of the rhythm makes you lose concentration.â Listen to the Streets for any amount of time and it is clear that he practices what he preaches. What stands out about his flow is the way it refuses to flow. Like water through leaky pipes, his lyrics alternately spill out and clog up in relation to the beat. At times he defiantly sets his flow against the rhythmic direction of the rest of the song. Just when you wonder whether heâs even heard the beat at all, he finds his way back in the pocket for a moment, only to jump out again.
What all of these examples tell us is that rapâs poetry articulates itself in music. Flow takes its meaning from its musical context. While lyrical transcription can reveal a great deal about rapâs poetic form and rhythms, it is but an intermediary step that must ultimately lead us back to the performance itself. Nowhere is this more obvious than with MCs that rely upon their delivery above all else to define their style. One such artist is Twista.
In 1991 a rapper from the west side of Chicago named Tung Twista released his debut album on Loud Records, Runninâ Off at da Mouth. While it was only a modest hit, it earned him mention in the Guinness Book of World Records as the worldâs fastest rapper. He would lose the title, regain it, and then lose it again, but it was clear that he was one of a rare breed of speed rappers. The fraternity of speed rappers includes artists as different from one another as Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Big Daddy Kane, and OutKast, all of whom occasionally rapped at tempos that stretched the bounds of human breath control. Few, however, were as committed to speed rapping as Tung Twista. Eventually he would lose the
âTung,â and with it, his monomaniacal focus on speed rapping. Twistaâs platinum-selling 2004 album Kamikaze displayed an expanded array of lyrical skills, not to mention a variety of tempos for his flow.
Whether rhyming slowly or quickly, though, tempo is a defining element of rap rhythm, responsible for shaping the distinctive cadences of an MCâs signature flow. Tempo is sound over time. Reflecting on his past as a speed rapper, Twista recognizes that certain necessary constraints must govern a rapperâs tempo. âI think a lot of artists that rap or want to rap in that style focus more on the speed and the style than they do the clarity,â he explained to MTV News in 2005. âTheyâve got it locked in their mind âI want to do it fastâ or âI want to do it like this,â but with me I always go about the clarity first, and if I couldnât say it [clearly] Iâm not gonna write it. . . . If I canât get it all the way out or make it sound crisp or itâs not within my vocal range or something, I wonât even mess with it.â An MCâs cadence, then, is governed in part by the possibilities presented by sound over time. Flow is defined by rapâs respect for clarity, and even the limitations of the rapperâs instrument: the human voice.
When given a beat upon which to rhyme, the beats per minute present the rapper with the minimum, optimal, and maximum syllable load. As an oral idiom, rap is governed by these physical constraints of the human voice. Breath control shapes rhythmic possibilities just as much as an MCâs lyrical imagination. Like singers, rappers must understand and practice effective vocal phrasing. Phrasing is all the more significant given that, more than most other forms of popular music, rap emphasizes clarity. Rappers have ways, of course, of making the language malleable and easing the challenges
of breath control. The most common of these is altered pronunciation. Sometimes an MC will say just enough of a word to make it clearly discernable before going right into the next phrase, all the while staying on beat. Other times they will employ dramatic pauses, for both artistic emphasis and practical necessity. All of these subtle but
What all of these examples tell us is that rapâs poetry articulates itself in music. Flow takes its meaning from its musical context. While lyrical transcription can reveal a great deal about rapâs poetic form and rhythms, it is but an intermediary step that must ultimately lead us back to the performance itself. Nowhere is this more obvious than with MCs that rely upon their delivery above all else to define their style. One such artist is Twista.
In 1991 a rapper from the west side of Chicago named Tung Twista released his debut album on Loud Records, Runninâ Off at da Mouth. While it was only a modest hit, it earned him mention in the Guinness Book of World Records as the worldâs fastest rapper. He would lose the title, regain it, and then lose it again, but it was clear that he was one of a rare breed of speed rappers. The fraternity of speed rappers includes artists as different from one another as Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Big Daddy Kane, and OutKast, all of whom occasionally rapped at tempos that stretched the bounds of human breath control. Few, however, were as committed to speed rapping as Tung Twista. Eventually he would lose the
âTung,â and with it, his monomaniacal focus on speed rapping. Twistaâs platinum-selling 2004 album Kamikaze displayed an expanded array of lyrical skills, not to mention a variety of tempos for his flow.
Whether rhyming slowly or quickly, though, tempo is a defining element of rap rhythm, responsible for shaping the distinctive cadences of an MCâs signature flow. Tempo is sound over time. Reflecting on his past as a speed rapper, Twista recognizes that certain necessary constraints must govern a rapperâs tempo. âI think a lot of artists that rap or want to rap in that style focus more on the speed and the style than they do the clarity,â he explained to MTV News in 2005. âTheyâve got it locked in their mind âI want to do it fastâ or âI want to do it like this,â but with me I always go about the clarity first, and if I couldnât say it [clearly] Iâm not gonna write it. . . . If I canât get it all the way out or make it sound crisp or itâs not within my vocal range or something, I wonât even mess with it.â An MCâs cadence, then, is governed in part by the possibilities presented by sound over time. Flow is defined by rapâs respect for clarity, and even the limitations of the rapperâs instrument: the human voice.
When given a beat upon which to rhyme, the beats per minute present the rapper with the minimum, optimal, and maximum syllable load. As an oral idiom, rap is governed by these physical constraints of the human voice. Breath control shapes rhythmic possibilities just as much as an MCâs lyrical imagination. Like singers, rappers must understand and practice effective vocal phrasing. Phrasing is all the more significant given that, more than most other forms of popular music, rap emphasizes clarity. Rappers have ways, of course, of making the language malleable and easing the challenges
of breath control. The most common of these is altered pronunciation. Sometimes an MC will say just enough of a word to make it clearly discernable before going right into the next phrase, all the while staying on beat. Other times they will employ dramatic pauses, for both artistic emphasis and practical necessity. All of these subtle but
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