500 WORDS, DAY 14: Hip-Hop as Powerful Poetry

Yesterday I wrote about my early inspiration for getting into hip-hop. The plan for today is to go more in depth into some thoughts I have on hip-hop, as a genre of music and also as a culture, both past and present. There are a lot of aspects of hip-hop that, if I’m being completely honest, I have to admit that I despise. Unfortunately, there are probably more things about hip-hop that I don’t fuck with than things I do, but the aspects of it that I do respect are just so unique and inspiring that they’ve kept me invested in this genre throughout the years. What I really love about hip-hop is that it truly is a form of poetry. Poetry, when done right, can be extremely inspirational, and the powerful, often aggressive, delivery of rap lyrics, can add a lot of emphasis to a powerful message, which in turn makes the listener feel it even more. How do we evaluate poetry? Usually, the greatest poems are those that make us feel something, often an emotion, or many emotions, which we can’t really put into simple words, but which we feel arising within us because of the words we’re reading in the poem. When a powerful message is incorporated properly in a written rap verse, it can be as powerful as any poem, but then when a dope rapper delivers the lyrics with a powerful flow and cadence, it ascends to an even higher level, with more potential for inspiring the listener. Another cool thing about rapping is that you can fit more into your music. A conventional rap verse consists of 16 bars, which is usually about 40 seconds in length, depending on the tempo of the song it’s a part of. Even without rapping too fast, you can usually fit a lot more into those 40 seconds than a singer can. Singing usually requires the words or lines of the song to be stretched out in some way, in order for the melody to be apparent to the listener. Since rap, in its original form, is devoid of melody, words can be quickly said and left behind, followed by other words that are going just as fast as they come, following each other in a rhythmic flow that keeps one’s head nodding. The fastest rappers can fill every beat of every bar with a syllable, leaving the listener wondering how they even have time to breathe in between words. In a way, this can actually be counterproductive though, when it comes to getting a clear message across, since the listener has to struggle to understand what is being said because of the speed at which it’s being performed, but I mention it just to further illustrate my point that one can fit more into a rap verse than a verse of any other genre of music. So, we have a legitimate form of poetry which can be very powerful because of the interesting way it is delivered. Many have understood this to be one of hip-hop’s greatest assets, rappers like 2Pac and Nas, Immortal Technique, or even J. Cole nowadays, who try to incorporate wisdom into their lyrics. They understood that hip-hop is a really unique artform, and that it would be disrespectful to treat is as something other than that, something below that. Those are the types of rappers I respect. I am not saying that I agree with everything they have ever said in their music, or with them as people, when it comes to politics or other things of the sort. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and I would support a rapper who holds completely opposite views from me on a lot of topics, as long as I see that they take their craft seriously, as long as I can tell that there’s a real person behind their lyrics, a poet who is trying to shed light on this life we all live, on this world we all call our home. Now, I’m gonna stop here for now since I’ve reached a good number of words for today, but I’m sure you can see where this topic is headed, and what I mean when I say that there’s a lot about hip-hop that I really dislike. We’ll get into that tomorrow though.

If you have a few minutes please consider checking out my song “Everything Stay In The Past.” I appreciate you for reading and listening!