On the Metrical Techniques of Flow in Rap Music

Abstract

This article systematically explores the concept of flow in rap music, with the goal of understanding how rappers’ uses of flow contribute both to the surface rhythmic vitality of a song and to deeper levels of musical meaning. I will explain the three most significant metrical techniques that constitute a rapper’s flow, and give examples of rap songs using each technique. The article concludes with some thoughts on how changes in flow as rap music evolved contributed not only to different style features, but also to value judgments by both rappers and audiences.

Hip-hop rhymes reiterate phonological typology

“…Later hip-hop, however, has considerably more freedom on all of the dimensions mentioned above (Adams, 2009). Walser (1995), for instance, gives a detailed analysis of Chuck D's 1988 performance in Fight the Power: this 'transitional' piece includes extensive mismatch between linguistic units and musical metrical ones, as well as certain types of non-linefinal rhyme; Walser offers some observations on how this marks a departure from earlier pieces.…”

“…Although rhymes generally do occur at some more or less predictable rhythmic interval, they are not constrained to appear only in this position (Adams, 2009;Horn, 2010). And although perfect rhyme is frequent, imperfect rhyme is the rule: a previous version of the corpus with rhymes coded by listener intuition showed that about 65% of the perceived rhymes mismatched for one or more features/ segments.…”

“…In more rhythmically rigid genres, this problem is avoided by defining the rhyme position rhythmically and then counting everything that occurs in that rhythmic position as a rhyme. In contemporary hip-hop, however, rhythmically predictable rhymes are accompanied by a large number of rhymes in other, less predictable rhythmic positions (Walser, 1995;Pihel, 1996;Alim, 2003;Adams, 2009;Horn, 2010). The solution described in Section 3.2 is to count as a rhyme any correspondent pair that satisfies a very loose definition of rhyme in terms of rhythmic and phonological properties.…”

“…1 It involves setting words to an isochronous musical beat, much like the lyrics of a song, but generally without musical pitch; linguistic pitch is present, and may be important in signaling rhymes. Adams (2009) gives an accessible and interesting overview of hiphop's rhythmic properties across several historical stages. The sequence of musical beats is organized in stronger and weaker levels, like linguistic stress (see Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983) and Palmer and Krumhansl (1990) for discussion of musical metrical structure).…”

Performing poetry slam and listening closely to slam poetry

“…However, writings on rap flows do exist: e.g. Adams (2008Adams ( , 2009aAdams ( and 2009b) (and a response to Adams [2008] in Williams [2009]), Krims (2000), Kautny (2009), Elflein (2009), Stougaard Pedersen (2009), Walser (1995). Also, the concept of flow plays a role in publications with a broader scope such as Rose (1994) and in particular Bradley (2009).…”