The (Sm)art of Rap

It is a ritual I’ve held since 2016. Sometime in October, I usher a group of youth researchers into the world of emceeing. The class is held on the campus of Queens College, and as I make my annual march across the quad, the 16-year-old inside me gets excited. We are about to rap! The acronym to describe rap is “rhythm and poetry,” and for the next 90 minutes, that is what I explore with a room of high school students.

This group is a mix of curious, shy, and reserved teenagers, most of whom haven’t rapped. In fact, some don’t even listen to or particularly like rap or hip-hop! They are there to research a social issue using a method called Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR). For their project, they synthesize research into a creative offering that becomes part of their presentation at the academic conferences they will attend in the spring. As the arts facilitator, I’m introducing them to one of the art practices they can use. 

Their teacher shares the reason for my visit, and the questions come: “We are going to rap?” “How will we do that?”

The mix of apprehension and anticipation in the room is palpable. Their teacher shares the reason for my visit, and the questions come: “We are going to rap?” “How will we do that?” I canvass the group to get a sense if they’ve written poetry before and what style or types of music (if any) they enjoy and listen to. As expected, it’s a range.

Before we get into it, I ask them to give me words, the first words that come to mind. They popcorn out: “salami,” “potato,” and I make a little joke about everyone being really hungry. They laugh, and a few more words come: “freedom,” “power,” “witness.” I put down my bluetooth speaker, which is also an 80s style boombox, open my laptop, and click on the beat, “Tried by 12” by The East Flatbush Project. As the strings waft out of the speaker, I put lines together with their words: “Let’s get down to business / I’m about to freestyle my bars and you are all witness / And in about an hour, after this workshop you’re taking, you too will have the power.” Their eyes widen as their words transform into a verse right on the spot, one of the kids gasps, “Yoooo.”

After about two minutes, I end the freestyle. The group applauds loudly, and I explain the idea of rhythm and poetry. Rap is a branch on the deeply rooted tree of poetry and storytelling. Its DNA can be found in jazz, spoken word, gospel, blues, and the earliest West African griots. Words layered with melody and rhythm, adding a certain personality, flair, and pattern of rhyme, is what we will do today.

“Wait!” A tall, brown-haired girl giggles. “I can’t do that!” But they can. I tell the group that we are going to create a “guided freestyle,” a written song/verse based on the exercises and prompts we will do together. And right away, it’s into the deep end of the pool. “Everyone, let’s form a circle with enough space for everyone’s arms to be extended out, right palm up and left palm down,” I say. 

The students form the cipher, a loose circle of 20 teenagers. The desks, dragged aside, form an outer ring and push them closer. The students, nervously ready, look into each other’s eyes as I instruct them to recognize the people whose palms are “facing” theirs. We now have a human beat machine, and I step to the center. “OK, as you can see, all of our palms are making a pair with one another so we can clap.” A few giggles echo across the room. I ask the group to repeat the clapping pattern I make, and we start off simple, “CLAP!” I always begin small and build into more complicated rhythms. The first rhythm helps them understand how it works, and with each round, I add on. The group repeats the sounds in unison, “CLAP!” After a few more patterns and more giggles, we break, and I explain this is an example of rhythm. I can feel some of the skeptics warm up a little, but the anxiety quickly returns with the next new exercise.

“Now, we are going to play the rhyming game!” I say. “The goal is for us to match a word that rhymes with the person to the right of us, and we need to get around the circle.” I give them a couple of examples of slant rhymes, like “moot” and “mute” or “steak” and “skate” to make it easier, and off we go! The first student, “Fate,” then the next “Mate,” and so on, till we get to the last student. I applaud them and encourage them to clap it up for themselves. With every success, they are more hyped up. 

The students’ eyes widen, and I see the click in their minds as clear as a cassette deck clicking shut, as a play button pressing down.

I remark to the group, “You revealed a few things: that you all understand rhythm and patterns and that you have a vast vocabulary! We almost have all the ingredients to cook the stew we are creating.” The next step is understanding how the lines of poetry in rap, or what emcees call a “bar,” works. Meter is the measure of syllables or sounds that are in a line. There is a close relationship in music and poetry with this idea; the difference is largely in how we measure the lines, the marriage of rhythm and poetry. The next thing for them to learn is how a bar works, the amount of words and/or syllables that are expressed within one measure of music.

I walk back to my laptop and select “Luck of Lucien” by A Tribe Called Quest, and the deep, repetitive bassline blasts from the speaker. As the music plays, I ask the students to listen closely and intently. Do they notice any patterns? Anything that repeats? I let the song run for two minutes, and every time it comes up, I point out the hook, where the main idea of the song is repeated like a refrain in poetry. One student raises their hand and says nervously, “Do the drums sound the same?” “Yes!” I reply. Another student raises their hand, “The ‘doom doom doom dum dup’ repeats, too,” mimicking the sound of the song. “You got it!” I put the song on again, and this time at the start of the bass, I clap “One-two-three-FOUR! One-two-three-FOUR!” I repeat this six times, emphasizing “four” with each clap. The students look on, some start bopping their heads. “Yes! Let loose, feel the rhythm,” I say. 

I keep the song going but lower the volume so that I can speak. “A bar, in rap, is a line of poetry that begins and ends on a four count. Every four counts is one bar.” I start reciting a nursery rhyme to “Luck of Lucien”: “Mary had a little lamb, its fleece is white as SNOW, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to GO.” The students’ eyes widen, and I see the click in their minds as clear as a cassette deck clicking shut, as a play button pressing down. But just to make sure, I do a quick test: “OK! Now I’m going to turn the music off and clap my hands in series four times each, and I want you to guess how many bars you hear. I begin. I clap out four successive beats. The group’s answer is right. Then I do eight, and they give the correct answer again, eight. I congratulate them as now they have the basic structure of a rap verse, and we can begin! An audible groan rumbles through the room. “But I can’t rap!” I snidely smile and ask, “Are you sure?”

The final ingredients are theme and content. Little do they know, this might be the easiest part of the whole recipe. At this point, the students orient into their research groups. I ask each group what their research is about, and in a few sentences, they convey their passion and conviction for their subject. Some students are talking about environmental safety, others about children’s rights, others about police brutality. I tell them how inspiring it is to hear about what they’re working on. 

With each exercise, I feel their confidence growing. It’s time.

Then I give them a prompt. In their groups, I ask them to come up with words and phrases that relate to their research. I play the music low as they create their lists. After five minutes, I ask them to use the list to tell a story about or related to their research topic in six words. I briefly explain the origins of the six-word story, a “form” supposedly attributed to Ernest Hemingway, after his story: “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” The only parameters are that their story must be exactly six words, and that it should not be literal or academic. For example, something like “Systemic racism harms all of us” becomes “Her skin is not her humanity.” The snaps and “ooo”s ensue. 

I ask if they are ready, and they nod and begin to talk amongst themselves while scribbling in their notebooks. I jump around to each group, talking with them, answering questions, and giving encouragement. I look up at the clock and see we have a little less than an hour left. Now is the time to put everything together for the moment of truth. Once again, I lower the music that’s been hypnotically seeping into their hearts and minds for the last 30 minutes or so. I ask a few students if they can share their stories, and they do. Some are funny, some are heavy, all of them brilliant. With each exercise, I feel their confidence growing. It’s time.

The last piece is for them to write four bars in rhythm with the music to create a verse about their research topic! The six-word story is the final prompt before we begin writing the rhymes for a specific reason. The warm-up exercises, the rhyming, and rhythm games establish the students’ understanding of rhythm and help them access their vocabulary. The six-word story is multi-purpose, giving them a low-stakes entry in creating story and content from their topics, while also giving them an opportunity to brainstorm what will be the subject of their rhymes. This form, which allows for some freedom and interpretation, provides a foundation for the final step. I quickly review the bar structure and add one final aspect: the end of each line every two bars should rhyme, and I explain, “This is called an end rhyme. This means that each line in a couplet ends with a word that rhymes with one another. So, bars one and two should rhyme, creating a couplet, and then bars three and four should rhyme. Remember ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’ the nursery rhyme from earlier? Remember that every two lines or so it ended with words that rhymed?” This should be the form they follow. I tell them if they want, they can even have all four lines rhyme at the end! We talk briefly about how the pattern of the rhyme could even change the rhythm.

Some of them bring up my freestyle from the start of class, how I wasn’t always just rhyming at the end of my lines. “Yes, with practice I’m now able to write and freestyle in a way that I can place rhymes throughout the bar and have bars rhyme in other places besides the end.” I discuss how there are almost infinite patterns that can be created by how many syllables you use, with where you place and how often you place the rhyme in a bar, a couplet, a quatrain, etc. I let them know, though, the basic and most routine patterns are verses where the bars rhyme at the end, and these are the best and easiest to work out if you are just beginning to write a rap song. After some of them nod, I get us started, “We have about 50 minutes, so find a place in the room you’re comfortable, and you have 30 minutes to write your bars.” 

The room is a buzz with pencils and head bops as the clock ticks down.

Just as before, I work the room, cajoling, helping to edit and giving gentle feedback on where they are at. Some of the students are still working out the mechanics of rhythm, some are still having a “block” on how to approach their topic. One of the students is struggling to have their bars form a coherent thought. Another student is unsure how it will sound when they rap. I encourage them to listen to the beat and let the music’s rhythm guide them as they say their bars. The form and the style is new, so the challenge is real, but as I point out their progress, they become more comfortable. A few students already have their bars and are rehearsing their verse. The room is a buzz with pencils and head bops as the clock ticks down. “Time! Let’s all huddle up!” And we return to our cipher circle, books in hand, as the nervous tension rises alongside the volume of “Luck of Lucien.” I tell them how proud I am that they took the challenge on, and that the most important thing is to have fun. For the final time, I review the four bar count and let them know I will count each of them in so they can start on the “one” of the music. 

We start the cipher from the left. Each student, with varying degrees of confidence, performs their rap. For some, it’s as if they were born to drop bars. A young woman with glasses and hair in a ponytail has worked out some complex rhyming patterns, with multiple words in her couplets rhyming. Another shy young woman in a jean jacket and baggy pants reveals the true poet within, but at times “off beat.” The rhymes are still beautiful, thoughtful. Telling a story. Everyone gets their turn, and after the last student goes, I go over to the boombox and turn the volume down. 

“How did it feel?” I ask. Some are still unsure, others are ecstatic, but none of them thought they’d ever be asked to write a rhyme about their research! Their projects, built on data and inquiry, present cogent arguments and offer possible solutions for social issues, but the creative process invites students to explore the human stories. One of the young women felt stronger about her topic after the exercise. “Exploring the personal costs made me feel the urgency.” Others agreed, commenting that the process of writing verses forced them to look at the topic from another perspective. Their reflections reveal the power of music and story to deepen meaning for listeners—this is the smart of rap. It’s the head and the heart coming together, or even, with our dancing and clapping, the brain and the body. Research and rhyme are not opposites—they are a potent combination.

Featured image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay.