Rap (rhythm and poetry) has over the years made its self popular amongst other genres of music. From just a style of music that originated in the black American communities in the 1980’s, to a sector of music that is growing more than its mother culture (hip hop).
Over the years rappers (people who perform rap music, popularly called emcees) have grown in quality (how well they rap) and quantity (how much they are in the music industry). Ranging from soul rapper to choppers or tongue twisters, you could name them all.
In all these, one could say that there is some sort of motivation behind the songs they come out with.
Here are 3 inspiration sources that enable rappers write rap;
- Experiences
- Popular and temporal events
- Selected subjects
Experiences
Human beings in general go through numerous and countless experiences every day. It could beat your work place, at home or even while you are reading this article.
Rappers are able to recreate some of their personal or public experiences over and over again using rap music. This could have happened in the past or is currently happening presently to the rapper or to another person entirely.
You often hear things like how they saw someone who got shot due to gang violence or a lady who got raped in the streets.
Experiences (extra ordinary events) have contributed to the inspiration or numerous rappers all over the world. For example, the likes of 50cent, Lecrae, NF, Eminem, Logic and the rest of them all have a story to tell from their experiences.
Popular and temporal events
May be there was a recent homicidal killing or a recent trend that is having a negative or positive effect on society.
These issues act as inspiration for rap songs, because rap has frequently been used as a tool for freedom fighting since its origination.
During the ages of racism, rap music was used as a tool to communicate to black people and to pass a message. So if a black person got shot, a rapper would use such scenario to pass certain messages across and create awareness about the issue.
Selected Subjects
Emcees don’t just use rap music as an awareness creation tool alone. Rap music can be used to talk about anything take for instance, these lines below.
“- Tick Tock Tick Tock, I hear you sleep not
9:45 in the morning you get to wake up
Cos the clock ain’t a part of you men, you got to wake up”.
I know the lines are a bit lame, but you understand what they were trying to say right? Simply talking about “time”.
Rhythm and poetry is a great way to express your views about anything. What differentiates rap music from any other method of public speaking is that it is done over beats or instrumentals that are loud and groovy, instrumentals that have melody coupled with high kicks and 808 drums.
Rap music also uses figures of speech often times while converging a bar or punch line to its audience. Believe me it sticks to the mind faster and longer than you can ever imagine. Sometimes you sit down and you start singing or repeating the lyrics of a rap song you heard some days back or even the previous day.
Other sources of inspiration for rap music;
CONCLUSION
In this article I have broken down or explained to you how rappers write rap and where they get their inspiration from. If you have any contrary view, please feel free to share them in the comment section below.
