Let’s discuss rap lyrics and storytelling. Specifically, let’s go over how to write them and craft stories with them.
If you’re serious about mastering this, understanding the art of songwriting and crafting lyrics that tell a story is essential.
This is an important element of creating rap music. Your lyrics are the core foundation to many that appreciate the craft. Being able to compose them and capture effective communication in this capacity is arguably one of my favorite demonstrations in entertainment. In some cases, spiritual messaging.
It’s one thing to be able to fill a beat up with a bunch of words, but it’s another to tell a story with them. It adds a layer to the craft, and takes it from only a surface level challenge, to a meaningful piece of art that holds real influence and impact with the rest of the world.
Finding the Core Message
Finding the core message in the lyrics of the raps you make is an aspect of creating rap music that arguably gets overlooked. You can do organic methods that reveal what’s really being said with peace and reflection. One of my ways in doing so this exact way is through Tea Journaling.
That’s not the point though! Finding your core message in the lyrics you create is a discovery that if made by the interested, will have a focus that’s imposed on the listener (and in some cases with the person who wrote it) to ‘keep their eye on the prize’ with what really matters.
To truly have the ability to find the core message in a cluster of lyrics, you have to know what the purpose of verses are in a song to begin with. Verses are the actual details of the song. They provide context in some cases, and maybe more questions, depending on how vague they are. Separate from the hook, they typically would be the more complex section of whatever song they’re in. When crafted correctly, they become a medium of conversation between the person who created them, and the other that’s listening.
They don’t always have to be the most profound messages though. The market and industry as a whole confirms that there’s generous representation of rap songs that have different meanings. Some of them are criticized for how thought provoking they can be, and others for what they may lack in terms of substance. We’re not gonna be the judge of that just yet, but there’s a message in just that statement alone. It’s: lyrics of all kind get discovered and captures attention rapidly.
If you’re an artist that creates their own music, and rap lyrics in this case, there’s a huge benefit that you yourself can gain from having clarity in what your core message is. If you gain this knowledge, you’re able to share that you’re aware through the likes of what you title the song, captions you label pictures on social media, and even added audio into visual productions!
Those are practical steps you can take to external validation in many cases, but if you’re trying to understand what the core message is yourself to the lyrics you created, it’s not meant for you to know yet. This might be profound in itself to say, but you as the person who creates lyrics don’t need to know every single nuance of what it is you made. That’s why you potentially will earn fans and critics that’ll fairly inform you on what they believe it to mean.
Perspective & Point of View
Perspective and Point of View is yet another element to creating rap music that’s important to the craft. Perspective is valued more when the individual is already championed for what they bring holistically as an individual. In my experience I find that someone who starts their career in rap has to build up their reputation to a certain point before their opinion and overall perspective is actually valued amongst their peers. History however has showed us that there’s other rappers that built up a reputation before anyone ever heard their music. It works that way too in where the public will give your music (in this case) a chance because of the rep you built up to that point.
Point of View is related, yet also different because of what it’s valued for. There’s not many stories that haven’t been shared yet already. What typically makes them unique though, are experiencing these familiar stories, but through the lens of a different perspective. Some of the best stories of all time got this clever flip, and made some of the largest impacts culturally.
Point of view can be added to the lyrics of your song with a secret ingredient that most neglect when they are writing lyrics to their music, that ingredients is imagination mixed with a bit of the golden rule. This is the most efficient way to go about doing it because It challenges you to think with perspective in mind. You possibly tap into a line of thinking that could be different from your own personal thought pattern, but still get the credit for at least pretending to be believable from that character. The biggest factor that’s gonna play a role in your success here is to be believable, and in most cases it happens by being accurate.
The importance of perspective is even revealed in the whole ecosystem of rap music when you consider that it’s an indicator in many ways. Perspective reveals who’s actually considered “hot” in the genre. It lets us know (usually after discussion) who’s relevant. We get a better idea collectively as to who we really resonate with and feels they speak directly to us when breaking down their lyrics. It actually wouldn’t be too far fetched of a thought to believe that perspective literally connects our mindsets.
Story Structure: Explaining The Beginning, Middle, End
The story structure is the roadmap to the project in general. That applies to both singles and full bodies of work. This concept is actually pretty similar to how our favorite stories are crafted. There’s an origin, eventual conflict, and conclusion of some sort. I find that it’s most applicable when focusing on classic bodies of work. There’s a Man on the Moon physical CD that I still have that proves the technique is employed intentionally with great rewards as a result. Specifically, this album has 3 acts, and actually has a follow-up album that keeps this same theme.
Detail & Imagery
Details are important to have present because from a technical standpoint, they extend the length of a song. They could potentially create opportunity for the artist to continue an entire series potentially! It host been until possibly the last decade arguably in where specifies that’s added to a song actually connects the dots for issues that would potentially return to bite the rapper later on down the line.
Rhyme Schemes & Narrative Flow
Rhyme schemes are probably one of the most entertaining parts about rap lyrics, at least from a listener’s ear. This can be one of the technical parts of rap that gets over emphesized actually. It can be a tremendous focus to balance because of how well people believe they have to be in this area when making rap lyrics of their own.
Emotional Authenticity
Emotional authenticity, whether it’s admitted to be or not plays a role in how an overall song is perceived. But when applied specifically to rap lyrics, emotions are a huge source of leverage when you notice rap sub genres that’s making noises because of their popularity in specific areas.
Algorithms for DSPs are getting even more sophisticated in identifying what’s popular with mainstream cultures and beyond. Clearly songs that specifically tug at
emotional strings are gaining favor. And from an artist standpoint, this tends to come across as genuine when you’re able to communicate what you really care about.
Punchlines & Memorable Moments
Punchlines and even memorable moments are the next factor that’s taken into consideration with creating rap lyrics. This is where your Witt comes into play. You’re able to really show how clever you can be when making your words rhyme and releasing at the times you do.
