Hip hop/rap music is an art form and system governed by its own principles and rules. It’s based on methods, techniques, practices, and processes cultivated from within its own tradition and the larger Black music tradition. While some of these processes are sometimes filtered through standard tropes of the European concept of music composition and […]]]>Hip hop/rap music is an art form and system governed by its own principles and rules. It’s based on methods, techniques, practices, and processes cultivated from within its own tradition and the larger Black music tradition. While some of these processes are sometimes filtered through standard tropes of the European concept of music composition and theory, they are not guided by such tropes. Again, all musical cultures use some sort of music “theory”, i.e. a way of forming and expressing (describing, explaining) how and what musical events have occurred. However, not all musical cultures use a written notation to express their theories. (Some areas of hip hop/rap music can be analyzed and understood by some of the basic language and concepts of music theory, some areas cannot.) But music theory, as a whole, is an inadequate means for surveying and truly understanding hip hop/rap music and beatmaking.
We must also not forget that hip hop/rap music is a different musical convention altogether — the hip hop/rap music tradition is an amalgamation of a number of things. It’s a music tradition that is well embedded within the Black (African American) music tradition. It’s not a descendent of seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth-century European music traditions. Also, hip hop/rap music is a hybrid of pre- and post-industrialism, coupled with great advancement in recording technology. Even more telling, hip hop/rap music is the born product of urban American street culture and neglected lower class Blacks and Latinos, not privileged whites. Finally, and perhaps most importantly for the purposes of this study, hip hop/rap music is the first music in the world to be created exclusively through the use of prexisting songs and other sound recordings.
Hip hop theory is further distinguished by the fact that it governs and speaks to two different but co-equal and interdependent layers or dimensions of musical activity: the beat and the rhyme — the instrumental and the vocal. In the hip hop/rap music tradition, the “rap” or the “rhyme” describes the chief (native) form of vocalization, while the “beat” is used to describe the entire instrumental.
*This article is an excerpt from The BeatTips Manual, 7th Edition by Amir Said.
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Up to the end of the twentieth century, conventional wisdom regarding rhythm was that things like groove and feel where only possible through human performativity in the traditional sense. The idea was that feel was the product of human touch, something that musicians could add to rhythmic structure only through their performance of it. Another […]]]>Up to the end of the twentieth century, conventional wisdom regarding rhythm was that things like groove and feel where only possible through human performativity in the traditional sense. The idea was that feel was the product of human touch, something that musicians could add to rhythmic structure only through their performance of it. Another assumption was that the groove qualities of rhythmic music, i.e. the characteristics that produce rhythmic feel, arise specifically from micro-temporal deviations from a presumed time norm.
Yet another assumption was that machine-made music was devoid of groove qualities because it presumably lacked the micro-temporal variations added by a human in performance. Electronic music production, ergo machine-made music production, has proven all of these assumptions wrong. This is especially true in light of the fact that machine-made music, i.e. music made with drum machines, digital samplers, and DAWs, involves a remarkable level of experimentation with and manipulation of the micro-timing of rhythmic events.80 The most obvious proof against the (previous) conventional wisdom regarding rhythm, human performance capabilities, and machine-made music has been the evolution of electronic music, with hip hop’s beatmaking tradition at the forefront of this evolution.
*This article is an excerpt from The BeatTips Manual, 7th Edition by Amir Said.
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The drums of the ‘60s and ‘70s powered the drums of most hip hop/rap music from the late ‘80s to the ‘90s; and these sampled drums carried with them the echoes of their rhythmic sense. Early on, these drums came typically in the form of the use of breakbeats. But by the early ‘90s, a […]]]>The drums of the ‘60s and ‘70s powered the drums of most hip hop/rap music from the late ‘80s to the ‘90s; and these sampled drums carried with them the echoes of their rhythmic sense. Early on, these drums came typically in the form of the use of breakbeats. But by the early ‘90s, a serious shift had occurred. The move away from breakbeats to using individually sampled drum sounds was, for beatmakers (producers), about being able to have greater control and more creativity. Moreover, it was about the possibility of creating new rhythms that were not found (or possible) in the breaks of records that were typically sampled.
When beatmakers (producers) say “drum sounds”, what we actually mean is drum kits. Our drum sounds represent our digital drum kits. Beatmakers (producers) sampled the kits and unique sounds from an unlimited number of drummers (most of which who were far less known than iconic drummers like Jabo Starks, Clyde Stubblefield, Bernard Perry, or John Bonham). These sounds were then modified, using various techniques, like pitch bending, reverb, compression, and EQ, and then recontextualized in new hip hop/rap beats. Thus, the use of individual drum sound samples, as opposed to breakbeats, has dramatically impacted the approach to rhythm in hip hop/rap music.
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*The following article is an excerpt from The BeatTips Manual, 7th Edition by Amir Said. Timing correct is just that: It’s a corrective measure for your timing. So how you set your timing correct values should be determined by how good (or bad) your general sense of timing is. If your timing is excellent, that […]]]>
*The following article is an excerpt from The BeatTips Manual, 7th Edition by Amir Said.
Timing correct is just that: It’s a corrective measure for your timing. So how you set your timing correct values should be determined by how good (or bad) your general sense of timing is. If your timing is excellent, that is, your drum event-strikes are comparable to the playing of a traditional drummer, meaning you strike on time, with little to no mistakes, then you really don’t even need to have the timing correct function on. But if your timing is fairly decent and you want to put in some swing, then you’re probably better off setting the timing correct note value to either the default 1/16th NOTE or perhaps even 1/32 TRPLT. (If you’re using an Akai MPC, you also want to make sure that the shuffle % is set to: 50, and set the Shift timing to: LATER.) If your timing is poor, then you almost certainly want to use the timing correct note value of 1/16th NOTE or 1/16th TRPLT.
The reason many well-known beatmakers (producers) set the timing correct to 1/16th and/or 1/16th TRPLT is not because their timing is poor, but rather their timing is so good, they know how to manipulate the corrective nuances of the timing correct function to their advantage. But when using the standard 1/16th NOTE value, you should be aware that if your timing isn’t that good, and if you’re not particularly skilled at note correction and the like, you run the risk of recording drum-pattern sequences that sound stiff, robotic, or slow-dragging with an off-beat feel. But then again, sometimes you might want that slow-dragging effect; it depends on the style and sound of beat.
Generally speaking though, I recommend setting the timing correct to either 1/32 TRPLT (especially for vintage hardware sequencers like the Akai MPC 60 II or the E-Mu SP 1200), 1/16, or 1/16TRPLT and leaving it as your default for all of your basic drum patterns. For instance, let’s say that you have an arrangement of non-drum sounds looping nicely and you’ve just added the main kick and snare to the sequence, and everything’s really starting to come together. All you need now to complete the drum pattern is the main hi-hat. Why stop the loop, change the timing correct, restart the loop, then play the hi-hat with the corrective protection? If you’ve got the loop going well and the main kick and snare are already in place, then just play the hi-hat right over the top of the existing pattern in real-time. In this way, you’re forced to trust your own timing rather than merely rely on the time correct function. I also recommend that you get accustomed to programming your event-strikes exactly how your fingers play them in the sequence, mistakes and all. This way, you’ll build up your timing strengths and neutralize your timing weaknesses.
Finally, although it may be a good idea to keep a default timing correct value for your main drum sounds and patterns, there are occasions where changing the timing correct value makes sense. For instance, depending upon the rhythmic nature of the event that you want to initiate and drum pattern that you want to achieve (especially in the area of additional syncopation like stutter hi-hat, kick, or snare patterns), choosing the most effective timing correct value is essential.
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Beatmakers (producers) are not simply clever electronic music production
“programmers”. They are also performance artists, much in the same vein of
traditional musicians.]]>The Human Touch: A Note About Playing EMPIs Like Various Traditional Music Instruments
I see the drum pads on my Akai MPC 4000 (and MPC One) drum machine/sampler/sequencer the same way a guitarist sees the strings on his guitar; or the same way a keyboardist sees the keys on his keyboard; or the same way a drummer sees the skinheads on his drums. I don’t merely program my MPC, I play it. This is the same way that most seasoned sample-based beatmakers feel. As Rsonist, one half of the production duo The Heatmakerz puts it, “The MPC is an instrument! Regardless… If I put 10 sounds in 10 pads and I gotta arrange it into a melody, I can do that. I don’t know like… this is a C chord, or whatever it is. But at the end of the day, I know what’s on key, what’s off key, what’s right, what’s wrong…”4
Beatmakers (producers) are not simply clever electronic music production “programmers”. They are also performance artists, much in the same vein of traditional musicians. But what distinguishes beatmakers (producers) from traditional musicians is the fact that beatmakers represent the whole band! Beatmakers are not responsible for just one instrument in the same way that one-instrument-capable traditional musicians are. For every beat, most beatmakers (producers) are responsible for playing (or providing) the drums as well as the string and wind instruments. So EMPIs, like the Akai MPC, represent for us a multi-instrument — an instrument that, in effect, allows us to play and tap into the essence of any instrument that we want. One moment a beatmaker (producer) can be crafting the drums; the next moment he can be laying down bass lines; and the next moment he can be flipping a sample or making a melodic synth phrase. This is one of the most liberating aspects of the beatmaking tradition. Because of this aspect, beatmakers (producers) have the potential to be much more versatile music producers than the average traditional musician.
EMPIs double as music instruments and production hubs that give beatmakers (producers) endless instrumental and musical possibilities when choosing instruments and sounds. And because EMPIs are both instruments and computers, beatmakers (producers) who use software-based setups should be careful to remember the “human touch”, because you can easily become more programmer than musician if you focus more on computing and less on composing. One area to safeguard against this is to use an EMPI with pads (for example a MIDI controller with pads) for triggering sounds; this gives off the feeling of playing something rather than just programming something. And note:
One major characteristic of the Black (African American) music tradition, and all of the music traditions that stem from it, most notably rhythm and blues, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, and funk, is that all instruments, particularly the bass guitar, are played in a percussive manner. Thus, playing samples and other sounds on drum pads harkens back and pays homage to that tradition.
Notes:
4. Author interview with Rsonist, The BeatTips Manual, 4th Edition (2007).
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When it comes to making beats, setting the right tempo (BPM) isn't as easy as it might seem. Some beatmakers prefer to "tap out the tempo of a beat in real time, while others opt to go for pre-set tempos.]]>Check This Out — Escaping the Tempo Trap: Exploring Different Tempo Ranges, and How To Avoid Getting Stuck With the Same BPM For All of Your Beats
*The following article is an excerpt from The BeatTips Manual, 7th Edition by Amir Said.
When it comes to making beats, setting the right tempo (BPM) isn’t as easy as it might seem. Some beatmakers (producers) prefer to “tap out” the tempo of a beat in real time, while others opt to go for pre-set tempos. Both scenarios are fine, but one problem that tends to plague many beatmakers (producers) is the inability to expand the tempo range of their beats. I like to refer to this issue as the “tempo trap”.
For most of us, the beats that we make fall within the same general tempo range. And this fact is guided by the style of beats that we like as well as the base compositional style that we work from. Each beatmaking compositional style — sample-based, synthetic-sounds-based, or hybrid-based — offers its own set of possibilities and challenges. So each compositional style, along with the style and sound of beats that you like, plays a big role in the tempo ranges you will ultimately work within.
For instance, with regards to sample-based beats, up-tempo is usually not the norm for most sample-based beatmakers (producers). One reason for this has to do with the pitch limits of sampling. Although sample-based beatmakers (myself included) enjoy utilizing the flexibility of being able to pitch a sample up or down, we’re mindful of the fact that drastic pitch moves away from the original pitch of the sample can impede the sample’s true potential, and thereby torpedo the chance of a dope beat.
For example, if you speed the sample up too much, do you then also speed up the overall BPM of your beat’s sequence? And if you increase the BPM rate, do you then have to decrease or increase the number of steps (events) in your drumwork? Sometimes, speeding a sample up (specifically, the primary sample) can be properly reconciled (depending on your style and taste) by slowing down the overall BPM of a beat, and by increasing the number of steps (events) in your drumwork. But of course, that all depends on the type and tone of the sample that you’re working with. For instance, with the synthetic-sounds-based compositional style (the so-called “keyboard beats”/synth rap style), there is perhaps more flexibility with tempo ranges. After all, once free of the sometimes inflexibility of samples, synthetic-sounds-based beatmakers (producers) can presumably work from a much broader tempo range. Well, in theory that’s correct. But in practice, this isn’t always the case.
Here, the important thing to remember is that contemporary hip hop/rap music is pretty much underscored by a median tempo range. Still, there are certainly slower and faster tempos being used in hip hop/rap music. But anything slower than 70 BPM is typically used for today’s “R&B” ballads. Likewise, anything faster than 120 BPM is typically used for urban pop dance tunes rather than core hip hop/rap styles and sounds. Hence, even most synthetic-sounds-based beats ascribe to similar tempo ranges that are found among sample-based beats.
Although the three main beatmaking compositional styles defer to the same tempo ranges, the reality remains that some beatmakers (producers) get stuck in a tempo trap, making beats that are consistently too slow or too fast. So how do you break from this? For me, the key to escaping the tempo trap has always been my insistence on practicing making beats within four distinct tempo ranges (BPM ranges): 83 – 87; 88 – 93; 94 – 98; and 99 – 103 BPM (fine tune +/- 5%).
Typically, most of my beats fall within the 86 – 98 BPM range. However, I still practice (experiment) with much slower and faster tempos, because doing so helps me to better understand the subtle vibe and nuance differences between smaller tempo ranges. For example, on the surface, the difference between let’s say 96 and 97 BPM is minimal. But depending on all of the elements of the beat — samples, synthetic sounds, arrangement scheme, drumwork, etc. — the slight incremental BPM difference can either push, pull, or shuffle the movement (pace) of the entire beat.
As a rapper, I know the importance of feeling the right pace of a beat. If I feel (know) the beat is pushing, then I know to be quick with my rhyme flow and to truncate words at certain spots in each measure. If I feel (know) the beat is pulling, then I know to lag with my rhyme flow and maybe slur some of my words together. And if I feel (know) the beat is shuffling, then I know to increase my word count in each bar, which requires me to be very careful with my breath control. In each case, when I’m creating a new beat, knowing the subtle differences that occur between incremental BPM changes helps me to quickly identify what tempo the beat should be at (especially for me to appropriately rhyme to it). Because of this, I never get trapped in either a slow or fast BPM zone. Instead, I’m always prepared to set the right tempo for the style and sound of beat that I’m working on.
Finally, I should also point out that while I rarely use beats that are north of 99 BPM, there are several reasons why I still like to practice making beats at faster tempos. Using my own tempo and loop exercises, in which I use higher tempo ranges (usually 103 – 125 BPM) with the same primary sample over different drumwork sequences, allows me to work on ideas that I have for new drum structures. It also helps me to audition new snare sounds. Further, practicing with faster tempos also helps me to better understand the different ways that loops can work at faster and slower tempos.
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"I’m always a consumer first. Then I’m a DJ. Then I’m a producer. And then I’m
an artist!"]]>Feel, Nuance, Individual Needs, and Approach Holds Is the Answer
*The following article is an excerpt from The BeatTips Manual, 7th Edition by Amir Said.
Sa’id: How do you see yourself as a producer?
DJ Premier: I’m always a consumer first. Then I’m a DJ. Then I’m a producer. And then I’m an artist! I’ve been a recording artist with Gang Starr since 1988. And I don’t enjoy being a recording artist all the time, because of the politics, how the industry dealt with us on a major label. It’s a headache. Furthermore, I’m just not a spotlight person. I always like to play the cut, and just get my money on the low. Because of that, I’ve always gone with that mentality.
I was given a chance to do music as a consumer. The problem with the record companies now is the fact that they don’t buy records anymore. You just saw what I bought. [He literally pull’s each CD out of bag] I just bought Ray Cash, I just bought the new Dogg Pound, I just bought Shawna; I bought Field Mob; and I bought Mr. Lif! I knew about J Dilla, I know about Stones Throw; I know about the underground, and I still know all about the major people. And that’s what keeps me fresher than most producers, because they don’t go outside a certain realm of their craft. I was raised on the ‘70s and the ‘60s and all the good ‘80s music. I was into Punk Rock, New Wave — Duran Duran, Susie and the Banchies, The Smiths. You know, groups that you’d be like, “Damn, Premier listens to that shit?” Hell yeah! ‘Cuz it was good music. Good music is good music! But when it comes to hip hop, I’m really, really adamant about keepin’ it hard. That’s the way I was raised on it. I saw it from the very beginning.
And I lived in Texas at the time, and I still saw it from the very beginning, because my roots in Brooklyn were through my grandfather, my mother’s father. I used to be in Brooklyn so much. He took me everywhere, you know, in the early ‘70s and the early ‘80s, when niggas was just break dancin’ for money and there were no records out yet. By the time I was 13, visiting my grandpa, I felt like I was a New Yorker, then. So when I moved here in ’85, everything wasn’t new. The same people I fucked with, still rollin’ with me. And from there I just expanded into what I do now. But like I said, being a consumer and a DJ is the number one thing for me!
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Comparative analysis in hip hop/rap music is always a tricky endeavor. Taking different rappers and different catalogs and different eras and comparing them together? That tends to yield more super fan-based arguments than it yields insight on the world’s #1 music genre. However, there are those rare cases where empirical evidence is undeniable. Those cases where, when […]]]>Comparative analysis in hip hop/rap music is always a tricky endeavor. Taking different rappers and different catalogs and different eras and comparing them together? That tends to yield more super fan-based arguments than it yields insight on the world’s #1 music genre. However, there are those rare cases where empirical evidence is undeniable. Those cases where, when we look at the facts on the surface and beneath, we find a consensus. And when we look at the GOATS of hip hop/rap music, now roughly after 50 years of its history, we can see this level of undeniable consensus is one particular area: Many of the GOATS were young when they made their marks on hip hop/rap music.
But why is that?
To answer this question, we have to look at the sign of the times. This means, we have to pause the reality of today’s information machine — the internet — and travel back to a time when information wasn’t just a click away. A time when you couldn’t quickly read Twitter threads and commentaries and act like you were more knowledgeable on a subject than you actually were. A time when information was hard earned. A time when information was gathered, for some more than others, out of curiosity and a hunger to learn.
Poetry In Black Cultural Spaces… and More Words Per Stanza
By the early ‘70s, poetry in Black cultural spaces across America’s inner cities had become something powerful. Poetry in this vein wasn’t the stuff of kids nursery rhymes — It wasn’t a docile thing. Poetry, especially against the backdrop of the Black power movement and the streets-to-prison pipeline, was a mechanism used to fight and cope with oppression. And since Black music artists like Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, and Isaac Hayes, just to name a few, were all considered to be poets, in addition to being singer-songwriters, poetry was not only prestigious, it was popular.
Such a climate placed a premium on words (especially slang). The ability to express yourself though poetry was considered a valuable thing during these times. So the capacity to distinguish yourself through poetry was absolutely priceless.
Looking closer at poetry, one of the chief mediums of the written word, we understand that poetry depends a great deal on the choice of words for its impact. Unlike a short story, a novella, or a novel, with a poem — and here I’m talking about the short form that is commonly associated with modern poetry, not the epic, book-length poetry of John Milton — the author has less time to make his point. Couple that with the standard 3-minute song length, and you see how a rapper’s time is both limited and liberating all at once. Traditional songs can do well with just three 4-line stanzas and a 1-line refrain repeated to taste. Rappers can’t get away that! Rap songs require “bars” — more words per stanza.
The Purpose of Teaching Poetry In School
Here, let’s pause for a moment and think about how poetry was taught in school back in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s. Just as music education was considered to be a vital part of a healthy education — this was before music education became a casualty of budgets at schools everywhere — poetry was once seen as one of the best ways to help students develop writing skills. Of course, implicit in the purpose of teaching poetry to young students was the aim of getting students to develop a love for reading.
You see, whether or not you have math skills beyond basic arithmetic, multiplication, and division; whether or not you go to or graduate from college; whether you take up a job where you use your head or hands — There is no skill more important to your personal development, more critical to your ability to advance in life, than reading. And reading comprehension is developed both through regular reading and writing. Since poetry is the most accessible, least expensive form of writing (practically all of us have tried our hand at, whether in school or private notebooks, journals, and…rhyme books), it was always considered to be a fundamental teaching aide. One byproduct of this was the emergence countless budding poets.
The Chief Currency of Poets
Vocabulary is the chief currency of poets. Sure, you gotta have style, you gotta have a voice, a recognizable sense within the poem. You gotta be good at arranging words. But without the vocabulary, a poem can’t really cook. And your vocabulary, poet or not, can only be developed in two ways: By what you hear and by what you read.
And those who read better, hear better. And those who read and hear better, write better!
Now, let’s also remember the fact that Vocabulary is also, without a doubt, built up orally. The first five years of our lives, we mostly learn things orally, not by reading or writing. We pick up and mimic what we hear. Then as we learn to read, we don’t simply add new words to our growing vocabulary, we also draw connections between the words we already know. In this paradigm, the poets develop a parallel sense for the construction and arrangement of words. Think about how this translates to a rapper’s rhyme skills.
Now let’s turn to information.
Information Gathering and Intellect: A Hunger For Knowledge, A Curiosity About the World Around You
In the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, did teenage Black kids spend hours in the library?
Nas dropped out of high school when he was 14 years old; at 19, he recorded Illmatic (1994), arguably the greatest hip hop/rap album of all time. Kool G Rap was already full-on in the streets by 16; at 18, he recorded “It’s A Demo,” a song that pioneered the multisyllabic rhyme style and help change the face of hip hop/rap lyricism forever.
LL Cool J dropped his debut album, Radio (1985), at 17, and by his own account, he’d been maneuvering since age 15 (not spending hours inside a library). Rakim, who changed the entire course of hip hop/rap lyricism on his first album, was 19 when Eric B & Rakim’s debut album, Paid in Full (1987), was released.
Ice Cube was 19 when he lead N.W.A.’s powerful debut album, Straight Outta Compton (1988). Run and D.M.C. (Run-D.M.C.) were both 19 when they recorded “It’s Like That,” “Rock Box,” “Hollis Crew,” and “Hard Times” — All songs would appear on their debut album, Run-D.M.C. (1984), an album that catapulted hip hop/rap music to another stratosphere.
Big Daddy Kane was 19 when he recorded his debut album, Long Live the Kane (1988), an album in which he introduced what I call the “showmanship delivery.” Prodigy (of Mobb Deep) was 19 when he wrote and performed one of the greatest verses in hip hop/rap music history: verse 1 from “Shook Ones, Pt. II,” from the classic album The Infamous (1995).
Snoop Doog appeared on “Nuthin But A G-Thang” when he was 21, and by that time, he’d already earned a name for himself as a respected gang member. Slick Rick, the greatest storytelling rapper in hip hop/rap history, was 23 when he earned that prestigious mark on his debut album, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick (1988).
Like Sick Rick, Raekwon was 23 when the world first heard him on Wu-Tang Clan’s hip hop/rap shattering “Protect Ya Neck” in 1993. Kendrick Lamar had released a number of mixtapes years before dropping his debut album, Section.80, he was 24.
What these 12 GOATS illustrate is the fact that, while the library is a great place for information, you need not “spend hours” in the library to read a book or a newspaper. Nor do you need to “spend hours” in a library to develop your vocabulary or have a hunger for knowledge and a curiosity about the world around you. The quest for knowledge and enlightening information is not an institutional thing, it’s a personal choice. And it can be manifested in many different ways.
Equipped with basic communication skills — i.e. the ability to listen to, talk to, and express your ideas to others — and basic reading skills, we learn how to gather information. And there’s no equality when it comes to information gathering. Some of us are more enthusiastic about it than others; some of us are simply better at than others. Some of us see information gathering as a vital part of everyday life, something that you turn on regularly; while others see information gathering as a minor tool that we use just when we need to know something.
For the poet, information gathering is always on, it never turns off! It lives in the forefront and in the background. Which means that the poet is constantly adding to and building up his vocabulary. In this way, the poet uses his intellect differently than the average person. And I should note, as philosopher Thomas Sowell has observed, “Intellect is not wisdom.” Moreover, the central problem with the modern concept of intellect is that it is nothing more than the memorization of information.
Poets don’t simply memorize information. Poets apply information. Poets execute the ideas that they secure from their information gathering. Poets use awareness, deduction, logic, and the wisdom gained from personal experience to apply lessons to the information that they gather. This invariably leads to the development of a strong vocabulary, which is essential to a top-level rapper (lyricist).
And let’s be clear about something here. A strong vocabulary isn’t about “big words”. A strong vocabulary is, above all, about the command, the mastery, of the common words and language that you already know. Someone who knows 1% of the Oxford dictionary can be 100 times more expressive and convincing than someone who knows 50% of it. You think it’s an accident that practically all of the GOATS of hip hop/rap music have some strong connection to or are at least familiar with the streets? Again, most of the GOATS of hip hop/rap music didn’t cut their teeth inside libraries — Doesn’t mean they never stepped foot inside a library, and it certainly doesn’t mean they didn’t read or gather information in other equally useful ways. In any case, having an “expanded vocabulary” doesn’t ensure that a rapper will be a GOAT. It can help, but it’s not necessary.
Thing is, you don’t read just to pick up new words, although that is sometimes a byproduct of reading. You read to gather information; you read to learn something. For the poet, this means learning more about the words he already knows. It means learning new arrangements of words that he already knows. And this leads directly to finding synonyms for words that he already knows. Which leads to developing a better understanding for how to construct metaphors, punchlines, analogies, and detailed accounts of stories and events. Notice how all of the GOATS can do these things exceptionally well?
What about listening and talking for the purpose of gathering information? There’s a parallel. When you listen and talk, you may sometimes pick up new words — especially depending on who you’re listening to or with whom you’re speaking with — but more importantly, you learn more about how words (mostly the ones you already know) sound. This leads directly to a deeper understanding of the rhythm of words and how they can go together in song. You think it’s an accident that all of the GOATS of hip hop/rap music are masters of rhythm?
Poetry and Lyricism Learned and the Idea of Being A Poet
So there’s our compass. In the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, the decades wherein all the GOATS of hip hop/rap music were born, poetry was taught as something powerful. And by “taught,” I do not merely mean taught in schools. Poetry was taught in everyday family life. Poetry was taught every day in the streets. Poetry was taught (and learned) every time a young man tried to “rap” to a girl. If you had strong rap — if a girl liked your rap — that was really another way of saying that you were…a poet. Back in the day (forgive me for sounding like my father), you couldn’t pull girls with weak rap; you couldn’t say the same thing that every guy said if you expected to win over a girl (at least not with words alone).
The GOATS were young because the idea of being a poet — the idea of distinguishing yourself through the written and oral word — was fostered in them at a young age. And as hip hop/rap music made the leap from park jam cassette tapes to recording studios to a bonafide commercial music genre, the GOATS who emerged between the mid-‘80s and mid-‘90s brought with them their poetic sense. Coupled with hip hop beats — by and large sampled-based beats — this poetic sense evolved into the specific lyrical sense that continues to distinguish hip hop/rap music today.
What We Find Today
Why is the age, poetry, and lyricism parallels less prevalent with many rappers of today’s generation? Today, image is popular. Looking the part is popular. Fitting in is popular. Sounding alike is popular. None of these things have any need for poetry. Put another way, many of today’s rappers can still be successful without being particularly poetic.
Still, despite a huge wave of mediocrity, top-level lyricism does exist today; and it’s not hard to find. But even though top-level lyricism lives on in today’s hip hop/rap music, there is, overall, less of a premium on lyricism — less premium on being a poet — among many of today’s rappers. I wouldn’t chalk all of this up to a mere disinterest in poetry. Again, for all intents and purposes, for the last 10 years or so, it hasn’t been necessary to be poetic if you want to be successful in hip hop/rap music. That’s not a critique, that’s a fact, a sign of the times. There has been a sameness to lyricism today. I offer no opinion on whether this lack of premium on lyricism or this overall sameness is a good or bad thing, because there has always been degrees of talent that separated rappers (poets), and there has always been degrees of sameness, to some extent, in hip hop/rap music. Listen to King Tee’s “Let’s Dance” (1988) and tell me where he sounded like he was from. Here’s a clue: King Tee is from Compton, not New York.
Sameness notwithstanding, over the past several years I have increasingly noticed a return to poetry, what some are describing as “rapping rapping”. If this trend holds, and I believe it will, especially in the light of the impact of the 2024 (2025?) Drake/Kendrick Lamar rap beef, there will be a number of new editions to the young GOATS list.
Coda
Music artists, like all creatives, choose a course of action based on the incentive that such course of action may provide for them. It’s too simple to say that the present era hip hop/rap music is overpopulated with rappers who just eager to make money. When was there ever a time in hip hop/rap’s history where rappers did not want to make money? The pursuit of the bag may not have been the primary objective of rappers from past eras, but “getting paid” has always been a motive and an incentive for rappers. (Eric B. & Rakim’s debut album was called Paid In Full. This title was not ambiguous.)
It’s also too simple to say that today’s hip hop/rap generation lacks “hunger”. As a matter of course, people don’t seek out obstacles when pursuing a goal. Which is to say that most people take the path to their goals that is the least difficult. If you’re a present-day rapper just seeking clout and, by extension, quick money and fame, and the easiest path to that goal is to do the bare minimum, to undervalue lyricism or originality, or to mimic other low-effort/copycat artists, then that’s likely what you’re going to do.
But if you’re present-day rapper who wants to reach the level of artistry historically exhibited by the GOATs of hip hop/rap eras gone past, then the path you’re going take will be the one underscored by your study of the past GOATs and the corresponding hip hop history.
Either way, hip hop ain’t dying.
For a more in-depth discussion of hip hop/rap music and the art of sampling, read my book The Art of Sampling: The Sampling Tradition of Hip Hop/Rap Music and Copyright Law, 3rd Edition.
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Call it a product, a brand, or a sound, the best thing that any artist can offer is their own unique feeling. Now, this feeling can belong to a sub-style and sound of hip hop/rap music, but the feeling stands out nonetheless. BeatTips Certified is a formal acknowledgement of those artists who illustrate that special, […]]]>Call it a product, a brand, or a sound, the best thing that any artist can offer is their own unique feeling. Now, this feeling can belong to a sub-style and sound of hip hop/rap music, but the feeling stands out nonetheless. BeatTips Certified is a formal acknowledgement of those artists who illustrate that special, unique feeling.
Grafh, Mike & Keyz, Jason Martin – “Concrete Jungle” feat. Mitchy Slick
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The number of drum sounds that a beatmaker (producer) should have is debatable. There are some who believe that you can never have enough drum sounds. On the other hand, there are those who believe that you should have simply a core set of drum sounds. So what is the right amount of drum sounds? […]]]>The number of drum sounds that a beatmaker (producer) should have is debatable. There are some who believe that you can never have enough drum sounds. On the other hand, there are those who believe that you should have simply a core set of drum sounds. So what is the right amount of drum sounds? Truth is, that’s up to each individual beatmaker (producer). But when deciding upon how many drum sounds to carry, either a core (limited) set or an unlimited set, there are a number of things you should consider.
To begin with, you must recognize how the sound of drums areperceived and valued in the first place. In beatmaking, as well as in traditional drumming, the value of drums is predicated more upon tonal possibilities rather than simply quantitative possibilities. That is to say, it’s not the sheer number of available drum sounds that are really important, it’s the various kinds of tones (unique sounds) that drum sounds can be made to produce.
Traditional drummers can employ several different techniques to produce different tones. For example, they can tighten or loosen the skin heads on their drums, and they can also modify their playing style to manipulate the velocity, attack, and sustain of a drum strike. Each technique has the potential to render a unique tone. Likewise, through effects processors, EQs, plug-ins, and the like, beatmakers can also modify their drum sounds. And just as with traditional drummers, beatmakers in their playing/programming can also manipulate the velocity, attack, and sustain of the drum sounds that they deploy.
Traditional drummers often do more with less. Celebrated drummers like John “Jabo” Starks, Clyde Stubblefield, Bernard Perry, John Bonham, and Neil Peart did not have an arsenal of snare sounds, yet they were able to carve out very distinct sound signatures. This is because the style, approach, and modification that a particular drummer uses is paramount to their ability to tap the various tonal possibilities of a given drum sound. Because beatmaking is a form of electronic music production, there will inevitably be a larger selection of drum sounds to chose from. However, this does not change the fundamental value of drum sounds. The tonal possibilities of drum sounds still outweighs the sheer number of drum sounds.
But those who advocate for having an unlimited set of drum sounds have their arguments as well. Some maintain that an unlimited amount of drum sounds leads to a better drum sound library, which in turn makes for more creativity. But if the purpose of a drum sound library is for amassing both a set of standard and customized drum sounds so that one can create and develop their own unique sound, then an infinite number of drum sounds actually undermines this purpose and contradicts the creation of one’s own unique sound. After all, a unique overall drum style and sound requires familiarity; and familiarity depends upon a beatmaker’s ability to repeatedly use a core set of drums in new (creative) ways. All great drummers have their own style and sound. There are some beatmakers who purport to use entirely new drum sounds every time that they make a new beat. So it would seem that an unlimited amount of drum sounds presents a beatmaker with an unlimited amount of options.
But here’s the question that begs asking. Is such an approach actually practical or even worth it in the long run? An infinite number of drum sounds doesn’t necessarily translate into a higher level of quality. For instance, let’s say you have a set of 500 separate snares. If you were to critically survey each snare, how many of those snares would actually sound distinct and unique? In fact, how many times would a certain tone be replicated? Furthermore, how many of these snares would actually be usable? What I’m getting at is that out of a given set of 500 snares, it’s not at all unreasonable for you to expect to find many that are quite similar. Finally, there’s also the management and real-time use issue of deferring to an unlimited set of drum sounds. Scrolling through thousands of drums sounds just takes something away from the creative process. For one thing, it’s time consuming; but more importantly, it disrupts your workflow, which in turn hampers the creative process.
Core Drum Sounds and Unique Style
A core (limited) set of drum sounds tends to breed a sort of familiarity and personal style and sound, whereas an unlimited set of drum sounds breeds an over-reliance on variety for variety’s sake. It also breeds as a degree of uncertainty and indecision, which typically leads to bad choices.
At one point in time, I probably had more than 5,000 drum sounds. I had nearly all of the MIDI Mark drum kits, the Kid Nepro drum kits, Sample Kings drum kits, various drum sound CDs, the E-Mu SP 1200 full drum sound library, the Akai S950 full drum sound library, and sampled drum sounds from over 14 volumes of the Ultimate Breakbeat Records series! I even had drum sound libraries that were comprised of sounds that I recorded and had mixed at recording studios. So at one point in time, I had a huge drum-sound library.
Then I reconsidered what I was doing and what I wanted to do. Ultimately, I simply wanted to make dope beats. But paying too much attention to building up an infinite drum-sound library was actually distracting me from my ultimate goal. Once I made this revelation, I vigorously started purging my drum sound library. I tossed out every drum sound that I wasn’t using. After that, I did another purge; this time I tossed out all drum sounds that I considered to be just okay. I went on to do more purges, separating the great drum sounds from the good drum sounds, followed by a separation of the best drum sounds from the great ones. When all was said and done, I was left with only those drum sounds that I thought were dope and those sounds that worked best within the style and sound of beats that I wanted to create.
I understand that some beatmakers (producers) thrive on having an unlimited set of options at their disposal. Some beatmakers (producers) simply like the notion of having unlimited choices. But what often happens in these cases is that you force-feed beats, i.e. you use new drum sounds simply because you have them, not because of their distinct tonal value or unique character or because they actually work well within their style of beats you’re making. For many beatmakers (producers) like myself, it’s not about spending unnecessary time searching for an arbitrary perfect snare. It’s about locating a snare from your library that you know well and making that snare sound fit with the theme of the beat at hand. As I’ve already discussed, drum sounds can really be divided into four main categories, with additional sub-categories. For instance, you have heavy kicks and standard kicks. Then there are standard snares and “irregular” snares. Next, there are hi-hats, closed-hats, and open-hats. And after that there are cymbals: rides and crashes and the like.
Finally, there are the secondary percussion sounds: tambourines, rims, bells, timpani, and the like. Of all of the aforementioned kinds of drum sounds, I carry about three to five drum sounds of each variety. And if and when I find that I can’t make any of those sounds work with a new beat that I’m making, then that means that the new beat is wack, simple and plain. Here’s the bottom line for me: I know my personal drum sound library very well. In fact, I know my drum sounds far better than I know my gear, and almost as well as my favorite records. But when I had 5,000 drum sounds, there was no way that I could realistically ever know all of those sounds. Therefore, I prefer the feeling of knowing that my drum kit, if you will, is set and ready to go whenever I have a new idea.
For a more in-depth discussion of the art of sampling, read my book The Art of Sampling: The Sampling Tradition of Hip Hop/Rap Music and Copyright Law, 3rd Edition.
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