TS: Rap as poetry vs. Rap as prose

Rap as poetry = "Peter Piper", and if you take the rhythm and the rhyme out of it then you lose almost everything.

second its, ahem, rockist to say that just coz its more difficult for the artist means its more rewarding to the listener.

also i don't think either is particularly more difficult, but combining serious rhyme skills and metaphor WITH an intricate narrative which doesn't just go then stop IS a skill. and it feels like an EXTENSION of battle-rhyme skills, the ability to stretch narrative conceits already present and explore them, to structure "gags" so the payoff is delayed, etc. Em does this really well -- i actually don't think Nas does.

'my essence tried to squeeze through the crack of dawn'

sheer rhythmic agility, a good sense of rhythm emphasis and displacement... even in a sort of facile way (50 cent)... can count for much more than narrative or even potent individual rhymes in certain contexts. too much writing on rap (unwittingly?) divorces the lyrics from the music.

i once wanted to do an article on the aesthetic differences between mc's who write their rhymes (most mc's) and those who work their rhymes out in their head (biggie and jay z both claim to never write down their rhymes beforehand).

and sterling, i know that you have a low opinion of nas (you called him a tupac-wannabe in the village voice), but could you please explain your above comments a bit. are you saying that em's songs have more of a narrative arc, or that em is able to recontextualize an entire song by a twist at the end? that *might* be the case, but nas' stories are more vivid (in imagery), compelling ("stan" seemed too self-involved to me) and creative in their use of characters (remember the ghetto guardian angel in "get down") and their use of traditional poetic devices (he repeats "one" in the first verse of "get down" not only for phonetic affect, but to advance the story). i guess that you could argue em's stories have more emotional impact.

Plus the idea of storyteller mcs vs. punchline mcs I think kinda undermines the fact that most of the best mcs manage to incorporate both into their verses; that's one of the things with Eminem and Nas and Tupac and Biggie and De La and others and why I find them so compelling, is that they can drop one-liners and zingers into a piece but still maintain that unification-of-theme/content. I think often some MCs who put too much emphasis on one side of this lyrical divide - whether it's on the prose/storyteller side of it (Gift of Gab fr'instance) or on the poet/punchline/battle side of it (like maybe Dirt or somebody) - are often written off by heads to whom that particular approach isn't as desirable.

and i agree with nick that there is something to be said for a well-rounded mc. but certain people obviously excel at different aspects of the game. to use the examples already in play, em has had a lot better punchlines while nas has had better stories and concept songs. and check "get down," where nas switches seemlessly switches settings from verse to verse, line to line while maintaining the songs central conceit. or nystate of mind, where the focus and message is constantly morphing.

Em self-involved? Getthefuckouttahere!

i don't mean to suggest that the differences between the two shouldn't be discussed,so i suppose the above point was fairly pedantic

either is great when done well
i love jay-z's one liners,ghostface's stream of images,nas' "storytelling",and combinations of the above
now that i think of it,i don't think its correct to categorize nas' verses as just being about storytelling either,i think the rhymes and wordplay in something like new york state of mind is phenomenal just in terms of his control of the language,verbal dexterity,apart from any storytelling element...

i think this is an ugly way to look at things nate.

What is, trying to discern what makes certain styles of rhyme actually work and trying to solidify my own particular personal opinion regarding why MCs with an actual lyrical personality/ability to conceptualize/wide range of subjects used (preferably) in a plain-speaking manner are the most compelling to me? (I know this sounds weird coming from The World's Biggest Definitive Jux Mark, but there's almost always an underlying element of ultradistinct personality and background to most of their MCs; the 'opposite' in question aren't great battle rappers but one-dimensional MCs who just seem content to spit punchline after metaphor after simile all to the ends of saying "I'm great and other MCs suck" without showing any real evidence of a persona beyond that. I keep thinking back to hearing Styles of Beyond's Megadef a couple months ago and coming out of it feeling unusually hollow. Which is a pretty fucking big feat when it's an album that samples the Stooges and has a synthpop track. Thing is, Grae has a battle-esque track on her new Bootleg of the Bootleg EP called "Hater's Anthem", and it's one of the best razor-tongue dozens cuts I've heard in a while; then I listened to the track she cut with the Herbaliser ("Mission Improbable") when she went under the name What? What? and it seemed a bit incomplete (especially compared to the rhymes she dropped in "Taco Day" and "God's Gift" and Mr. Lif's "Post Mortem"). So my whole outlook on this is kind of malleable. (I'm more pissed when a narrative rhyme fucks up than when a battle rhyme does, if that means anything.)

and battle mcs can often keep a whole string of related metaphors and slip in and out of narrative within it.

Right. The ones that don't and aren't super-sick just start getting a little monotonous and one-dimensional to me. But yes, MCs that can do both are super great and awesome. I'm not arguing they aren't. It's just that pure narrative with a few scattered metaphors interests me more than pure battling with little to no thematic cohesion.

second its, ahem, rockist to say that just coz its more difficult for the artist means its more rewarding to the listener.

Oh quit waving around that 13" black vinyl "ROCKIST" dildo. Someone'll get hurt. At least I asked if it was a possibility instead of just out-and-out saying it. I suppose your answer to the question would be a basic "no". OK. But understand that a lot of hip-hop's evolution into the form we know it now was pushed along by MCs who wanted to rock crowds but felt the need to raise the bar in order to be heard and wound up creating a new rap standard in the process (Rakim, Kool Keith, Biggie, Jay-Z, Eminem). Shit like that is more rewarding to the listener because otherwise it's likely they'll just keep to their Sugarhill records and then everyone'll sound like Jurassic 5.

This argument is going to get derailed pretty fast, which is probably for the best, since it's probably not that strong a dichotomy to begin with.

Well duh

Anyways, back on topic: what purpose do battle rhymes have when they're not directed at anyone? (Not telling here, just asking.)

at least I didn't start another Momus-bait thread

(also nate i don't think people start threads to bait momus -- he intercedes on threads to bait PEOPLE)

as for nas i just don't think he tells seamless stories very often. i mean people have pointed to different instances of him doing the opposite -- disrupting narrative structure. what some read as deliberate disruptions though i just tend to read as laziness. and if they are deliberate, they're still not the traditional narrative structure nate posits at the opening post of the thread.