If you feel as though you have the basics of rapping down and you just need to polish your skills, then this article is for you. Make sure you know the rap basics. Start Rapping, Freestyle Rap, and Do a Breath Control Exercise for Rapping all offer great introductory tips if you’ve never rapped before and don’t know where to start. This article presupposes that you are already familiar with some of the basic rap fundamentals covered in these additional ZedHow articles.
Part 1. Working on Your Lyrical Skill
- Analyze what other rappers are doing. Great artists in any field need to have a working knowledge of the legends who laid the groundwork in the field, as well as the contemporaries currently shaping the industry, and rap is no different. Spend time listening closely to everything from Run DMC to Tupac to local artists around you who haven’t made it big.
- Being a connoisseur alone isn’t enough. Break the lyrics and rhythms of your favorite and least favorite songs down into component parts. Ask yourself what succeeds and what fails in every example.
- Hold yourself accountable to the same standards you hold other rappers. If you realize that you’re tired of hearing some worn out rhyme in other songs, then you need to avoid that same pitfall yourself, for instance
Part 2.
2. Write everything down. Think you’ve got a good idea for a lyric? Write it down where ever you can! Writing down your ideas will help you improve your rap skills since you will have more concepts for raps as well as an ever expanding vocabulary of lyrics.
- Poets and other writers regularly keep pocket-size notebooks on them at all times, so they can easily write down great lines before they forget them no matter where they are. If you have a smart phone, plenty of note-taking apps exist as well.
- Waiting for inspiration to strike before you write will limit your productivity, so try to make yourself write every day.
- Try giving yourself writing assignments. For instance, you can assign yourself thirty minutes or maybe even one verse to write each day. Enlist the help of friends to ask about your daily progress if you don’t think you will pressure yourself enough to do it on your own.
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