Learn To Rap

The next example is the average rhyme pattern, two syllable rhymes, this will also be the main pattern if your going to be battling (rhyming doesn’t hold much weight in a battle unless your exceptional at it). Jadakiss, DMX, Jay-Z, Pac, Biggy, Nas, this is there type of pattern
_______________1 2
_______________1 2

"I've been fucked over, left for dead, dissed and fogotten
Luck ran out, they hoped that I'd be gone, stiff and rotten"
Nas -Ether

Dissed and stiff rhyme and forgotten and rotten rhyme, dissed and forgotten, stiff and rotten.

The most simplest way to create this rhyme scheme is to just rhyme the last two words of the line your using. So the line I’m going to use “I use my paper as the body and my pens a sword” so we need rhymes for pen and sword, the reason were going to use ‘pen’ and not ‘a’ is because ‘a’ is considered silent in the verse, silent meaning its not being emphasized while pen is one of the words in the line being emphasized. So words being rhymed with ‘pen’ then, ten, bend, lend, send, hen, when, defend, blend, pretend, men, again, friend, and rhymes for ‘sword’ more, for, tore, core, lore, four, soar, floor, poor, nor, score, roar, door, sport, court, fort.

This is where we start putting the words together, send to the floor, pretend to score, ten or more, friends to roar. So we’ll use ‘ten or more’ for the second line.

“I use my paper as the body and my pens a sword,
Ripping through pages, in a hour about ten or more”

“I use my paper as the body and my pens a sword” so the paper is the body I’m using to rip through with my pen. “Ripping through pages” meaning everything your writing on these pages is on point, the content is real good. “in a hour ten or more” meaning your writing so much material that within a hours time you already wrote ten pages or more worth of writing. So the pen is ripping through these pages and in a hours time you got 10 or pages done.

Also, it doesn't have to be two words, it could be a word with two syllables, like the word preview, you could rhyme it with another matching two syllable word like reuse, diesel, evil, or two one syllable words that'll match both pre and view, preview, see you, breeze through, me too.

"This rhyming thing isn't nothing, just a little preview,
But my worst rhymes has been taken and reused"

or

"This rhyming thing isn't nothing, just a little preview,
The littlest verse I ever wrote will still see you"

So the main thing you have to remember is to use the last two syllables or words that’s being emphasized in the line your using, and find rhymes for those two. Once you find enough rhymes, connect the words until you feel you can make two lines that rhymes with the last two syllables/words and make sense of both.

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One Syllable Multi’s

_______ 1 _______ 1
_______ 1 _______ 1

This multi rhyming is also considered simple, your just doubling up the rhyming word, you could have 2 or more of the same rhyming sound. This example is from late great Tupac

“Constantly armed, my firepower keep me warm
I'm trapped in the storm, and fuck the world til I'm gone
Bitches be warned - word is bond, you'll get torn
I'm bustin on Guiliani, he rubbin my niggaz wrong
And then it's on, before I leave picture me
I'm spittin at punk bitches and hustlin to be free”
Tupac - Deadly Combination

Anyone can rhyme words, so this format shouldn’t really be to much harder then the simple one word a line rhyme.

But just in case your having trouble, lets take some easy rhyming words, how about ‘word’. Words that rhyme with ‘word’ bird, heard, herd, stirred, third, herb. Well heard and word can be in the same line, like “I heard the word was” a ‘bird’ in slang is the gun Desert Eagle, a herb also in slang means someone that’s considered a loser or punk, spelled hurb really. A herd mean a group of animals, so we can connect herd and bird together in the same line. So now to make two lines that makes sense using these rhymes. So we can come up with something like this:

“I heard the word is ya’ were gonna murk me on the third,
Well I got a herd of birds that ready to shit on you hurbs,”

So you heard the word that some group of people are going to try and kill/murk you at some point of time, so we’ll be more specific by using the third cause it rhymes with word. Well your ready to counter them with a herd of birds, meaning you got more than one Desert Eagle. “That’s ready to shit,” the listeners will take that to mean the guns shooting, but were using shit because birds shit and sometimes might hit someone. “Shit on you hurbs” shooting back at these people/hurbs that’s trying to kill you.

So that was something simple, but it’s a good way to experiment with your multi rhyming. If you got something you want to talk about, but you also want to rhyme it well, similar to that. Find the main word you know your going to be using, find a bunch of rhymes for that word, and start connecting them, like I did with ‘I heard the word’ or ‘herd of birds,’ and mess around with the words like that. Make sure the words your going to connect will make sense when its time to put them all together to make complete lines.

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This is plain and simple rhyming, just rhyming the last word in each of your lines

_______________ 1
_______________ 1

Mainstream rappers are heavy into this category. You won’t hear to many good rappers using this simple format. But you do got 50 Cent who falls into this category sometimes and Sheek Louch who also rhymes like this on several occasions. But they make up for it in other ways, like how the rap is delivered, what is it their actually saying, relaying in those lines.

"If I ain't hungry, who the fuck is, I'm worse than them African kids
I ain't straight til my numbers match the Motorola bid
And walk the streets of N.Y. like I don't fuckin care
If I ain't strapped that means I took em off my Nike Airs
Get off mine, y'all talk shit like little children
wanna ride mine like bitches when I walk up in the building
Cause I catch tans in the winter, with wild whores
Jet-skiin, while you keep warm at corner stores"
Sheek Louch - Reservoir Dogs

Other than mainstream pop rap artist, this format should be avoided, rap is not about the things we talk about in our usual verses, meaning of course, guns, violence, drugs, sex, etc. Rap is suppose to be about our creativity, using what your saying creatively, everything content wise should be more complex than any other music genre. And rhyming is no exception, rhyming should be more than just the last words being rhymed with each other. But not is all bad with one word rhymed lines. Your able to relay more of what you want to say in a verse, in each line if you have a subject matter you want to write about.

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Rhyming is what can seperate an ordinary verse from an outstanding verse. From as long as i've been listening to rap, rhyming is one thing that always impressed me. So I decided to gather all the different rhyme schemes i've heard from different artist and show how they're implemented by these artist. This is to show you the rhyming patterns so you can experiment with. The rhyme scheme's should always end on a even number, 2, 4, 8, or more.

There’s different ways to implement rhyming in your verses. These number patterns will show you the commonly used rhyming formats. The numbers stand for the same sound, 1 rhymes with 1 and 2 rhymes with 2. Each pattern will get an industry rappers verse explanation.

Bars with a single rhyme in it are no good, only the corniest rappers use a single rhyme for each bar, that’s the worst. The same syllable one word rhyme in each line, only rappers who use this format are mainstream rappers, the mainstream these days are lacking heavily on lyrical content, creativity, rhyming, etc. Multi same syllable rhyme is good, nothing special, Two syllable and multi two syllable are the most commonly used format by almost all rappers. But then you got those rappers that take rhyming to a whole other level, these rhymes are the most impressive, skills in rhyming is definitely needed if your going to attempt them.

All these patterns don’t have names, so we here at LearnToRap is going to put a name to all of them.

Same Syllable Rhymes
_______________ 1
_______________ 1

Multi Same Syllable Rhymes
_______ 1 _______ 1
_______ 1 _______ 1

Two Syllable Rhymes
______________ 1 2
______________ 1 2

Multi Two Syllable Rhymes
______ 1 2 _____ 1 2
______ 1 2 _____ 1 2

Constant Two Syllable Rhymes
___ 1 2 __ 1 2 __ 1 2
___ 1 2 __ 1 2 __ 1 2

Three Syllable Rhymes
_____________ 1 2 3
_____________ 1 2 3

Multi Three Syllable Rhymes
____ 1 2 3 ____ 1 2 3
____ 1 2 3 ____ 1 2 3

Double Same Syllable Rhymes
_______________ 1 1
_______________ 1 1

Multi Double Same Syllable Rhymes
______ 1 1 _____ 1 1
______ 1 1 _____ 1 1

All Word Rhymes
1 __ 2 __ 3 __ 4 __ 5
1 __ 2 __ 3 __ 4 __ 5

Constant Same Syllable Rhyming
1 _ 1 _ 1 _ 1 _ 1 _ 1
1 _ 1 _ 1 _ 1 _ 1 _ 1

Double One Two Rhymes
____________ 1 1 2
____________ 1 1 2

Multi Double One Two Rhymes
____ 1 1 2 ___ 1 1 2
____ 1 1 2 ___ 1 1 2

Constant One Two Rhymes
1 _ 1 _ 1 _ 1 _ 1 _ 2
1 _ 1 _ 1 _ 1 _ 1 _ 2

Tongue Twisters
___ 1 _ 1 _ 2 1 1 2
_ 2 1 3 1 _ 3 1 3 1 2

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Metaphor - A figure of speech in which one thing is called another which it resembles in some significant way.

Now in rap, a metaphor is attributed to both metaphors and similes, so if someone says “you had some good metaphors” and you actually used only similes in the verse, just know they’re talking about your similes. But I’m separating the two because the true meanings are different and I wanna show examples of both.

“And my bullets give you a deep tissue massage”
Ludacris - Made You Look (Remix)

When your getting a deep tissue massage, they press into your skin, and if you get shot, that’ll really press into your skin. So Luda is comparing a bullet to lets say the fingers to the skin that‘s giving you that deep tissue massage.

“Don’t be mad cause your career is in the ninth inning”
Big L - Size’em Up

Referring to a rappers career ending, the ninth inning which is the last inning in baseball is the comparison to the rappers career coming to an end.

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Simile - A comparison of two unlike things, typically marked by use of "like", "as" or "than".

“I got shit on lock like I was constipated”
Cassidy - Problem vs. Hustla

“I got shit on lock” he’s mainly talking about rap, he has it locked down. “Like I was constipated” when your constipated, you know your unable to shit, it’s there, but its not coming out, its like if your ass was locked sort of in a way lol. So you use whatever situation or subject your talking about and comparing it to something different. Another example from Cassidy

“Looking like a handy man wit tools on the waist”
Cassidy - You Don’t Want War

This time the two comparisons came after the like. “Looking like a handy man” a handy man is someone who usually fixes things, usually with tools. “Wit tools on the waist” slang for tools is of course guns. So he’s basically saying he has so many tools/guns on the waste he’s looking like a handyman with real tools on his tool waste belt. Also it doesn’t have to be “like” or “as”

“All my jewels be rocky like Sylvester Stallone”
Big L - Triboro

Jewels being rocky meaning his jewelry has a lot of diamonds, and Sylvester Stallone was Rocky in the movies Rocky.

“With more shit out on the streets then evicted tenants”
Ludacris - Made You Look (Remix)

In this one, Ludacris uses “then” to compare having more shit which he means music then evicted tenants who get there stuff/shit thrown out whatever place they’re evicted from if not moved by a certain period of time.

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When you listen to emcees such as Big, Pac, Pun, G Rap, Big L, Canibus, Eminem, Sticky Fingaz, Wu Tang etc. and actually listen to the content they produce, the witty things they say, and how they deliver it, you can't help but want to grap a pen and a paper and just start jotting a bunch shit down.

Real Hip Hop, real rap is not about the guns, the drugs, sex, violence, its not about the clubbing and the partying (remember that I said real Hip Hop). We only use those topics as our niche to showcase our skills of rhyming, our lyrical abilities, how we use punchlines and metaphors, the witty lines we come up with, the stories we produce. When you can implement all these factors into a verse, you'll never fail to amaze people on how great of a rapper you are.

I was around 10 when I wrote my first verse, my older brother who was 19 at the time told me to write a rap. I showed him it later on and he was all excited for me, maybe that was due to me being only ten, making me feel good, which it did, it was probably a piece of junk rap. But that moment in time stuck with me til this day. I wrote a lot in my early teens but it was just regular verses with no skills in it, just simple rhyming.

In ninth grade, I started listening to two of my close boys rap, two brothers, both in there mid 20's when I was only 15, but one of them was a lyrical rhyming genious on the mic, complex rhyming, wonderful vocab, witty lines, this really sparked something inside me that just made wanna spit, this was the first time I started to display actual skills in my verses. But it was the other brother who actually taught me how to format my verses.

During ninth grade, french class was the first time I actually battled someone, it was actually a team battle, but I dissed both of them, the verse was about a page, front and back, long. I basically destroyed both of them. Later on we got into more battles, mainly off the top of the head, a few lines the most. The first off the top of the head battle I had, he mentioned something about being able to beat me in a battle, and I responded with "You sure you can beat me, are you positive, cause if I had your flow i'll call myself anonymous" and one of my best friend didn't let me finish, he just hugged me like if that was the greatest thing he ever heard, I just think it caught him off guard that I had an actual good response. But from there on, we had battles almost everyday, and almost everyday i'll get kicked out of class because of it.

By tenth, I had people always wanting to battle me, always trying to spit a verse at me to get me to respond, but I wasn't to open like that, so I never really got into it. But being older and wiser, I was able to listen and pick up on why rappers like Canibus and Big Pun were considered so great, it wasn't the music itself, it was the content and how they were delivering the content that seperated them from a normal rapper, they were considered by many as the greatest rappers. So I implemented everything these rappers had to offer, my writing skills were on point.

My brother got locked up when I was around 10 years old for a gun charge, then manslaughter. I had joined a rap group in eleventh grade, and the first beat I wrote to, I tested it out on my brother, so I spit this verse to him over the phone, and he had me repeat it like 3 times, was trying to call his boys in the jail over to hear this verse I wrote, this dude was amazed, and not cause I was his little brother this time, it was cause I had real skills. By twelth grade, I had the highschool basketball team wanting me to go to there games and battle the other schools after the games. People wanted me on there tracks ro join there group, my poem assainments were always the best in class, as a matter of fact the teacher would have me read it to class, and one of them she kept so she could use as an example of a creative writing poem, more like a rap to me.

I never was into rapping on the mic, but I also figured out how to rap on mic to stand out and not seem plain and boring. I was always into just writing, so this is where the internet comes into play. I started hitting up the internet, mainly rap sites, but none actually had any battle spots, just talk. So this one dude who was also starting off wanted somebody to battle, so I jumped in since I had some shit in my head, some of the lines I remember
"But he aint a geek he more like a dumb ass but he run fast,
Or it must've been because of the sound of the gun blast,"

he mentioned something about the indent in my pance only getting 2 cenimeters bigger so my response was
"And this faggot got excited writting about dick he a fronter,
2 cenimeters bigger he must've got that information from his mother,
But let me explain why, the pussy was to wide plus was to dried,
But whos dick would get hard when pussy starts to attract flies."

he said his mom robbing me, so my response
"Your mom robbed me that night diggin in my pance looking for bread and dough,
So when I catch her Ima Kill and Rob her and really leave her Dead Broke,"

"Aight you a legend but in the future people are going to say Lot was a myth,
Cause somebody that lyrically amazing couldnt have possibly exist"

"Tellin these dealers how he’ll suck dick for coac,
Might as well put your face between two ass cheeks the way you sniff blow"

That wasn't a voting battle, the first voting battle was in a tournament we were throwing, and for some reason I thought it was going to be a few rounds with an opponent, but after I dropped a testing the water verse, voting started, so I was assed out. I was also speaking in general to everyone in that verse
"I'll go first in this text tournament,
Cause if I lose theres goin to be
seven dead emcees hanging off trees like ornaments,"

I lost that battle, but after that battle, my opponent mentioned my name in one of his verses, so of course I had to counter attack, this is what one of the voters said
"Lot Murdered dat verse.... das inferno right der.. if we votin im givin my vote direct to Lot.... das 2 lyrical"

That was just my first time battling online which is a whole different ball game when it comes to battling, cause you can't joke on the opponents shoes, or the gear he got on, or the personal attacks that would make a crowd laugh at the person, you actually have to be creative with your punchlines and metaphors to joke on the opponent which I wasn't really up to par with. So the more I started battling, the more creative I got with my punchlines and metaphors, added on that I was a already a real good rhymer and can think of witty things to say, but now I had metaphors and punchlines intergrated in my verses which is a big plus.

That first site helped me a lot with my writing skills to the point I had someone who worked with sony music wanting me to write for his artist which I turned down, let them write their own stuff. So I began hitting bigger sites, and man, some of these emcees are unbelievable, some of the things they come up with will have you wowed.
"kid's done with.... but he's a known leader, & I got proof/
cuz Black run's shit.... down his leg & into his boots//"

So I knew I had to step it up, so I began battling, I won my first battle and then lost my second battle, then after that, I went about 10 to 12 in a row without losing, lost another to someone I had already beaten and later on beat'em again, and the third time I lost was in a team battle where I had the best verse out of the four battling, but my opponent had the weakest verse and since it was a team battle, they other team got it. Oh yeah, and we had already beaten this team in a previous battle. By the time I had finished battling, I was 21-3, one lost to someone I would destroy right now, another lost to someone I beat twice, and the last lost was to two people my team had already beaten, oh yea, and one of the opponents on that team was the first person I ever battled online, you probably already had read about if you got this far.

But after that, I hadn't really battled much, stuck to just plain writing verses, practicing on my off the top of the head freestyles.

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