Rap rhythms

[supersoul]

Rap/HipHop came up in the Music Pedagogy and Rhythm thread, and I figure it should have its own thread and not derail that one.

It's an interesting topic for me. When hiphop is compared to jazz, it's often because of the rhythms of the lines.
I think about the rhythmic conception of the rap, and how it developed over the years, but especially in the early days when it was developing quickly. Also, I'm an old school head, so much of what I listen to is 80s and 90s. So much that has happened since, but my knowledge falls off around the mid 90s.


Slick Rick has cool phrasing, often a little behind the beat, but the phrases tend to be within the bars. He doesn't spill over. Mostly 8ths, dynamics are smooth, just laying it out and not being declarative.

Eric B. & Rakim the raps always have cool rhythmic twists and turns. The phrase lengths don't always fit into the unit of the bar.

Chuck D. is on top of the beat, swings the 8ths. Plus, the Bomb Squad production is so heavy, almost like metal, but with a deep pocket, makes my head nod.

Now, and the obvious... Kendrick Lamar is super rhythmic, he's a virtuoso, he'll fit things in with16ths and even 16th triplets, all over the bar line.

[PickingMyEars]

Thank you for starting the thread, supersoul.

One thing to stay silent, another to say you're not interested in the topic, but being an anonymous ass about things...

Appreciate the effort here, my friend

Patrick Bartley loves to talk about the parallels between rap and jazz. If the thread gets good, maybe he'll join...

Mr. B used to discuss hip hop too. Paging @MR. BEAUMONT

Supersoul, how would you discuss the rhythm of these musicians:

And of course, how could we not talk about...

[supersoul]

I remember when all that Stone's Throw stuff started coming out and thinking it was cool, but I wasn't really listening to hiphop then. It was definitely refreshing after the late 90s mainstream hiphop. More imagination, less braggadocio. MF Doom is sick rhythmically!

I'll check out everything else you posted. It always takes me a little while to digest, but it reiterates to me that hiphop and "urban contemporary" or whatever it's called, is so incredibly sonic, almost psychedelic in how it is physical. That Billy Woods "Spongebob" track is totally woozy, in the best possible way!

[pamosmusic]

I read this back when To Pimp a Butterfly came out. Really interesting. You can definitely hear that there was some Trane in his listening on a lot of the tracks.

How Kendrick Lamar Transformed Into 'The John Coltrane of Hip-Hop' on 'To Pimp a Butterfly' | Billboard

[PickingMyEars]

My favorite Kendrick Lamar is with Flying Lotus--relative of John Coltrane, that is:

[supersoul]

Tate Kobang - Bank Rolls Remix
16ths, pattern repetition until around 1:45 when the accents start shifting.

[PickingMyEars]

Sometimes Adam Neely really gets on my last nerve. Like that infamous video on offset quarter note triplets. He did all the math, just to prove he could figure out such an "esoteric" rhythm that "nobody" would ever play. I'm talking about an eighth note rest followed by a quarter note triplet starting on the upbeat. If you are familiar with Mike Longo, you'll know that such a figure is a key part of bebop. If Dizzy Gillespie says to study the off beat quarter note triplet, you listen:



Anyway, Adam did a video recently on the Ludacris controversy. I actually enjoyed his process here. Important for us to pay attention where a phrase starts and how that choice affects the musical time--and how the AUDIENCE hears and understands what we play. Plus, it's Ludacris

[spencer096]

[jazzloverfat]

.

[supersoul]

Sometimes Adam Neely really gets on my last nerve. Like that infamous video on offset quarter note triplets. He did all the math, just to prove he could figure out such an "esoteric" rhythm that "nobody" would ever play. I'm talking about an eighth note rest followed by a quarter note triplet starting on the upbeat. If you are familiar with Mike Longo, you'll know that such a figure is a key part of bebop. If Dizzy Gillespie says to study the off beat quarter note triplet, you listen:

Anyway, Adam did a video recently on the Ludacris controversy. I actually enjoyed his process here. Important for us to pay attention where a phrase starts and how that choice affects the musical time--and how the AUDIENCE hears and understands what we play. Plus, it's Ludacris

I had to watch that Adam Neely vid. I think he's missing the point about the Ludacris song.

He's coming at it as if the track started out as written down on a page, when in fact it was made in the studio with samplers and sequencers. Timbaland probably just sampled the melody track and liked how it sounded where he placed it, which turned out to be offset by an 8th note. That's just part of that particular workflow. I don't actually know how Timbaland works, but he's been making great tracks for decades now. He's a virtuoso of the studio.

In other threads on this forum people have suggested taking an existing phrase and trying to place it in different places, at different starting points, rhythms, adapting it to different chords, etc. It's a simple technique to expand material. Pretty similar to what Timbaland did here, I think.

I liked the answers in the end, which were that either there are multiple "ones" or that the "one" is wherever the guy paying the bills says the "one" is. The "corporate" vs "street" emphasis of the phrase "Roll Out" was kinda funny, too.

[dasein]

This forum isn't ready for this thread. But I'm here for it.

So for the intersection of jazz and hip-hop, the gold standard is and forever will be A Tribe Called Quest. I don't even think the rapping is necessarily that technical, but it's just. so. smooth. They nailed that classic 50's Blue Note vibe, where everyone sounds so relaxed and swinging.

We talk a lot about swing here. What it is, how you get it, who's more swinging, etc.

Hip hop, and rappers in particular, have their own version: flow. "So and so's flow is so clean," "he's got no flow", "oh he's copying this other guy's flow".

It is a correlate of swing, but it is not the same thing. A big part of swing is aligning your harmonic and melodic ideas with the rhythm. With rap, there's not as much emphasis on the melodic line (there isn't zero as some people claim).

But the introduction of actual words adds a whole other dimension. You suddenly have all devices available in poetry.

So for example, it's very hard for me to talk about someone like Pac in purely rhythmic terms, because a huge part of his flow is how aggressively he leans into alliteration, which changes the whole character of his rhymes.

Always have to meet art where it's at. Judge it by its immanent standards.

[MinToyTot]

I like rap but don't see a lot of musical value in it outside of the rhythmic elements & focus, not that it needs anything else to justify its existence... Saved us from more Barry Manilow types... Whenever I try to look at rap lyrical content I cannot see any way in which it is not inferior to "regular" poetry, except that it's more accessible. This is also the case with basically every song that has words, but rap kind of puts a lot of responsibility/focus on lyrics. Popular rap songs tend to strike me as being aimed at a very young (<16) audience, but that's probably just because it's pop music. Less than being a genre of music or poetry that has influenced its medium, I see it more as an independent medium which has altered others which it is similar to. Fun stuff!

[jazzloverfat]

Popular rap songs tend to strike me as being aimed at a very young (<16) audience, but that's probably just because it's pop music.

But isn't this an issue with all commercial music, irrespective of genre?

[supersoul]

But isn't this an issue with all commercial music, irrespective of genre?

... and there is plenty of hiphop/rap that isn't geared towards the under-16 pop market.

Also, the lyrics of most jazz standards aren't exactly Shakespeare, haha.

[Christian Miller]

Most styles of music have a dichotomy between commercial and more artistic. You wouldn't judge all rock by Nickelback or Bon Jovi...

[pamosmusic]

Most styles of music have a dichotomy between commercial and more artistic. You wouldn't judge all rock by Nickelback or Bon Jovi...

Also a pretty narrow view of rap.

Kendrick Lamar is very popular with the young uns but he is not writing for that demographic.

[MinToyTot]

Yes, I would say that contemporary rap's image (to non-enthusiasts or maybe just me) suffers from its status as the dominant form of commercial music in that a plurality of popular stupid stuff is rap just due to its market share. Also muddles the motivations of people who want to make it for a living, all problems with commercial music in general but exacerbated for the most commercial genre(s). This is more of a 2000-2025 complaint than a 1975-2000 complaint btw and I also do recognize it as not reflecting on the intrinsic qualities/potential of the style. The only thing that really conceptually rubs me the wrong way is sampling... seems kind of entropic.

ATCQ is always fun, Nas too. I actually think that Kanye is a genius but of course would never say so now; At one point I was quite enamored of MF Doom... K-Lam of course... All lightyears ahead of songbook stuff lyrically - I just ultimately don't care much about words*... I would actually really like to hear the rap equivalent of what new-grass / "new acoustic" is to country. Probably something closer to spoken word?

*when listening to music

[MinToyTot]

Sorry to double post but it would be really awesome if someone here had a juicy book or paper or whatever with examples / an encyclopedia or glossary of the rhythmic devices / cells used in rap. I know "Dilla beat" is important but not why nor what it is. Seems like this stuff could dovetail quite nicely into my recent reading on projective rhythm and hypermeter and whatnot.

[spencer096]

I dunno I think I said plenty.

[pamosmusic]

I dunno I think I said plenty.

Nothing interesting though

[djg]

[supersoul]

Brother Jack McGriff - Oblighetto (J Dilla remix)

[brent.h]

I'm tapping triplets. Lots of Snoop's words line up with triplets.

E.g. the part where he goes, "Laid back,"

Laid is on the last triplet of beat 2
back is on the last triplet of beat 3

He reminds me of Billie Holiday.

[Strat-itis]

Rap is so bad that noise music like gv is often better.

[Beats_and_Guitars]

Brother Jack McGriff - Oblighetto (J Dilla remix)

I knew J Dilla would come up. In my opinion, his drum swing is a natural fit for jazz language.


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