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By Artist / Album (Analysis of Rap Songs)

Owned by Nathan Wailes
Last updated: May 17, 2019
24 min read

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The Beastie Boys

  • Wikipedia - Beastie Boys
  • It's weird thinking that Ice Cube and the whole gangsta rap movement was kind of born out of the violent/punk attitude of the Beastie Boys.
    •  ← I suspect that if three white guys that looked like this tried to start a rap group now about being violent, the concept would get laughed at.


Drake

Scorpion

  • General:
    • One nice thing about Drake is that I can generally understand what he's saying.
    • The rhythms and rhymes for his raps seem pretty amateurish.
    • He's got a lot of songs on the album.
    • I can't really say it's better than older rap (e.g. ATCQ), it's just a cleaner sound because the tech is newer, more unusual instruments / sounds, and a more 'cool' / subtle / delicate sound which may be a result of speakers getting better(?) or maybe just software that can produce more delicate sounds.
    • Drake's singing seems better than his rapping (both in lyrics and execution), but it sounds autotuned.
  • Survival - Well-produced, amateurish lyrics.
  • Nonstop, Elevate - Generic amateurish lyrics. Sound like filler songs.
  • Emotionless - I liked that this one was actually trying to convey a message: it's not good to obsess over your social media presence.
  • I'm Upset - The total reliance on end-rhymes and identical rhythm for every phrase sound very amateurish, but I can't think of a way to do it better for this accompaniment off the top of my head. The repetitive rhythm is kind of appealing on its own, IDK if it's possible to keep that appealing aspect but not have unappealing / bad end-rhymes.
  • Talk Up - The "ja ja ja ja" is totally ripped from good kid maad city's maad city song.

geohot / tomcr00se

  • General info
  • The good
    • Overall, he is actually not bad.
    • He has problems in his writing and delivery, but he also is much better than most professional raps at trying to say something new.
    • He's good at actually sounding earnest in his performances, although some might say it borders being on melodramatic / too self-serious.
      • 'it was called the cold war...' - 3:30
  • The bad
    • His lyrics often don't reinforce the beat but instead rely on the accompaniment to maintain the listener's sense of what the beat is.
      • For example, it seems like at times he has too many pauses in his rap.
      • He'll also do the common thing of forcing too many syllables into a given span of time, which makes the syllables no longer follow the beat.
    • It seems like he doesn't always enunciate as clearly as is possible.
      • Examples:
        • it was called the cold war because russia is cold
          • 0:21 - 'when' in 'when pokemon cards taught me how to hustle'
          • ''romances' in 'it was called the cold war because russia is cold'
  • Songs
    • 5AM in Silicon Valley
      • Lyrics

        • i got the house to myself
          i can finally rap alone
          back in jersey for the holidays
          i don't think i can call it home

          started a company this year
          this is straight from the valley throne: it sucks

          the only voice left at the party
          is telling me that i shoulda known
          your 27 and never grown
          and what you think / you get to the top / and your less alone
          all the pressures and stressors and headaches
          you wake up and feel great

          nah, you stagnate
          and flip a shit when your uber's 3 minutes late
          and can you still make fun of fat people
          when your BMI is overweight?
          i sorta of feel like i'm out of place

          a year goes by you look around
          you're down in the shitter
          so down you can't be fucked
          if they call you a quitter
          a loser, a little bitch
          who didn't deliver
          by the type of guy
          who comments and gets triggered

          if that's the test
          then i didn't prepare
          lookin kinda stupid standing in my underwear
          should i rock chris and be never scared
          or leave there for somewhere
          is this feeling just here
          or is it -- everywhere?

          from the ass of my chair shit talkin
          i lost a girl i love this year
          now i date myself like i'm crip walkin
          and i might sound like drake
          but i miss the old you and the old us
          when we lived in the closet like harry potter
          guess there never was much trust
          i just want to save us from the future
          but you never loved yourself
          and i never saw where you holed up

          i got a lot of thoughts to think on the train home
          i wonder if younger me would be proud of me
          he never doubted me, we made choices
          and tried our best to drop out
          lets get him loud on these words now

          is there a place for people
          who actually wanna change the world?
          and don't just wanna make a buck
          and market shit to boys and girls
          and fill the ads with products
          that are just out of their reach and so
          they're depressed and you can sell em fuckin lexapro

          in conclusion
          society's for suckers
          and if you still put in work
          you're a stupid motherfucker

      • Good
        • He doesn't make good use of the intro period, where you can talk while the listener gets used to the accompaniment.
        • The quality of the recording of his voice is pretty good. It may not be capturing the bass of his voice as much as it could be.
        • ~1:20 - He does a gradually-increasing tone on a particular line.
        • The accompaniment he chose seems like a good choice for the mood his lyrics seems to be going for.
      • Bad
        • He repeats the same kind of rhythm for three lines in a row at the beginning, but they don't feel connected enough to make it sound like a unified whole.
        • He jumps between different topics in a way that's jarring.
    • it was called the cold war because russia is cold
      • The lyrics
      •  Bad
        • He's out-of-tune when he sings the chorus, the mic quality is bad, his voice doesn't seem as prominent as it should be relative to the accompaniment, and he doesn't seem to have spent any time cleaning it up in his audio software. (2:29)
        • It seems like he doesn't always enunciate as clearly as is possible.
          • Examples:
            • it was called the cold war because russia is cold
              • 0:21 - 'when' in 'when pokemon cards taught me how to hustle'
              • ''romances' in 'it was called the cold war because russia is cold'
    • i'm disgusted by this place i should leave
      • The lyrics:

        • i guess i rolled over i've grown up and i'm mostly sober
          childhoods over and so's my hope for closure
          taylor swift i'll never get to hold her
          adulthood is a pail of shit that it's your job to deal with

          it'll have you on your knees quick
          try and say you're excited
          but don't just think it, feel it
          can you still when the years slip

          why not?
          cause you're all grown up
          and when you ask why to that it's cause
          you're all grown up

          bunch of fascists smashin the pleasure centers of animals
          with a universal human right to be happy
          hold on to your right to feel crappy

          straight talker j walker
          move through the streets like a new yorker
          blue blocka two blocks up it's chewbacca
          with a huge cock
          it's all cool except it's not true
          breakthroughs
          grab soma and take two
          it's a bad omen it feels like a wars coming
          and most of our brave new world is FAKE NEWS

      • Good
        • The title helps the listener understand that the main idea of the song seems to be that geo is 'disgusted'.
      • Bad
        • I found most of the lyrics impossible to decipher from his performance alone. Later I noticed he had posted the lyrics underneath the song on its page.
          • "I guess I rolled over" - "Rolled over" isn't an idiom I'm familiar with.
          • "Childhood's over and so's my hope for closure" - Closure about what?
        • Different aspects of the song seem to be working against each other w/r/t the emotion they seem to be trying to create.
          • The song's accompaniment and his tone of voice suggest that the song should make you feel sad with/for him, but then he says something ridiculous like suggesting that one thing he's sad about is that he isn't going to be able to fulfill his dream of dating Taylor Swift.
        • The title of the song suggests that there's a "place" that he may be able to "leave", but then the actual song seems to be talking about adulthood(?). So the title is obscure as well.


Kanye West

2018 - Ye

First listen

General thoughts:
- I couldn't make out what a lot of the lyrics were supposed to be saying, which made it hard for me to understand what the songs were supposed to be about.
- I didn't really like the album.


I Thought About Killing You
- He seems to walk back the extremity of the premise, where Eminem would've gone full into it.
- The accompaniment / production is great.
- He seems to be trend-following with his rapping style, where it seems what made Kanye popular was his trend-setting with his complicated, high-production-value accompaniments.
- Didn't understand what the purpose of the last part of the song was.


Yikes
- References DMT...seems like a trend-following thing to do.
- I don't understand what the song's about.


All Mine
- Can't understand what the people at the beginning are saying.
- The "I love your titties" lyric didn't flow well.
- I don't understand what the song's about.


Wouldn't Leave
- I don't understand what the song's about.
- *Extremely* minimal accompaniment.


No Mistakes
- I don't understand what the song's about.


Ghost Town
- I don't understand what the song's about.


Violent Crimes
- I *could* understand what this song was about.


Kendrick Lamar

General

My thoughts

  • He's picking up the torch from Eminem / Tupac / Biggie of telling stories and rapping about things other than how great he is.
  • He knows all the methods / tricks, and he's mixing them together. He's not just copying the style of someone else and making some small change to it. He's not just using a single trick / flow. He's a rap-geek like Eminem, not a businessman like Dre / Drake / Jay-Z.
    • I've heard him use Em's flow, Ludacris's flow, Lil Wayne's metaphor-style, etc. and he manages to weave them together so it sounds natural and not like a rip-off. It's like a remix of those styles.
  • I did not understand the hype when I first heard songs by Kendrick. I was also just hearing his most-played songs, like HUMBLE and his Control verse, which are even now my least-favorite. They're different from the rest of the tone of his albums.
  • I still don't buy his tough-guy lyrics, unlike when Biggie / Tupac / DMX / Eminem would deliver them. There isn't enough audible anger / malice / desperation / emotion. But he seems to only use that style of lyrics for radio-play, I guess because it's expected.
  • He mixes double-time rapping into otherwise normal-time rap in a way that I haven't heard as a rapper's main way of rapping.
  • I'm still not convinced his voice is as clear as Eminem / Ludacris / Tupac / Biggie. He doesn't seem to put as much force into the volume of his voice as those other guys do. He seems to be projecting from his throat / lungs instead of his stomach. The accompaniment also seem to be busier and with his voice at a relatively lower volume than those other guys, with a lot of sounds at around the same frequency of his voice.
  • He has an articulate double-speed rap. He enunciates and doesn't fumble / slur words together.
  • He seems to be purposely breaking existing conventions for writing rap songs, like the idea that a rap song has a single accompaniment / melody that goes for the entire song.

2012 - good kid, m.A.A.d city

General

  • First listen, without following along with the lyrics:
    • I'm not convinced he has the emotional range of Eminem / Tupac in terms of his delivery.
    • The songs are longer, which I like. It gives more time to tell stories. And it's not just the same accompaniment the entire time: he'll totally change the accompaniment.
    • The scenes are good. I think they work well with the theme of the album.
    • The accompaniment / production isn't as fancy / flashy as Kanye / Usher, but I think it's still really well-done. There's nothing sloppy or half-assed about it at all, no rough-edges that I could hear.
    • It's a relief that he's usually not rapping about rapping. That's is something I didn't like about Illmatic.
  • Second listen, ~1 month later, following along with the lyrics on Genius

Sherane a.k.a Master Splinter's Daughter

  • First listen (just listening, not reading the lyrics):
    • Good mood.
    • Reminded me of Eminem's storytelling songs.
    • Found it hard to follow his lyrics. I think the accompaniment clashes with his voice sometimes, and he raps fast.
  • Second listen (following along with the lyrics):
    • Awesome story.
    • Love the cliffhanger ending.

Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe

  • First listen (just listening, not reading the lyrics):
    • The chorus is too repetitive. "Bitch don't kill my vibe" is said way too much.
    • It can be hard to follow what he says when he's rapping fast.
    • I think one of my least-favorite songs on the album.
  • Second listen (following along with the lyrics):

Backseat Freestyle

  • I like the way he intersperes double-time lyrics in his normal-speed rap. It seems to be the main trick of the song.
  • Generic topic

The Art of Peer Pressure

  • Great concept for a song.
  • He pauses too long after saying "I got a blunt in my mouth".
  • I actually kind of wish this song was longer, maybe talking about the consequences of such behavior.

Money Trees

  • It's hard for me to follow with the slang.
  • I like the doubling he uses in the song.
  • I can't say I understand what he's saying.
  • The guest verse actually seems well-written, maybe not perfectly-performed. I wonder if Kendrick helped with it.
  • On first listen, it seems like the message is that stealing is OK

Poetic Justice

  • During the chorus they repeat the same two lines, which isn't a best practice
  • I don't understand the scene at the end.

good kid

  • Seems like a good concept: people are being put in a bad situation.
  • Seems like a good build-up.

m.A.A.d city

  • Good mood
  • The idea seems to be telling stories about how dangerous LA was.
  • I really like the intimidating gang-member voice, that was really well done.

Swimming Pools

  • It's about drinking.
  • I really like how he bends 'themselves' to rhyme with 'Chicago', that's a crazy rhyme.
  • Second listen: I really like how the scene at the end serves as a transition to the next song, which is a sad one about gang violence.

Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst

  • Talking about people getting killed by gang violence. Sad song.
  • I really like the jolting effect of the gunshot cutting off what he's saying. That was well done. It really emphasizes what he's rapping about.
  • It's interesting how he fades out his rap transitioning to the chorus.
  • He splits the song into two different accompaniments, just like in the previous song. I really like how he seems to be purposely seeking out song-writing conventions and breaking them.
  • I like the scene at the end.

Real

  • I really like how he mirrors lyrics between multiple verses.
  • I found the call from his 

Compton

  • Features Dre, he even says he's passing the torch. Features a lot of 90s gangsta-rap sounds.

The Recipe - Bonus Track

  • First listen, listening only (not looking at the lyrics)
    • Great accompanying melody.
    • It doesn't fit the mood of the rest of the album, but makes a great bonus track.
    • Kendrick can rap fast articulately.
    • Great track, if I heard this on the radio I would want to learn more about him. <Update: Apparently this was the first single from the album. I don't remember hearing it before, but I also don't listen to the radio.>
  • Second listen, reading the lyrics along with the song
    • Dre sounds really different on this track from the previous stuff I've heard. He's got a much wider range of inflection / accent, where before he was pretty monotone. I think it sounds great.
    • I felt like Dre's lyrics, or maybe at least the way they come off, sounded better than K's.
    • K repeats these two lines within the same verse, and it's not clear why: We want to be on to peak on the chart / So the peons can be gone and pee on their hearts

HUMBLE

  • Who dat nigga thinkin' that he frontin' on Man-Man? (Man-Man)
    Get the fuck off my stage, I'm the Sandman (Sandman)
    Get the fuck off my dick, that ain't right
    I make a play fucking up your whole life

    These lines are not good...they sound like high school stuff.

  • If I kill a nigga, it won't be the alcohol, ayy
    I'm the realest nigga after all

    That last line is not good.

  • It isn't clear to me who he's talking to in this song. At one point it sounds like he's talking to a lady he likes, but then it seems like he may have switched to talking to his competitors.

2015 - To Pimp A Butterfly

General notes

  • First listen:
    • I listened without referring to the lyrics.
    • Using the "Performance" or the "Entertainment" setting equalizer settings sounded the best (I could make out the lyrics the easiest).
    • I feel like this album shows a team at work that has learned from Kanye's production.
    • This album doesn't seem to have an album-wide concept, it feels like it kind of jumps around more than 'good kid, maad city'.
    • I'm really going to have to listen to these songs in-depth, one-at-a-time, to be able to analyze the lyrical technique.
    • Even though I couldn't make out what the lyrics were about, the accompaniment was so good that I was kept entertained, and I feel like coming back again and again to better understand the lyrics would be nice.
    • The album feels kind of emotionally one-dimensional.
    • The songs are long.
    • I think several(?) of the songs are broken into two(?) halves with different sounds in the two halves.

Wesley's Theory

  • First listen:
    • Hard to make out the lyrics from under the accompaniment
    • Nice production
    • I like the subtle allusions to the 90s rap production (in the instruments)

For Free?

  • First listen:
    • Impressive poetry technique
    • I couldn't make out what he was trying to say, though.

King Kunta

  • First listen:
    • Sounds like a James Brown "The Payback" tribute.
    • Good production and lyrics technique.
    • I couldn't make out what he was trying to say. I had the same issue with his lyrics getting melted into the accompaniment.

Institutionalized

  • First listen:
    • Amazing accompaniment.
    • The lyrical technique is amazing.
    • I still can't make out what he's trying to say.

These Walls

  • First listen:
    • The accompaniment on this one felt like a mellower Kanye accompaniment.
    • There are a lot of tricks being used in the accompaniment.
    • Still couldn't make out what the song was about.

u

  • First listen:
    • From the beginning, I guess the main idea of the song is "loving you is complicated".
    • The second half reminds me of an emotional Eminem song.

Alright

  • First listen:
    • Amazing lyrical technique.
    • The lyrics I could make out sounded fairly generic.

For Sale?

  • First listen:
    • Great accompaniment.
    • I couldn't make out what the song was about. There was this person called "Lucy" talking to Kendrick. Was that Lucifer?

Momma

  • First listen:
    • I couldn't make out what this was about.

Hood Politics

  • First listen:
    • This seems to be a gangsta anthem.
    • I couldn't make out a lot of the lyrics.
    • I think I noticed here for the first time that at the end of the songs I'm hearing the same prayer over and over, and it seems to be getting longer with each song (i.e. new sentences are added to the end).

How Much A Dollar Cost

  • First listen:
    • I think I was able to make out a lot more of this song than previous songs.
    • I really liked the story.
    • My understanding of the story is that it's a homeless guy asking for a dollar, Kendrick turns him down, and then the homeless guy reveals himself to be God.
    • Awesome accompaniment.

Complexion (A Zulu Love)

  • First listen:
    • It seems to be Kendrick talking to a woman about how complexion doesn't matter.
    • The guest rhyme is actually good.

The Blacker The Berry

  • First listen:
    • In this one Kendrick seems to be talking to...racists? And he's saying...he knows they hate him? I couldn't totally make out the message.

You Ain't Gotta Lie (Momma Said)

  • First listen:
    • I think this was Kendrick talking to some guy trying to impress him, but I couldn't fully understand it.

i

  • First listen:
    • "I love myself"(?) I couldn't follow the message. There seemed to be a lot of boasting lyrics.

Mortal Man

  • First listen:
    • "When shit hit the fan is you still a fan"(?)
    • lol it has Kendrick talking to Tupac halfway through. it actually takes up several minutes
    • I don't understand how the second half relates to the first half.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Alexander Hamilton (song performance at the White House)

  • The song is humorous in part because of the contrast of the very informal urban-black style of speaking and the very formal white subject (Hamilton).
    • "What's your name, man? / Alexander Hamilton..." had a lot of people laughing.
  • Lin-Manuel relies somewhat on the urban-black vocabulary: "The brother was ready..."
  • Another thing that makes the song fresh is the piano accompaniment. It's maybe normal(?) for a Broadway tune but not for a rap song. And it's a well-done accompaniment that changes over time, not a repetitive loop, like a lot of rap accompaniment is.
  • Lin-Manuel does a brilliant job of telling a story with the lyrics, having the lyrics connect with each other, instead of it being a string of mostly-unrelated couplets.
  • I feel like the ending is weak.
  • When Lin-Manuel is singing the "there would've been nothing left to do for someone less astute", both he and his accompaniment seem to shift back a beat, so their previous 4th beat is now their 1st beat.

Nas

General

Why he's good
  • Q-Tip: Just from when you heard Nas initially, you knew he was ill. When I first heard him rhyme, I knew he was ill. Everybody knew he was ill. But I told Faith, “You guys got somebody special.” Because he has vulnerability in his rhymes. A lot of niggas who MC, you don’t hear the vulnerability. He keeps it relatable, but he has a lot of depth. He can keep it gangsta, he can keep it educated, he can keep it thoughtful. He can tell you that he’s the shit, & he can tell you when he fucks up. And that’s what makes Nas endearing to everybody. (Source)

1994 - Illmatic

  • Related book: Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic
  • General thoughts
    • The good
      • The main attraction of his rapping style, as far as I can tell, is that he has one (or more!) internal rhyme(s) on nearly _every_single_line_ without it sounding like complete gibberish, which is obviously an incredible accomplishment.
      • He's also able to make his lyrics sound dramatic / not ridiculous.
      • His flow is also–while not perfect (see "The bad" below)–is overall undeniably very good, maybe even 'excellent' when compared against later artists, with the caveat that this is a different style of rapping with different constraints that he's holding himself to.
      • He doesn't have all of his rhymes at the end of the line and the same rhythm on a significant percentage of his lines, which was a big problem with earlier rap.
      • He also doesn't skimp on the lyrics the way some other rappers will, filling the time with repetitions of the chorus or variations on the beat/melody. All of his songs have a lot of original lyrics.
    • The bad
      • Illmatic seems pretty hyped, and it may have been revolutionary at the time it was released, but I don't think it holds up when compared to Biggie's / Tupac's / Eminem's best albums/songs.
      • He will sometimes pause in the middle of a sentence, which is something less-good rappers are known to do and really hurts my feeling of immersion into the lyrics.
      • He will sometimes flip his sentence-structure, which makes it harder to understand, similar to when he pauses in the middle of a sentence.
      • His producer(s) clearly aren't as good as Biggie's / Eminem's / Tupac's. He often doesn't have fun / interesting melodies. "The World is Yours",  "Memory Lane", "Represent", and "It Ain't Hard to Tell" are exceptions.
      • He doesn't alternate long (1/8th-note) and normal (1/16th-note) durations on his vowels the way Biggie / Tupac / Eminem do. So it sounds less varied.
      • He uses words / phrases that are hard to understand:
        • "Visualizin' the realism of life and actuality"
          • This is by someone else rapping a verse on one of Nas's songs, but the verse was written in Nas's style.
        • "Beef with housin' police, release scriptures that's maybe Hitler's" ← What does "scriptures that's maybe Hitler's" mean?
      • I think he's so focused on getting internal rhymes that it forces him to use awkward sentence construction, which makes it harder to follow what he's saying. IIRC Eminem has the same issue in his internal-rhyme-heavy songs.
      • He has a LOT of references/slang in his rhymes, which make it harder to follow than Biggie / Tupac / Eminem lyrics, even though those guys also use slang / references.
        • "Before a blunt, I take out my fronts" ← OK, in hindsight, I guess 'fronts' refers to his grill.
        • "That's like Malcolm X, catchin the Jungle Fever"
        • "I'll pull a number like a pager"
        • "I'm an ace when I face the bass"
        • "40-side is the place that is giving me grace"
        • "Nas will catch wreck"
        • "And told my little man that I'm a go cyprose" ← Even urbandictionary doesn't know what 'cyprose' means.
      • It's hard to say what a lot of his songs are about.
      • He doesn't have any skits or other things to mix up the flow of his album and give his listeners' brains a breather between songs.
      • A few too many references to Moet (IMO) in the second half of the album.
  • Song-specific thoughts
    • The World Is Yours
      • The flow, rhymes, chorus, and melody/beat on this are sick.
      • But it's still hard to understand the ideas he's actually conveying with his words.
      • Later: IMO they would've done better to slow down the song a bit to make the lyrics easier to follow.  I enjoyed the lyrics a lot more when I played it at 75% speed on YouTube and could actually follow the lyrics.  75% felt a little slow, the ideal may be ~80-90% of the original speed.  But I do agree the accompaniment sounds good at a faster speed.  On the other hand, if the idea is that people are going to be listening to the song many times, it may make sense to have it at a faster speed.
    • Halftime
      • Forgettable :/
      • He says "slaaave ships" in exactly the same way that Biggie would 5 months later on "Ready to Die". He also then rhymes it with "clips", which is what Biggie ended up doing.
      • On my second listen, with the lyrics in front of me for both the first and second listen, I ended up with the impression that the main idea of this song is "I'm a great rapper".
      • This song also has a sample that I'm sure I've heard on another song, and I feel it was most likely a Biggie song (which was almost certainly released after this song). It may have been a commonly-used sample. You can hear it looping from 2:41 to 3:01. It sounds to me like a trumpet.
      • Later: Listening to this track on its own, without playing the entire album, I like the accompaniment.  Maybe the accompaniment sounds samey if the listener is listening to the entire album at once?
    • Memory Lane
      • Good loop/melody/beat.
    • One Love
      • I think this may be my favorite song on the album, despite it not having the most 'fun' / catchy beat / melody / sample.
      • I think the first verse of this song may be my favorite verse of the album.
      • This song actually has an easy-to-follow concept: someone writing a series of letters to their very-close friend / partner-in-crime in prison.
      • Eminem's "Stan" feels a lot like this song (obviously in concept, but also in execution), except with a lot more emotion in it.
    • One Time 4 Your Mind
      • I can't say what this song is supposed to be about.
    • Represent
      • This has a good loop/melody/beat. I immediately recognized it; this may be the most popular song on the album.
      • The concept is somewhat easy to understand: it's about his behavior in his hood.
    • It Ain't Hard To Tell
      • This has one of the better loops/melodies on the album.
      • He somewhat-weirdly combines a downplayed/quiet sample of the most-memorable portion of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature" with another very-prominent "DA-da-da-da-da" sample.
      • Can't say what the concept of this song is beyond "I'm a good rapper", and I had to reread the lyrics to be sure of that much.

The Notorious B.I.G.

1994 - Ready to Die

  • at the end of "Me & My Bitch" he says he started rapping at around age 18, but if you watch the video on YouTube, it says he's 17, and he's already good. And in the video he suggests he's been rapping since 13.
  • he varies his emotional tone; sometimes he's angry, other times he's not as angry
  • he varies the speed with which he talks
  • they do a great job of filling up the sound space with various sounds. one of the early songs in particular does a great job of this. it's really just like a christmas tree. but he also varies this; "One More Chance" empties out the space. It seems like they load up the sound space to add more energy into the song. For example, Lil Wayne's "How to Love" is relatively sparse of sounds.
  • a big part of the appeal is how unusual of a character he presents; it's just like There Will Be Blood or No Country For Old Men. His accent is part of what makes him seem exotic. Another trait is the way he responds to things; he responds differently than the listener would.
  • on The What, Method Man splits a rhyme in half, pausing before finishing it: "I'm not a gentle--man, I'm a method man" It doesn't sound good.
  • he uses "and stuff" a lot.
  • somehow the quality of the production on "Respect" and "Friend of Mine" sounds worse.
  • he's got songs that span many different emotions that people would feel: aggression towards someone, trying to pick up women, feeling depressed, etc.

13. Big Poppa

Tempo: 84.52 bpm
Structure: 3 8-couplet-sized stanzas of rapping divided by the chorus. But at the end you have Puffy talking instead of anyone rapping, and in the first stanza Biggie does a triplet followed by a singlet, and then for the singlet and the next couplet has the lyrics bleeding into the next couplet.

14. Respect

  • I think this is one of the worse songs on the album, but I can't quite articulate why...
    • The melody is less interesting

16. Unbelievable

  • Verse 3 has some lines with awkward rhythm in it.

17. Suicidal Thoughts

Notes from 2017.07.10

  • This album is just about twice as long as Illmatic, although it does contain several non-rap intros/skits/interludes.
  • The concept of each of his songs is very easy to understand.
  • Biggie sometimes uses hard-to-decipher slang, but much less frequently than Nas:
    • That's my word, nigga even try to bogart
  • He'll make slight changes to common words:
    • I guess to get his life tooken
  • Things Done Changed
    • The production plays with the stereo. It has some samples/audio play from the left side, and other audio playing from the right.
    • The melody is interesting.
    • The song has multiple samples of other people speaking.
  • Machine Gun Funk
    • Great, great loop/melody
    • The concept of this song is harder to understand. It seems to be about how he is now a rapper, and has given up his past life, but is still capable of violence.
  • Warning
    • Good loop/melody.
    • Very easy-to-understand concept.
  • Ready to Die
    • The concept seems to be the same as Eminem's 'Rock Bottom': I need money and I'm going to steal to get it. But Biggie's delivery doesn't convey the same desperation.

A Tribe Called Quest

1990 - People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm

1991 - The Low End Theory

1993 - Midnight Marauders

1996 - Beats, Rhymes and Life

1998 - The Love Movement

The Wu-Tang Clan

General thoughts

  • They just about all have great voices.
    • They have tough-sounding voices / delivery, so when you listen to it you feel pumped up / tough yourself. You don't really need to even understand most of what they say, because the sound in their voices gets you going all by itself.
  • One nice thing is that they have different personalities in the same group (eg ODB).
    • Honestly, though, other than ODB, I can't really say how the rest of their characters are different from each other.
  • They make heavy, heavy use of metaphors. They seem to be motivated by a desire to create internal rhymes.
    • I think the problem is that they give each metaphor too little time to become clear; they literally have one metaphor per measure in some stanzas.
    • And the problem is that listeners often use context to "decode" the meaning of a metaphor, but when you have too many metaphors, it becomes difficult for listeners to use the non-existent non-metaphorical language to clarify what the metaphors mean.
  • They seem to operate on a standard-operating procedure of having not just the end of the measures rhyme in couplets, but having the first measure of each line also contain a word that rhymes with the end-rhymes.
  • They really don't swear much. They're nothing close to Biggie / Tupac / Eminem. They seem closer to Nas.

1995 - Return to the 36 Chambers

General thoughts

  • The album doesn't seem to have been created with a sense of creating variety between tracks.
  • ODB comes across as totally crazy, which is great.
  • ODB's delivery is great, it's really the highlight of the album.
  • It's not easy to follow what ODB or the other rappers are saying.
  • It feels like an album where they focused on the songs they were going to release as singles and spent way less time on the other songs, basically treating them as filler.
  • The mics don't sound good.  It can't just be the era, because Ready to Die came out before this album and I don't remember this being an issue.  It's most noticeable for ODB.
  • An album like this contracts drastically with something like the Slim Shady LP and shows why Eminem / Dre's perfectionism was so important.

Intro

  • I can't make out a fair amount of what's being said.

Shimmy Shimmy Ya

  • I can't really give a first impression of this song because it's so famous.
  • This song is a great example of how much ODB varies his delivery.
  • I like the distorted/reversed couplet.
  • I'm not sure what to think about the fact that the only stanza is repeated in its entirety, with a different delivery.  It's obviously generally a big no-no.
  • Even while referring to the lyrics I couldn't make out the point of the song.

Baby C'mon

  • It's not easy to follow the lyrics.
  • The mic isn't great, it makes him sound like he's got a cold.  It feels like there's a lot of information being lost in the lower end of the sound spectrum(?).
  • I couldn't make out the point of the song, if it had one.

Brooklyn Zoo

  • Great accompaniment.
  • This is lyrical myricals done well: the emphasis isn't on the lyrics, it's on his delivery and how he varies it.
  • Love the interruption to the rhythm with his true-to-life delivery of the line, I said "Get the fuck outta here!"

Hippa To Da Hoppa

  • A very, very weak accompaniment.

Raw Hide

  • Great accompaniment.
  • The variety in voice sounds between ODB, Raekwon, and Method Man is great.

Damage

  • The rapid delivery and rapid alternating between ODB and GZA gives it a great energy.

Don't U Know

  • ODB's ending verse is pretty funny.

The Stomp

  • Forgettable.

Goin' Down

  • Weak accompaniment.

Drunk Game [Sweet Sugar Pie]

  • Not a rap song, it's a funny "song" with ODB "singing" to seduce some woman.

Snakes

  • A bunch of collaborators rapping on this one.
  • ODB's verse on this is the worst one, it sounds like he came up with it in a few minutes and improvised a bunch.
  • Buddah Monk's really-short verse gets buried under the accompaniment.

Brooklyn Zoo II [Tiger Crane]

Proteck Ya Neck II The Zoo

  • This is a better-than-average song on the album.

Cuttin' Headz

  • Forgettable, but maybe better than average on this album.

Dirty Dancin'

  • Forgettable, weak accompaniment, Method Man and ODB's voices are great but not enough to make this interesting.

Harlem World

1997 - Wu-Tang Forever

Disc 1

01. Wu-Revolution

  • It's a really long intro (6:46). The guy's talking about all kinds of random stuff. It sounds like a sermon. It also sounds a little like crazy-talk.
  • I have no idea what the purpose of this intro is.
  • The accompaniment is not very interesting.

02. Reunited

  • GZA has a great voice, ODB has a great voice. RZA has a somewhat generic voice. Method Man has a great voice.
  • There's basically no chorus.
  • The accompaniment isn't particulary interesting
  • They all seem to be focused on great flow / internal rhymes over making sense.

03. For Heavens Sake

  • The accompaniment is a little more interesting here. They seem to be sampling something.
  • Masta Killa's verse is bad.

04. Cash Still Rules / Scary Hours

  • This is a good song. One of the only songs on this album I'd heard before.
  • All the performers are good and have interesting voices: Raekwon, Method Man, Ghostface Killah
  • Good sample
  • It's not clear what the 

05. Visionz


06. As High As Wu-Tang Get


07. Severe Punishment


08. Older Gods


09. Maria

This is a good one


10. A Better Tomorrow

  • Awesome lyrics:
    Took two drags off the blunts, and started breaking down the flag
    The blue is for the Crips, the red is for the Bloods
    The whites for the cops, and the stars come from the clubs
    Or the slugs that ignites, through the night, by the dawn
    Early light, why is sons fighting for the stripe


11. It's Yourz


12. Wu-Tang Forever Intro


13. Triumph



Disc 2

14. Impossible


15. Little Ghetto Boys


16. Deadly Melody


17. The City


18. The Projects


19. Bells of War


20. The M.G.M.


21. Dog Shit


22. Duck Seazon


23. Hellz Wind Staff


24. Heaterz


25. Black Shampoo


26. Second Coming


27. The Closing


28. Sunshower


29. Projects

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