feel like you need to write about something just because everyone else is, this will only get you into trouble. Not only will it make the writing process a lot harder and slower, but it will also require you to spend a lot more time practicing your delivery later on.

The Words

After you've established just what it is you're going to write about, you have to start figuring out which words you want to use to do it. The skill of being able to choose the right words and mold them into something interesting is known as flow.

The skill of flow is the art of conveying your content to your listener through words. Like Poetry. But how do you know which words to choose? Choosing the right words can be hard depending on where you are as a writer and as a rapper. Most importantly, they should be the words you use naturally everyday.

As an exercise, spend the next few days paying close attention to how you talk to other people, and how you talk to yourself. How do you communicate differently than your friends or family? Which parts of a story do you find more interesting or important than everyone else? Take notes and incorporate them into your writing.

The Delivery

Congratulations you are now a lyricist. But a good rapper is a lot more than just lyrics. So, it's time to turn them into a rap. The performance part of rap and hip hop is called delivery and without it your content and your flow would just be a bunch of words on a page.

The delivery of a lyric takes into account a number of stylistic choices, from your energy level, to your vocal tone, to the words you accentuate. You can be sarcastic, angry, or casual - threatening or laid-back. Maybe you slur words together. Or Maybe you emphasize each syllable. How you take your lyrics from the page and perform them is up to you, so experiment with different styles and see what works best for you.

How It All Fits Togther

You can probably see by now that there is a strong relationship between each of the elements within a rap. The way you deliver a lyric can depend on the words you choose. And, the words you choose can be influenced by what you rap about. Even the rap beats and hip hop instrumentals you choose can affect how you write.

The different elements of a rap fit together like a puzzle, so pay attention to the relationships between them when writing. And if you get stuck remember, writing a rap is an expression of yourself and who you are as an individual, so just be yourself.




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