How does the young performer relate to the hip hop beats he’s going to use? The point is not just to spit lyrics rapid fire over any beat and then when you’ve finished tell people that you killed the beat. In actuality you may really have just killed the beat. The point of rapping is not just to spit lyrics, or let me say that the point of creating music is not just to spit lyrics all over the place. You also have to have an eye toward how those lyrics sound over the hip hop beat you’re running with.
If you don’t consider the type of hip hop beat you’re working with as you begin to lay down your flow then you’ll never truly grasp the science behind making a worthwhile rap song. And while I say that it’s a science, it’s really an alchemy. Alchemy in the old days was the supposed art of turning other metals into gold. And that’s exactly what you’re going to have to do when you go about making a song. Remember just because you can stand in a circle with friends and put down a sick rap doesn’t mean that you have any skills at all when it comes to creating a real song over hip hop beats. For that you’re going to have learn the alchemy.
And the only way to learn the alchemy of creating hip hop music is to get your hands dirty. You have to spend a lot of time rapping before you can learn how to do it well. And beside that, you have to spend a lot of time knee deep in hip hop beats before you’ll really come to understand how to successfully lay your lyrics down over a beat.
This is not even to mention the fact that you also have to have a knack for which beats to choose. And choosing the right hip hop beat can be as big a challenge as any you’ll face in this whole process. You have to learn which hip hop beats you excel over and why. Learning which hip hop beats you can excel over seems at first to go without saying, but believe me this is an aspect of the process of creating music that must be mentioned again and again because people so often forget how important it is. While you’re knee deep in hip hop beats you have to take the time to learn which beats work for you. When you find the beats that do work for you then you have to repeatedly ask yourself the question of why they work for you.
Asking why certain hip hop beats work for you is a perfect way to come to understand your own style of musical creation. And this is the point of the exercise. If you’re not learning about your own style then you’re not growing as an artist and this can leave you at a loss. You have to know your hip hop beats first, and then you can go about the alchemy of creating hip hop songs which is your ultimate goal anyway.
