Support the National Bail Fund Network: secure.actblue.com/donate/bailfundscovid BLM resources: blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ Music Theory's White Racial Frame: musictheoryswhiteracialframe.wordpress.com/ Some additional thoughts/corrections: 1) I want to emphasize that this isn't covering the entire concept of flow. Heck, it's not even covering the entirety of _Adams's paper_ on the concept of flow. There's a lot more to it, and this won't be my last video on the topic, but I feel like starting with an appreciation of the ways in which hip-hop artists use words as instruments is a vital part of understanding what makes hip-hop so wonderful and unique as a genre. 2) I didn't want to spend too long on the "Is rap poetry?" question 'cause I've already made _two other videos_ on why it definitely counts as music, but here's a couple more points in case you're not convinced. a) When we look at flow, we're looking at more than just words, we're looking at how those words _interact_ with the musical structures around them. Poetry is bound only by its own internal meter, whereas rap also has to interact with the tempo, time signature, and other rhythmic elements. The tresillo in Blazing Arrow, for instance, cannot exist without the underlying 4/4 pulse provided by the beat. b) The field of advanced poetry has, for a long time, been moving _away_ from obligate rhyme, because within poetic structures those are fairly limiting. in the context of music, though, doubling down on rhyme is liberating, creating new musical layers that didn't exist before. The behaviors of the two art forms are different, so conflating them seems unhelpful. c) Most rappers consider themselves musicians and I think it's both condescending and ill-informed to insist that they're incapable of self-defining their own artistic output. 3) I expect I'll get some pushback for the claim that country comes from black communities, because these days the genre is viewed as pretty explicitly (and traditionally) white, but historically speaking, that image is the product of an intentional campaign of erasure by folks like Henry Ford. If you want to learn more, here's a good starting point: www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/country-music-racist-history-1010052/
Thank you so much for doing this, way to many people are afraid to take a stance in these kinda of thimgs at the risk of being called too political, and I'm sure you are aware you're risking patrons and subscribers for this, but you did the right thing, and you were honest about what you think, and I have so much respect and admiration for it. 12tone, your platform is a force of good; until now mainly for musical education with an open mind, but now also due to a specific focus in an area much neglected. Hip hop is awesome, and it deserves you.
You say you support Black Lives Matter, but do you know what you are supporting? Taylor's of Harrogate, who make Yorkshire Tea, clearly had no idea. Yorkshire Tea Endorses # Black Lives Matter ua-cam.com/video/oLS30MfJt00/v-deo.html
Nothing really needs anybody’s defense. Society just can’t let too many things be equally pure. It is just that society keeps nominally corrupt what entered it on its margins.
It doesn't. No form of music does. If someone just doesn't get it and is genuinely curious, explaining the artistic or aesthetic merit isn't defending it. When people come out and just say rap isn't music, just like when someone asserts some overly simplistic political, religious, or other sort of perspective, they're not looking to be convinced to change their mind, so any effort defending a more nuanced position is a waste of energy. And I say all of this as someone who, on the whole, doesn't generally enjoy hip-hop; I probably have about a dozen hip-hop albums among my collection of thousands. By the same token, as a massive fan of metal, I'm not going to expend energy defending it; if people are genuinely interested, I'll talk their ear off, if not, it's okay, not every genre is for everyone. Really, I think Steven Wilson said it best, paraphrasing: In any genre, 99% is forgettable, but 1% is essential. This has consistently held true. I've found some truly spectacular gems in hip-hop that, if I just assumed I didn't enjoy the whole genre, I never would have found. The reverse holds true for those who don't get genres I love, but I can share some truly exceptional examples of it, and even if they don't love it like I do, they'll typically at least understand why I do.
@@BaronSloth I am an hip hop head. I am curious about what are the hip hop gems you are talking about. If you don't mind sharing them, I would like to know (many of) them.
@Big D I mean no disrespect, but I wanted to know the opinion of someone who is not an hip hop head as you are and is into other kind of music. I do know and listen to the artists you wrote, you have great tastes btw.
@@huss2600 I so fucking hope we get it someday. Honestly when he was saying the stuff about copyright, I thought he was about to cover the sections he was talking about with his own voice xD
I’ve been a rocker and metalhead for decades, but after listening - ACTUALLY listening - to hip hop, I am incredibly impressed with the musicality and skill that those artists exhibit. I’ll be honest - I did not get this concept of “flow” until I stopped listening to hip hop for just the instrumental virtuosity (me imposing my value onto the genre) and more for the overall feel and complexity. The dual purpose of lyrics - both to tell a story as well as them being used as an instrument - is incredibly impressive.
Dude im your vice versa - Grew up on hip hop and rap, and so lyricsm, beats, etc. is nothing new to me. I started listening to rock and metal music, and just paying attention to the level and skill these bands and artists have on their respective instruments, guitar, bass, drums are just fkn insane. And i really appreciate the sound and vibe that they have with their music. Now im a major mix of rap, hip hop and rock and metal haha I mean, metal has its place in the gym for me anyway, gets me into the mood that rap and hip hop wont haha
I wish there were more people like you, I absolutely get triggered when someone says that they don't "get" rap or it's just not valid as a music, song or art-form.
Fun fact: henry ford is the reason a lot of us in the US throughout the years learned square dancing in school. Because racism and his vendetta against jazz. in the words of @12tone, "that's a thing that actually happened, you could look it up"
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Hitler had a portrait of Ford hanging in his office. I often wonder why we haven't collectively decided to rename his products, like back in the 40s when there was a sudden influx of people named Adolph putting in applications to change their name.
mcfahk Your comment made me double-check this factoid, and it turns out your assumption is correct: both Ford and Hitler had each other's respective photos displayed in their offices!
Adam Neely said it best. American music is Black music. I am so down for more hip-hop analyses! Just dont totally drop the rock, blues, and occasional jazz stuff altogether. Also I'd love to see more microtonal/alternative tuning systems videos.
I mean, American music is also European folk, especially English folk. Particularly in the country and folk genres, but the influence is all over other genres too.
I really wish Neely kept up his 2nd channel video where he criticised 2SetViolins and that one video they made, because he touches on a lot of the history of people dismissing black music, and the ideas that 2Set's video unfortunately feeds into.
@@Telamon8 Twoset are pretty much glued in the classical world of music. I think they sleep with a portrait of bach under their pillow bro. I mean why not
I get what he's going for, but I don't think it's really accurate. Rather, I'd say that American music is an essential element of what makes American music uniquely American. And, in so saying, it's difficult to overstate just how important that influence is. As they say, America is a melting pot, and that holds just as true of the music and art is it does of culture; after all, art is a pillar of culture
Slavery happened in the colonies before America declared independence. Black people have been living in a country called The United States of America as long as white people have. It's crazy people subconsciously forget that.
All music has complexity and craft in it, the only differences are where that craftsmanship is focused. Jazz and classical put a lot of focus on harmony for example while modern pop puts its focus on timbre. Rap puts that mastery into the music of the words themselves. I got so tired of hearing people with an “academic” perspective be dismissive of other styles just because it isn’t there area of study. 12tone absolutely nails that understanding. Edit: 12tone made this same point, this is what I get for commenting while watching.
@@estranged520 Mostly they rag on pop-music. Haven't seen them touch hip hop much. They're pretty funny when they focus on music theory, art school hijinks or what it's like working events, but the roasting is better when they stick to classical music.
@@BonaparteBardithion _"the roasting is better when they stick to classical music"_ True. I also often cringed at their comments on pop music. But I haven't seen them roasting pop music in a long time. That's something they did maybe two years ago, but recently, they have been a lot more open minded about it, and in some of their most recent videos, they tried to write their own pop songs and lo-fi hip hop songs. I really don't think they were elitists, and I don't think they had bad intentions. A lot of it was simply jokes/memes (like the way they make fun of violas and recorders) - and yes, I'm aware that insensitive jokes can have consequences. I do remember the comments under those videos - they were full of classical elitists that took the jokes in the videos literally. But as I said, it seems like they have become more open minded about other styles of music, and no longer post videos where they roast other genres.
@@MaggaraMarine i also think they used to be very unaware of the actual craftsmanship that goes into genres other than classical. these days they seem to have a lot more respect for different styles of music
Great video! Side note: As a rock fan myself, I find it interesting how I had all these preconceived notions about rap just being fast talking that you brought up until I sat down and gave something a chance one day that I had seen highly recommended. I didn't understand almost any of it, but the artistry and pathos were unmistakeable. In one listen my entire opinion began to do a 180. For me that album was To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar, an album and an artist I believe has had similar effect on many former rap-haters like myself. If you're reading the comments and this video still hasn't convinced you to give rap a chance, I strongly suggest you give this album a listen. Especially if you come from a more rock/prog/jazz background, you're bound to find a lot of familiarity there. I remember the first time I heard it I couldn't help positively comparing it to Pink Floyd's The Wall.
This is why I scourged the comments section, lol. Love testimonials like this! What other artists have you discovered since? Also, what artists do you typically listen to?
@@negasirutledge3617 Forgot I wrote this comment, lol. I'm still much more of a rock head but my respect for hip hop runs deep. Over the past year or so I've fostered a budding love for OutKast, I think they may be my favorite hip hop artist now. I also really love stuff from Kanye and Eminem, and I've come to enjoy Enter The 36 Chambers by Wu Tang, Me Against The World by 2Pac, Coloring Book by Chance, and probably some others I'm not remembering off the top of my head. Artists I typically listen to? I'm a major prog rock fan, as well as a major classic rock fan, so Rush, Queen, Genesis, David Bowie are all top five artists for me, as well as the newer band Muse. My listening habits vary a lot day to day, so today I spun It's Only Rock And Roll by the Rolling Stones, Benefit by Jethro Tull, Novella by Renaissance, and Red Octopus by Jefferson Starship. How about you? :)
Haha, I almost had an identical experience: hated rap for pre-conceived notions, ended up giving TPaB a shot after hearing good stuff about it and being exposed to other forms of rap at one time or another, loved the album so much that it single-handedly got me into the world of hip-hop. (Btw you're welcome for the year late notification)
When Grandmaster Flash' The Message stops feeling like it's talking about recent events, we'll have made it to the other side of the issue. Until then, rap rules. And we have a long time coming.
When watching Sideway's video on hip hop and slam poetry, it felt like their comparison of the two felt too simplistic. I understand that the two are very interconnected, and that cultural appropriation is very common. However, to me it felt like a key fact was left out of the mix. This video pointed out the key fact of flow being inseperable from the musical aspects of a piece. removing lyrics from the music of a rap just makes the it feel empty. the lyrics have no reference point, and the beat feels hollow. Slam poetry does not need music because the poet makes the words flow on their own. As a slam poet, rapping is hard, not because of rhyming, but because flow is hard to translate from one genre to another.
I thought the same after watching that video. It was actually comical to me. Like he tried to run a clean line between poetry and music, failed because he couldn't find a good definition for either (no one can) , and concluded that they must, in fact, be the same. Even though everyone he interviewed where like "well obviously they are different it's just cant articulate how". Why should there be a clear line between poetry and music? Poetry often feels musical anyway...
There definitely are people in slam poetry who want to be rappers but know if they tried to call it "rap" they'd get hated on, which I think was his point more than all slam poetry being cultural appropriation. If I remember the video correctly he even talks about the fact most of it doesn't have that tight rhythmic feel and flow but brought attention to stuff that was clearly trying to sound like rap but without music which makes him uncomfortable. I might be wrong on that though, has been a long time since I watched that video
@@omeragam8628 Exactly that last part, and music has been incorporating poetry since the dawn of time too. I love music that does all the talking for itself, but when arts come together, they can just form something not necessarily greater than the sum of it's part, but definitely great in a way that wasn't there before. Some videogames have a very, very strong sense of consistency between all the involved arts, it's like it forms a little universe where it all makes sense together.
@@ClikcerProductions You should check out Raul Zurita (a chilean poet) with "Gonzalez y los asistentes", poetry doesn't need to be rap to have it's musical aspects highlighted.
Actually, lyrical poetry is a very old tradition that has popped up in both the East and West. It's not actually that hard to compare poetry to lyrical poetry, BUT lyrical poetry has much, much stricter rules in both the Eastern and Western traditions.
There's an old joke: What do you call the guy hanging out with all the musicians at a concert? The drummer. But, let's call it what it is - a joke. Keeping time in a manner that is not only interesting, but adds to the musicality of a piece absolutely qualifies a drummer as a musician. Neil Peart, Phil Collins, and even Dave Grohl (when he was with Nirvana) are musicians. A rapper is essentially adding another layer of percussion. They don't just speak words with rhyme and meter (poetry), they do so in time with the other instruments being used. And, as you pointed out, can do so in a way that expands the percussion in the song in an interesting and musical way. Also, if other forms of music don't put enough value on lyrics (looking at you, pop), that's a knock against them, not against those who value what they have to say and how to say it. Compare meaningful rap lyrics to someone singing "Baby, baby, yeah, yeah, yeah" and I'd pick the former every time.
@@kenshin6553 My argument against rap being music is that it isn't musical. I like music that isn't tonal, but I'm thinking of music that doesn't have a key, like serial or twelve-tone music. Humphrey Searle ua-cam.com/video/lzrR3acoxlw/v-deo.html You probably mean music that doesn't use tones, or notes, precisely pitched sounds used to create melody and harmony. Even that can be musical: Senri Kawaguchi - Zildjian Factory Solo ua-cam.com/video/NvDsi-gohDo/v-deo.html
Nightjar on the gate You should watch 12tone’s video about why rap is music, as well as his response to Ben Shapiro, where he breaks down what can and can’t be music
All Caps is my go-to when people use the bad-faith argument that rap is not valid at a musical genre because it is just fast talking over a beat. MF DOOM's flow on the entire song is unbelievable complex and his rhyming keeps you on your heels for the entire song. More than anything, though, it nicely demonstrates the skill that is required to rap because it is extremely hard to replicate that flow. The skill goes far behind the writing (which is also very impressive). Would love to see analysis of how rap more. The lyrics are always worth analyzing but analyzing the flow and how that works into the meaning is something that I don't feel like I have seen a lot, except on songs where it is very obvious like Tech N9ne's Wither.
Vocals as an instrument without "lyrics" are a concept I think a lot more people need to grasp. It's on full display listening to music in a language you don't speak, but I'd bet a large portion of western audiences have never listened to a song that wasn't in english outside of Despacito.
@@user-rc4re5fo2f I mean, that was some odd shit to say in response to a comment that was simply a throwaway phrase to elicit some humour from the context of the piece of analysis that 12tone provided, but I'm going to try to parse what you said to understand where you're coming from. _"no it wasnt deep because it has been so obvious to everyone forever, except you I guess."_ Brah, no need to be so snide about it. Who hurt you? I'm fully aware of the influence that blues music has had on Rock/Heavy Rock/Heavy Metal (and most genres of guitar music since the early 50's, if we're getting into it), I've been playing guitar (amateurishly, if I do say so myself) since I was 13 years old and I'm 44 now, I studied music at school and at college, so I'm reasonably well grounded in the basics of theory, at least from a "western" composition view (something that 12tone and Adam Neely have touched upon in recent videos, but I digress). So, yeah, you guess wrong. _"Listen to the first black sab album from 1970 or any heavy rock from then thru the 80s"_ Preaching to the choir, Brah, I grew up on that shit through both of my parents extensive record collections. Black Sabbath was like the bread and butter to my musical dinner. _"and its mostly all blues derived pentatonic at it's core, until thrash and harder styles came in the 80s."_ See my responses above about my history of, and exposure to music. _"Odd thing is most blk ppl dont like blues anymore"_ I'm guessing you know most of the black people that listen to music then! Congratulations, Brah, I can see you're clearly doing your bit for the side there! It's nice to know that you got that covered for them, I'm sure they appreciate it.
Maxwell Monheit It's worse than that. Watch Tom Scott's video on copyright law for a deep dive on this, but basically, UA-cam's claim system is actually one of the *more* reasonable compromises to deal with how fundamentally terrible copyright law is.
@@ConvincingPeople such a good video, I've seen it lol, thanks for correcting me! ya copyright law is bullshit for the same reasons, has nothing to do with artistic integrity and everything to do with treating media as a commodity
On the topic of "is rap poetry?": Well yeah! And so is other music. Some of my favorite poems are song lyrics, "Kiss this thing goodbye" by Del Amitri, "Closer to Fine" and "Hammer and a Nail" by the Indigo Girls for just two examples. Not only is music vs. poetry a false distinction but hip hop is some of the best poetry around.
I disagree, and I hope I'm able to express my point here. I don't think rap is poetry, but I think rap contains poetry. Saying "rap is poetry" to me is analogous to saying "you are your brain". Clearly your brain is an important aspect of you (perhaps even the most important part). But you are more than your brain. You have the whole rest of your body which definitely contributes to who you are. And I also happen to believe that you more than the sum of your parts (gestalt), just as rap is more than the sum its parts: poetry, rhythm, beat, sound elements, etc. Once you put everything together you get something new. As you mention, poetry is a part of other forms of music too, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a distinction between music and poetry. There definitely is.
@R. L. Dodson I think asking "is rap poetry" is like asking "is poetry music". I think the answer to both is no, but rap is LIKE poetry in a way that other musical style are not. Just like poetry is LIKE music in a way that prose is not.
@@omeragam8628 Yes, poetry can be music. Very easily. The tradition of lyrical poetry is very old and is mostly gone except for in East Asia, but poetry can definitely be music. Teresa Teng's most famous song is based on a lyrical poem from the Tang Dynasty, around the 700s CE, rearranged for modern tastes. It's quite easy for poetry to be music, but the rules are strict.
I've given rap a shot... it's kind of the vocal equivalent of a drum solo, and I get just as bored as I do listening to those. But that's okay, people can like what they like, and not like what they don't like. That's the beauty of art. Like what you like, it's not a contest.
John T. Mickevich Yeah, I really don’t care for rap, along with modern pop and metal. They don’t have the sort of complexity that I like, and, more importantly, I just don’t like the soundscape they create.
There are artists out there that use both jazzy instrumentals and intelligent lyrics. A few recommendations: a tribe called quest, the pharcyde, digable planets, blackalicious, common and Jurassic 5. All of these guys blend the musicality of jazz and pop with the flow of hip hop, and if that doesn't get you into hip-hop then that's ok too
This is why, as a metal fan (amongst love of many other genres) I really hate metal heads attacking hip hop and rap . . . Look at the best metal vocalists. When you are wailing, shouting or screaming lyrics (as you often have to in metal) rhythm, flow and timbre are exactly what conveys the meaning. Its the same with rap. Its recognising that you don't necessarily have melody to play with so you have to push the other options available to you. And it works brilliantly. The vocals almost become a percussion Intrument, which - if anything - lends more weight and more importance to what it is you're actually saying. The lyrics become the nuance of the vocal line because the melody can't be. Also, we have to, as rock fans (which I also am) acknowledge the contribution of black people in creating rock music. It seems such a homogenous 'White genre' these days, but it started with people like lil richard and sister rosetta tharpe . . . We cannot deny or ignore the contribution of black artists in what are generally considered 'white' genres today
@@creamwobbly Rubbish. Occam's Razor tells you the simplest explanation that fits all the fact is the most likely one. As a white non-racist music lover I don't like rap because it doesn't do the things that I want music to do. I don't like metal either generally for the same reason. I would rather listen to blues or jazz, both types of music that came from black people. Metal and hip hop are very different and the music itself is the simplest explanation for people liking one and not the other. If I like Berlioz but not Messiaen am I both a francophile and a francophobe? And what about all the rap fans who don't like metal, which is probably most of them? Is that racism too?
Fun fact: Buddy Holly was invited to play at the Apollo because the promoters decided with his sound, he must be black. They never saw a picture of him.
@@nightjaronthegate Thats more personal preference and you gave a vaild reason why you don't like it. the problem is when people dont have an actual reason why they don't like it and don't give a chance. I will recommend some rap artist you may like. MF DOOM, Slum Village, A Tribe Called Quest, Kendrick Lamar. They have heavy influence with jazz and hip hop
@@nightjaronthegate Funny you should mention Berlioz, as he's probably the only French composer (possibly Chopin, though he was really polish) that I really enjoy. I tend to prefer central and Eastern European music. Give me Bach, Mozart, Liszt, Sibelius or Tchaikovsky! I too like jazz and blues, but also rock and metal and I actually really quite like alot of earlier 90s hip hop and UK grime and hip hop acts like Dave & Akala.
I'd say that the harmony is not just a hip-hop thing. Hip-hop emerged and was influenced by the production techniques of house and jungle music (as well as many other genres), and so no wonder it's loop based (which I guess is my way of saying it's not uniquely lacking harmony, that it's a product of electronic music production).
Yes! Many other genres such as reggae and funk tend to vamp on a single chord for entire songs, which serves to divert your attention from the harmony and focus it on the rhythm and the lyrics.
Maybe you still haven't found complex harmony in hip hop but it exists. Try some Tyler The Creator stuff, just to start from a popular one, then if you like it, dig deeper
Jazz rap is an essential part of the hip-hop scene. In Kendrick Lamar's TPAB, all of the music was written and produced by black contemporary jazz artists including Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin, and Thundercat. Those songs don't have simple harmony compared to pop music, they are complex and authentic jazz, created by virtuosos and titans of modern jazz who continue to push the genre forward. Listen to To Pimp a Butterfly and try to say that hip-hop is harmonically simpler than pop music. Listen to The Roots, listen to Tyler the Creator, listen to Anderson .Paak, you really don't have to dig deep or even listen to anything challenging. And while you're at it, listen to some contemporary jazz, like The Epic by Kamasi Washington, Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery by The Comet is Coming, and Wisdom of Elders by Shabaka and the Ancestors, it's good for your soul. Please stop making over-generalizations about hip-hop, or about any genre, there's so much music that there's literally no point.
The harmonic *progressions* are pretty simple, but that doesn’t mean the harmony itself is simple. Especially if you’re listening to the sample-based stuff, the coloristic harmony is insane.
I've been enjoying rap for years now, and for a while now I wanted to try to study its theory, along side just enjoying it. I never got to it, and this video is awesome because it opens it up to me. listening to the song's you speak of and then hearing the analysis, that is really interesting. "that's not a thing that most traditional forms of analysis are set up to catch, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just means we're not very good at finding it" is such a great quote. really.
I'd love to see an analysis of something from Mos Def's Black on Both Sides album. Mos Def's flow is somewhat sing-song at times and I feel like that adds another layer to his music.
I’m really happy you’re making more videos on hip hop. I love your channel, your topics, and the music you discuss. However my one true love will always be hip hop. I’m glad to see these two things meet.
Nice video. 1. Thanks for that Picasso Easter egg. His bull series is one of my favourite of old artworks. 2. Such a great idea to refocus things more onto hip-hop. I also come from a classica-music background, and I look at a lot of what rappers do through the lens of classical-music concepts such as metrical modulation, melodic decisions, etc. But so much of the extant criticism looks at it purely as poetry, and this is ofc to have only half a picture of what's going on. 3. A suggestion: I would say that for you to do this effectively, you need to include more musical examples: writing out, in full, rhymes and lines in question, and more snippets of music (even if reperformed through your voice and a MIDI backing). I found it extremely hard to keep track of some of the details of your points in this vid. Anyway thanks and fair play to you!
First of all, I really respect the pinned comment as well as what you went into during the last part of the video, and I loved the video. I agree with you completely. That said, in case you might find it interesting: I used to rap a lot and have listened to the genre since I was little. My music wasn't the best but I feel like I have a good understanding of how it all works, and when I was more active I talked with a lot of people who were making their own songs. Most of us started out with the things you're extracting from the lyrics. We would come up with the flow first - the vowel sounds and the rhythms, usually - even if it was just one line followed by a verse of gibberish, then we would fill in words until we had something. Even when I met professional rappers at record store events they told me that's how they did it too. Started with the flow, filled in the lyrics. After a while you get good enough at it that you can say what you want to say within the boundaries of the syllable counts and rhyme schemes afforded by the flow you're putting words to. Exact, specific things? Maybe not, unless you use a flow that creates rhythmic patterns with syllabic emphasis as opposed to assonance (e.g. Versace by Migos). But with any flow, even ones which require specific sequences of vowels and syllables, if you're practiced enough you can get the gist of something communicated, even while having to sometimes write yourself out of a corner. For example on "Accordion" I wouldn't be surprised if DOOM started with "Freudian" as just being something which rhymes with "accordion," because he was rapping over a beat with an accordion sample, then figuring out "slip like Freudian" as a way to make it work. Other times when you have a deeply personal song, like "Moment of Clarity" by Jay-Z, in the first verse when he talks about his dad it seems like he injects the Uncle Ray line because it's a way to be truthful and on topic, in this case regarding things he'd say to his dad, while fitting the rhyme scheme. So in that sense it's almost like he's searching a round peg to fit a round hole, that can be shoved in without much modification. But it still has to fit. At minimum, one line establishes a structure that the next line mirrors or compliments, to form a couplet with some cohesion. The more consistent and complex the flow, the more abstract and creative the lyrics, usually, because the more specific your rhyme scheme gets the more likely it is that you'll have to really contort yourself to fill it in with lyrics. But ultimately, even though sometimes the vocal track is more poetic than percussive, when you get super complex with your flow you can feel like you're playing a big set of toms in a drumline. Sorry for the wall of text! It's 3 AM and I'm probably rambling.
As a metal guitarist of 21 years, I've always had a respect of rap. Hell, I love Body Count. It's a real art form, and I really love the analyses of these various kinds of music genres. Of course, classical is great, I love jazz, love rock, blues, and metal, but everyone loves to pick on rap. Rap is awesome. Music is awesome. Listen to what makes you happy. :)
I would love more rap lyric analysis. I look forward to a closer look into hip hop in general and really appreciated your work on this video! I also appreciated that all 3 songs you referenced were new to me. I look forward to listening to those albums.
I think it's worth talking about the technical death band Archspire. As a techdeath band, most people wouldn't assume they have anything to do with hip-hop as the music sounds so different with it's emphasis on technicality. However, the vocals are heavily influenced by rap, as the vocalist studied the technique of rappers in order to perfect his rapid fire delivery. Part of that technique is realizing that he needed to write lyrics in such a way that the flow works, and in that manner the technique of hip-hop was incorporated along with the technique of other technical genres that influenced Archspire.
I'm a lifelong rocker who was introduced to the likes of Aesop Rock, El-P, Atmosphere, P.O.S., and others in the underground hip hop scene in the mid 2000s. Aesop immediately caught my ear as a brilliant lyricist, taking my "the more complicated the better" philosophy of music as a whole and planting the hip hop genre firmly in my wheelhouse. I still have a lot of disdain for the simplistic approach of many of today's hip hop artists, but fortunately for people like myself, there are just as many brilliant artists out there doing groundbreaking work for the genre every day. Great work on this channel!
Thank you for making this video and look forward to your others on HipHop. The thing someone pointed out to me about HipHop that really opened my ear to was when someone compare the rhythms of the Rappers with that of the ride cymbal in Jazz. The ride cymbal is the main focus of the beat and the good drummers are not only driving the rhythm they are making subtle variations other are playing off of. A lot going on in HipHop with you really listen to how all the parts fit together.
I'm all in for seeing you go deep into analyzing a rap song, it's the genre I find most rewarding to delve into, always changes how I view the song and makes it that much more enjoyable
If you're at jazz and want to get into hip hop, I can't recomend "to pimp a butterfly" by Kendrick Lamar more. It's as jazz as any jazz, and it shows wjat hip hop can offer in terms of musical complexity and richness. It's one of the worlds best albums and I got into hip hop a cupple of days ago. It's worth it, listen to the whole thing in order (even if the first track is one of the weaker), 'cuz the progression will make you see so much cool stuff and have it all connect. It just so good.
This is a very big part of my music, dubstep also has a lot of 1 note bass leads, relying on timbral variation instead. The line between harmonics and notes can also get blurry with sound design, and aside from that, incorporating elements separate from the harmony can also sound either great or terrible, and it's hard to tell what truly makes it work. I've heard rappers that were technically using detuned scales that had nothing to do with what's going on, but it sounds so natural, it's like magic to me.
When talking about rimes in music I am sad that i cant talk about Øystein Sunde with anyone that is not Norwegian. He once called him self word smith from the hysterical institute, and it describes his lyrics quite well.
That is a dilemma with (I'd imagine) all the best Scandinavian troubadour-with-clever-lyrics genre. Why not try translating some songs yourself? It's not easy by any means, but it could be fun. Also, and I mean this in the kindest way possible- this generally isn't the conversation to bring that up in, especially at the moment and in a 'public' forum. The entire idea of 'hip-hop as art', and further the 'be honest, 90% of music you listen to has its roots in a black musical movement' still seems objectionable to some people, and denigrating rap/hip-hop has been a major component of chronic racism in the US and elsewhere. What you said could def come across as insensitive/oblivious at best and kinda 'what about white people?' at worst-- not to imply either of those things describe you. I hope I wasn't too patronising with all that, but I figured it'd be better to be very specific, just in case.
@@elgatonegro1703 America doesn't own the internet. Your petty internal squabbles don't overwrite someone else's right to voice their opinion and talk about an artist they admire during a discussion about art. Get off your high horse.
I'd really like more videos focusing on song groove and funk. Why do songs make you want to move? I feel like black artists have really established what is dance worthy in the US and it would be awesome to understand more of that nuance.
Three points: 1. Why treat poetry as something negative? It IS poetry. You analyse it using tools developed for analysing poetry. You demonstrate that there's some awesome poetry in rap. That's high praise in my vocabulary. And of course, if something is poetry, that doesn't exclude it also being music! (Think of Dylan getting a literature Nobel, undeservedly, IMHO, but you won't deny him being a musician because he's received recognition as a poet, right?) 2. What about alliteration? As significant a device! 3. Folk music, especially epic song (Homer and the like), is comparable in how the words become central to the song.
Because the claim he is rebutting is that it's *just* poetry, i.e. not also music. Of course, like nearly all other lyrical music, rap contains poetry. But it cannot be reduced to merely poetry. And this video was all about something that rap has that most poetry does not: flow.
Beautiful. Hiphop has way more technical aspects than any other lyrics. Tricks with syllable structures, rare word usage, timing and delivery Cadence and projection is an instrument
Multies with roll in and roll outs. I love this breakdown. Liked and subscribed. I wrote a verse that every single line rhymes with itself. Every syllable of every every word connects. So any beat, any genre, it can magically adapt. You can shuffle every line and it will still flow smoothly. It was far more difficult than I care to admit. I could write any other genre in a few minutes but good hiphop takes hours upon hours. Your playlist is good. Gift of Gab is one of he greatest. Tech n9ne Krizz Kaliko would have been good examples to use. Since Kaliko can sing he blends it into rap Thanks for the content.
The line between poetry and music is a fine one, and often an artificial one. Poetry relies on rhyme, meter, and structure, really the only difference is the existence of specific notes and accompaniment, and in its defense it brings to the table deeper linguistic meaning that resonates with the human psyche more than any combination of notes and meter, regardless of how brilliant, could. Ultimately, I think we as a species should learn to recognize art in all its forms and not try to artificially divide it based on our limited and biased perspectives. I appreciate Dr. Dre as much as I do Bob Dylan or Mozart or Silversun Pickups or Quentin Tarantino or Bob Ross. The right brain in general is something to be celebrated, not segregated, and you, 12tone, have been instrumental (pun definitely intended) in making this happen. Keep up the good work!
Try this: Listen to an adhan, then listen to "Statesboro Blues" by Blind Willie McTell. There is no doubt in my mind that African-American roots music was nourished by Islamic music and poetry via the Mali Empire.
For another hint in this direction see books.google.no/books?id=kurkDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA583&ots=Cvb7DPF7Nx&dq=eman%20tai%20calligraphy%20of%20thought&pg=PA583#v=onepage&q=eman%20tai%20calligraphy%20of%20thought&f=false
Great analysis! It's really got me rethinking my opinions, and actively looking for Hip-Hop/Rap that I will enjoy. I also think a lot of points about the rhythmic aspect of the words themselves can be applied to death metal vocals as well.
Cool thanks for opening my eyes 👀 to rap I hear it differently, I've known about the metal thang for ever. Its based out the blues. Black Sabbath started as a blues cover band, basically anyway. I like how you know music history and the way you use it in your videos. THANKS for putting them out
You should make a video on how rappers use sampling to create completely new musical sounds, Chance the Rapper's I Need Security is a cool choice if you want to break down the musicality of it. Jazz rap is a cool subgenre to look into too, A Tribe Called Quest really helped make it mainstream. Sometimes I Rhyme Slow is a cool example of the rhythm of the lyrics and flow completely changing the feel of the song itself too.
You mentioned Blackalicious and I think analyzing Lotus Flower would be awesome. First time I heard that song was on accident. I ended up on some chill beats channel by chance and it was playing at the time. I grabbed a pen to write down the name of the song so I wouldn't forget it and I could find it to download it (before Spotify existed lol). It's so haunting. The mix and master are phenomenal. Not to mention the lyrical style you just went over. Oh and the bass with off-beat drumming. It's one of my favorites.
"Four elements: There's DJ'in' There's breakin' There's graffiti And then there's the mc" "Attention all space cadets, hip-hop is the triple threat Expandin' like the Internet, come and place your bets"
MFDOOM "One Beer" line There's a line that goes: ""How's there only one left? The pack comes in six! Whatever happened to two and three?" A herb tried to slide with four and five And got caught like, "What you doing, G?" The song is called One Beer, and a pack comes in Six. He legit broken down a six pack of beer, all while referencing the Title name. THATS INSANE. Or Madvillains (MFDOOM and Madlib) "MoneyFolder": Own his own microphone, bring it everywhere he go So he can bring it to you live in stere-ere-o In the song, if you have heaphones on he switches the feedback to the left channel on the line "stere-ere-o". Making a joke about how stereo heaphones have a feeling of the artist walking around you, but he says it the line in Monophonic. MFDOOM is one of the best rappers out and I really recommend his albums. MM...FOOD, Born Like This, Op. Doomsday, DangerDOOM, Madvillain.
I find it fascinating. Placement of words and unexpected emphasis are one of the skills I admire in hip hop. Giving words their own pulse, including syncopation and polyrhythms, mixed with rhymes that create a sort of micro pulse within those rhythms. I have heard it done masterfully in hip hop.
I loved that your honesty about black influences in music. Not only in the US, but throughout Latin America, African influence in rhythm is prevalent. Samba and rumba are clear examples of an African rhythm brought over with the slave trade, that influence today's music.
I think its great that you're going to put more focus on hip hop on your channel, while you're at it you should talk about UK grime and its similarities and differences to american hip hop
My intro to hip-hop happened after other genres weren't built to tell it like it is. I get the need to explore harmonies and deeper feelings, but while exploring something in between, touch of surface issues can overwhelm the unpredared.
super hyped for the future hip hop analyses. i love all the videos you make about various genres but rap is one of my favorites and i’m happy it’s going to get some recognition from you!
I don't want to sound condescending and just "request" a song to be analyzed because really you do what you like, but I wanted to mention Stargazer by Rainbow. I'm still really just starting music theory but this song feels to me like it's infinitely deep, I'd love to see you cover it! But again, just an idea :)
I never thought I'd live to see hip hop musically analyzed seriously, but now there's dissect, Switched on Pop, multiple Kanye podcasts, and now even 12tone. I hate to be the "as a black man" guy, but as a black man who loves metal, pop, jazz, romantic, and hip hop, i thank you for using your voice
I started watching Jamel_AKA_Jamal's reaction videos a few weeks ago. It's quite refreshing to see what a music fan whose core early experience of music was hip hop engages with and calls out. Him getting the feels on Led Zepp's Babe I'm Gonna Leave You is obviously a more intense experience experience than me as a teenager encountering Rapper's Delight and The Message...
This is a great analysis for those of us who don't understand the mechanism of rap. I grew up with the false belief about it that you were talking about, and honestly it took Epic Rap Battles of History covering subjects I thought were funny for me to actually hear and appreciate the art of it and come to recognize flow as a thing that existed. I may never actually enjoy Coolio's work, but thanks to ERBOH breaking down that delusion I held, I can listen to it for the artistry of it now. But I also didn't know what flow was until this video just now. I realized it was the pacing and vocalization, but I didn't realize it was potentially so complicated or that the placement of the syllables of the words themselves were what was creating the music. And to the commenter 3 years from now randomly wandering in and asking why I would listen to the artistry of something I don't enjoy - you can enjoy appreciating art without enjoying the resulting art. It's a bit like solving a puzzle in reverse, extracting the layers of meaning in a thing. A large part of why I don't enjoy rap is because the most common pacing of it is uncomfortable to my musical upbringing, so I'm not going to veg out listening to rap the way I do to a lot of music. George Watsky is an excellent example of this - he can rap about a subject I can normally fall asleep to, but the flow is very engaging. It's like sandpaper to my ears (his faster work specifically), but I can take apart what he's doing at about 1/1000th the speed he can spit it out and his verbal craftsmanship and rate of enunciation are amazing. And now from this video I'm learning that there was another layer I was completely blind to.
Love this video. I feel like you could do a whole series on breaking down flows, so I'm happy to hear you're shifting the focus of your channel. I also thought the commentary at the end was really genuine and heartfelt while at the same time staying true to the point of the video. Keep being you, 12tone. I love it.
This has been one of my favorite music channels on UA-cam for a couple of years now, and I can't wait to see more content like this. Just rung the bell, keep up the good work!
The emphasis on the text as the determiner of musical structure arguably makes rap closer to plainchant in ethos, which is a sublime irony that makes me really question what "Western musical traditions" the most virulent anti-hip-hop polemicists are upholding. To whit, I dare anyone to look at a rhythmic transcription of one of MF DOOM's flows, or even the flow of a less critically lauded artist like, say, Big Sean (coming out of the whole Detroit school of bar construction), and tell me that any of that is "simple." Those are incredibly complex rhythms being internalised. Of course, these are the same people who think Europeans invented vertical harmony when Subsaharan Africa, Melanesia and the ancient Caucasus would beg to differ, or downplay the value of non-white classical oral traditions for not preserving the names of composers when we know just as little of Perotin or the architects of Notre-Dame.
This video opens up a whole new perspective for me. Now I understand why it seems that many classical musicians tend to not put a lot of thoughts or emphasis on the lyrics. Lyrics seems like nothing more than the set of syllables used to vocalize the melody from their perspective. It's only a matter of time until the academic scholars starts to research and acknowledge Hip-Hop as a part of music theory. Speaking of Syllables and Hip-Hop, I often wonder how it feels to create Hip-Hop music is in East Asian language. With their particles and syllabic language, the process of creating Hip-Hop music must've been quite interesting.
12tone's comments about the words in classical music were nonsense (see my reply to his pinned comment). Most classical musicians play instrumental music most of the time, but there are classical singers, and their principal domain is the opera house. An opera is a musical drama, the libretto (the words) is the script and the singers are the actors. They do put a lot of thought into their interpretation and performance.
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Ray Pradana Rap breaks DO seem very common in a lot of K-pop songs...so I guess it works well in Korean? No idea what they are rapping about though.
I've actually played around with taking rap songs and making them into melodic pieces without lyrics. Thing is, it is never just a single note being repeated. Rappers generally do use different pitches in their delivery. So anyone who reduces it to one note is clearly not even listening.
Awesome vid!!! I’d love to see your take on Raining Blood by Slayer, as I haven’t yet found a decent analysis on the song as well as it’s meaning. Hope to see more awesome vids!!
This is a higher level of abstraction. The maestro himself --Barry White --said he was astounded at what rappers were doing with lyrics. He freely admitted that they were above him in that aspect.
Thanks for this. It’s always good to be clear about the difference between why we ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ anything and whether anything is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I’ve listened to a lot of hip hop and the less melodic the lyrical delivery the less I am able to genuinely enjoy it - but I would never say hip hop is in any way inferior to other forms of music. I’ve had the same experience with opera - but it is notable that substantially fewer people seem comfortable with saying opera is crap just because they don’t enjoy it. Why ever might that be....😜
1) Blue notes are common in traditional Irish/Celtic folk music. While the Blues did originate with African-Americans, Black people do NOT have an exclusive, metaphorical "copyright" on blue / bent notes. It can even be argued that the Blues are a mixture of African and European musical elements, just like Jazz. Alot of Southerners are of Scottish and Irish descent, so there was some culture mixing going on. 2) Yes, American Heavy Metal, especially early on had a lot of blues influence. You could even say that early Heavy metal was just louder Blues music. However, certain European styles of metal such as Gothic Metal, Viking Metal, Symphonic Metal, Black Metal, Death Metal, Neo-Classical metal have exactly 0.0000% blues influence. They have more in common with classical music than anything else. Even modern American metal largely lacks blues influence. I fail to hear any blues elements in brutal Djent metal that has been popular in the past decade. 3) The current wave of immensely popular rap styles such as mumble rap, emo rap, SoundCloud rap etc. have much more melody in the vocals (albeit simple and heavily autotuned) than hip-hop traditionally had before.
YES! I would love to see more, not so much lyrical analysis, but musical analysis of rappers’ word choice. Or even non-rap, but I’m down with some videos like that!
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BLM resources: blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/
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Some additional thoughts/corrections:
1) I want to emphasize that this isn't covering the entire concept of flow. Heck, it's not even covering the entirety of _Adams's paper_ on the concept of flow. There's a lot more to it, and this won't be my last video on the topic, but I feel like starting with an appreciation of the ways in which hip-hop artists use words as instruments is a vital part of understanding what makes hip-hop so wonderful and unique as a genre.
2) I didn't want to spend too long on the "Is rap poetry?" question 'cause I've already made _two other videos_ on why it definitely counts as music, but here's a couple more points in case you're not convinced. a) When we look at flow, we're looking at more than just words, we're looking at how those words _interact_ with the musical structures around them. Poetry is bound only by its own internal meter, whereas rap also has to interact with the tempo, time signature, and other rhythmic elements. The tresillo in Blazing Arrow, for instance, cannot exist without the underlying 4/4 pulse provided by the beat. b) The field of advanced poetry has, for a long time, been moving _away_ from obligate rhyme, because within poetic structures those are fairly limiting. in the context of music, though, doubling down on rhyme is liberating, creating new musical layers that didn't exist before. The behaviors of the two art forms are different, so conflating them seems unhelpful. c) Most rappers consider themselves musicians and I think it's both condescending and ill-informed to insist that they're incapable of self-defining their own artistic output.
3) I expect I'll get some pushback for the claim that country comes from black communities, because these days the genre is viewed as pretty explicitly (and traditionally) white, but historically speaking, that image is the product of an intentional campaign of erasure by folks like Henry Ford. If you want to learn more, here's a good starting point: www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/country-music-racist-history-1010052/
BRO CUT YOUR NAILS
Thank you so much for doing this, way to many people are afraid to take a stance in these kinda of thimgs at the risk of being called too political, and I'm sure you are aware you're risking patrons and subscribers for this, but you did the right thing, and you were honest about what you think, and I have so much respect and admiration for it. 12tone, your platform is a force of good; until now mainly for musical education with an open mind, but now also due to a specific focus in an area much neglected. Hip hop is awesome, and it deserves you.
SO. MUCH. YES.
If we're gonna be analyzing Black Artists can we do some Godmother of Rock'n'Roll Sister Rosetta Tharpe?
You say you support Black Lives Matter, but do you know what you are supporting? Taylor's of Harrogate, who make Yorkshire Tea, clearly had no idea.
Yorkshire Tea Endorses # Black Lives Matter ua-cam.com/video/oLS30MfJt00/v-deo.html
"I'm tired of defending hip hop, it doesn't need my defense"
Powerful words man
Nothing really needs anybody’s defense. Society just can’t let too many things be equally pure. It is just that society keeps nominally corrupt what entered it on its margins.
It doesn't. No form of music does. If someone just doesn't get it and is genuinely curious, explaining the artistic or aesthetic merit isn't defending it. When people come out and just say rap isn't music, just like when someone asserts some overly simplistic political, religious, or other sort of perspective, they're not looking to be convinced to change their mind, so any effort defending a more nuanced position is a waste of energy. And I say all of this as someone who, on the whole, doesn't generally enjoy hip-hop; I probably have about a dozen hip-hop albums among my collection of thousands. By the same token, as a massive fan of metal, I'm not going to expend energy defending it; if people are genuinely interested, I'll talk their ear off, if not, it's okay, not every genre is for everyone.
Really, I think Steven Wilson said it best, paraphrasing: In any genre, 99% is forgettable, but 1% is essential. This has consistently held true. I've found some truly spectacular gems in hip-hop that, if I just assumed I didn't enjoy the whole genre, I never would have found. The reverse holds true for those who don't get genres I love, but I can share some truly exceptional examples of it, and even if they don't love it like I do, they'll typically at least understand why I do.
@@BaronSloth I am an hip hop head. I am curious about what are the hip hop gems you are talking about. If you don't mind sharing them, I would like to know (many of) them.
@@Super000x000 Eminem is great . IF you have tIME , PLEASE LISTEN TO NEFFEX THEY HAVE JUST RENNOVATED HIP HOP
@Big D I mean no disrespect, but I wanted to know the opinion of someone who is not an hip hop head as you are and is into other kind of music. I do know and listen to the artists you wrote, you have great tastes btw.
When 12 tone said he was about to put his money where his mouth is, I was waiting for him to just drop down and bust some fat bars
That would be LEGENDARY.
@@huss2600 I so fucking hope we get it someday. Honestly when he was saying the stuff about copyright, I thought he was about to cover the sections he was talking about with his own voice xD
@@mrsteamie4196 lol haha maybe someday!
I’ve been a rocker and metalhead for decades, but after listening - ACTUALLY listening - to hip hop, I am incredibly impressed with the musicality and skill that those artists exhibit. I’ll be honest - I did not get this concept of “flow” until I stopped listening to hip hop for just the instrumental virtuosity (me imposing my value onto the genre) and more for the overall feel and complexity. The dual purpose of lyrics - both to tell a story as well as them being used as an instrument - is incredibly impressive.
Man, this is great to read/ see! I'm glad the genre was able to reach you, and I appreciate your transparency for learning how to listen to Hip-Hop!
Dude im your vice versa -
Grew up on hip hop and rap, and so lyricsm, beats, etc. is nothing new to me.
I started listening to rock and metal music, and just paying attention to the level and skill these bands and artists have on their respective instruments, guitar, bass, drums are just fkn insane. And i really appreciate the sound and vibe that they have with their music. Now im a major mix of rap, hip hop and rock and metal haha
I mean, metal has its place in the gym for me anyway, gets me into the mood that rap and hip hop wont haha
I wish there were more people like you, I absolutely get triggered when someone says that they don't "get" rap or it's just not valid as a music, song or art-form.
Listen to some killstation or ghostemane that'll really throw you for a loop
@@Synnizter been there done that
"But that all changed when..." and then drawing the Fire Nation symbol from ATLA. Nice.
Very nive
Is THAT what that is? I thought it was supposed to be the symbol for the rebellion in SW just done badly…but consistently.
"Noted racist Henry Ford"
I really like that
Fun fact: henry ford is the reason a lot of us in the US throughout the years learned square dancing in school. Because racism and his vendetta against jazz. in the words of @12tone, "that's a thing that actually happened, you could look it up"
It's ironic that Henry Anycolouryoulikeaslongasitsblack Ford was anti-black.
That line made me laugh out loud at a point where I really needed to keep quiet. Brilliant stuff.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Hitler had a portrait of Ford hanging in his office. I often wonder why we haven't collectively decided to rename his products, like back in the 40s when there was a sudden influx of people named Adolph putting in applications to change their name.
mcfahk Your comment made me double-check this factoid, and it turns out your assumption is correct: both Ford and Hitler had each other's respective photos displayed in their offices!
Adam Neely said it best. American music is Black music.
I am so down for more hip-hop analyses! Just dont totally drop the rock, blues, and occasional jazz stuff altogether.
Also I'd love to see more microtonal/alternative tuning systems videos.
I mean, American music is also European folk, especially English folk. Particularly in the country and folk genres, but the influence is all over other genres too.
I really wish Neely kept up his 2nd channel video where he criticised 2SetViolins and that one video they made, because he touches on a lot of the history of people dismissing black music, and the ideas that 2Set's video unfortunately feeds into.
@@Telamon8
Twoset are pretty much glued in the classical world of music. I think they sleep with a portrait of bach under their pillow bro.
I mean why not
I get what he's going for, but I don't think it's really accurate. Rather, I'd say that American music is an essential element of what makes American music uniquely American. And, in so saying, it's difficult to overstate just how important that influence is. As they say, America is a melting pot, and that holds just as true of the music and art is it does of culture; after all, art is a pillar of culture
Slavery happened in the colonies before America declared independence. Black people have been living in a country called The United States of America as long as white people have. It's crazy people subconsciously forget that.
All music has complexity and craft in it, the only differences are where that craftsmanship is focused. Jazz and classical put a lot of focus on harmony for example while modern pop puts its focus on timbre. Rap puts that mastery into the music of the words themselves. I got so tired of hearing people with an “academic” perspective be dismissive of other styles just because it isn’t there area of study. 12tone absolutely nails that understanding. Edit: 12tone made this same point, this is what I get for commenting while watching.
Very true!
Just got recommended your Ben Shapiro video like a half hour ago then got this notification. Great stuff!
same but a year later
0:57 what a nice way of saying "we probably all know twosetviolin"
I'm only a little familiar with that channel. Do they rag on hip-hop a lot?
@@estranged520
Mostly they rag on pop-music. Haven't seen them touch hip hop much.
They're pretty funny when they focus on music theory, art school hijinks or what it's like working events, but the roasting is better when they stick to classical music.
@@BonaparteBardithion _"the roasting is better when they stick to classical music"_
True. I also often cringed at their comments on pop music. But I haven't seen them roasting pop music in a long time. That's something they did maybe two years ago, but recently, they have been a lot more open minded about it, and in some of their most recent videos, they tried to write their own pop songs and lo-fi hip hop songs.
I really don't think they were elitists, and I don't think they had bad intentions. A lot of it was simply jokes/memes (like the way they make fun of violas and recorders) - and yes, I'm aware that insensitive jokes can have consequences. I do remember the comments under those videos - they were full of classical elitists that took the jokes in the videos literally. But as I said, it seems like they have become more open minded about other styles of music, and no longer post videos where they roast other genres.
@@MaggaraMarine
i also think they used to be very unaware of the actual craftsmanship that goes into genres other than classical. these days they seem to have a lot more respect for different styles of music
Great video!
Side note: As a rock fan myself, I find it interesting how I had all these preconceived notions about rap just being fast talking that you brought up until I sat down and gave something a chance one day that I had seen highly recommended. I didn't understand almost any of it, but the artistry and pathos were unmistakeable. In one listen my entire opinion began to do a 180. For me that album was To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar, an album and an artist I believe has had similar effect on many former rap-haters like myself. If you're reading the comments and this video still hasn't convinced you to give rap a chance, I strongly suggest you give this album a listen. Especially if you come from a more rock/prog/jazz background, you're bound to find a lot of familiarity there. I remember the first time I heard it I couldn't help positively comparing it to Pink Floyd's The Wall.
Dude TPAb is probably my favorite album ever. A prime example of the power Hip-Hop can have. Glad you found it!
I remember the first time i gave rap a chance was because i of Aerosmith. My god run dmc is so fucking good!
This is why I scourged the comments section, lol. Love testimonials like this! What other artists have you discovered since? Also, what artists do you typically listen to?
@@negasirutledge3617 Forgot I wrote this comment, lol. I'm still much more of a rock head but my respect for hip hop runs deep. Over the past year or so I've fostered a budding love for OutKast, I think they may be my favorite hip hop artist now. I also really love stuff from Kanye and Eminem, and I've come to enjoy Enter The 36 Chambers by Wu Tang, Me Against The World by 2Pac, Coloring Book by Chance, and probably some others I'm not remembering off the top of my head. Artists I typically listen to? I'm a major prog rock fan, as well as a major classic rock fan, so Rush, Queen, Genesis, David Bowie are all top five artists for me, as well as the newer band Muse. My listening habits vary a lot day to day, so today I spun It's Only Rock And Roll by the Rolling Stones, Benefit by Jethro Tull, Novella by Renaissance, and Red Octopus by Jefferson Starship.
How about you? :)
Haha, I almost had an identical experience: hated rap for pre-conceived notions, ended up giving TPaB a shot after hearing good stuff about it and being exposed to other forms of rap at one time or another, loved the album so much that it single-handedly got me into the world of hip-hop. (Btw you're welcome for the year late notification)
When Grandmaster Flash' The Message stops feeling like it's talking about recent events, we'll have made it to the other side of the issue.
Until then, rap rules. And we have a long time coming.
When watching Sideway's video on hip hop and slam poetry, it felt like their comparison of the two felt too simplistic. I understand that the two are very interconnected, and that cultural appropriation is very common. However, to me it felt like a key fact was left out of the mix.
This video pointed out the key fact of flow being inseperable from the musical aspects of a piece. removing lyrics from the music of a rap just makes the it feel empty. the lyrics have no reference point, and the beat feels hollow. Slam poetry does not need music because the poet makes the words flow on their own.
As a slam poet, rapping is hard, not because of rhyming, but because flow is hard to translate from one genre to another.
I thought the same after watching that video. It was actually comical to me. Like he tried to run a clean line between poetry and music, failed because he couldn't find a good definition for either (no one can) , and concluded that they must, in fact, be the same.
Even though everyone he interviewed where like "well obviously they are different it's just cant articulate how".
Why should there be a clear line between poetry and music?
Poetry often feels musical anyway...
There definitely are people in slam poetry who want to be rappers but know if they tried to call it "rap" they'd get hated on, which I think was his point more than all slam poetry being cultural appropriation. If I remember the video correctly he even talks about the fact most of it doesn't have that tight rhythmic feel and flow but brought attention to stuff that was clearly trying to sound like rap but without music which makes him uncomfortable. I might be wrong on that though, has been a long time since I watched that video
@@omeragam8628 Exactly that last part, and music has been incorporating poetry since the dawn of time too. I love music that does all the talking for itself, but when arts come together, they can just form something not necessarily greater than the sum of it's part, but definitely great in a way that wasn't there before. Some videogames have a very, very strong sense of consistency between all the involved arts, it's like it forms a little universe where it all makes sense together.
@@ClikcerProductions You should check out Raul Zurita (a chilean poet) with "Gonzalez y los asistentes", poetry doesn't need to be rap to have it's musical aspects highlighted.
Actually, lyrical poetry is a very old tradition that has popped up in both the East and West. It's not actually that hard to compare poetry to lyrical poetry, BUT lyrical poetry has much, much stricter rules in both the Eastern and Western traditions.
There's an old joke: What do you call the guy hanging out with all the musicians at a concert? The drummer.
But, let's call it what it is - a joke. Keeping time in a manner that is not only interesting, but adds to the musicality of a piece absolutely qualifies a drummer as a musician. Neil Peart, Phil Collins, and even Dave Grohl (when he was with Nirvana) are musicians.
A rapper is essentially adding another layer of percussion. They don't just speak words with rhyme and meter (poetry), they do so in time with the other instruments being used. And, as you pointed out, can do so in a way that expands the percussion in the song in an interesting and musical way.
Also, if other forms of music don't put enough value on lyrics (looking at you, pop), that's a knock against them, not against those who value what they have to say and how to say it. Compare meaningful rap lyrics to someone singing "Baby, baby, yeah, yeah, yeah" and I'd pick the former every time.
This. Every argument that rap isn’t music boils down to “it’s not tonal”. As if tone is the only aspect of music, let alone art
@@kenshin6553 My argument against rap being music is that it isn't musical. I like music that isn't tonal, but I'm thinking of music that doesn't have a key, like serial or twelve-tone music.
Humphrey Searle ua-cam.com/video/lzrR3acoxlw/v-deo.html
You probably mean music that doesn't use tones, or notes, precisely pitched sounds used to create melody and harmony. Even that can be musical:
Senri Kawaguchi - Zildjian Factory Solo ua-cam.com/video/NvDsi-gohDo/v-deo.html
Nightjar on the gate You should watch 12tone’s video about why rap is music, as well as his response to Ben Shapiro, where he breaks down what can and can’t be music
Nightjar on the gate You haven’t given an argument on why rap isn’t musical at all here
@@joedav67 I have seen "Why Ben Shapiro Is Wrong About Rap"
All Caps is my go-to when people use the bad-faith argument that rap is not valid at a musical genre because it is just fast talking over a beat. MF DOOM's flow on the entire song is unbelievable complex and his rhyming keeps you on your heels for the entire song. More than anything, though, it nicely demonstrates the skill that is required to rap because it is extremely hard to replicate that flow. The skill goes far behind the writing (which is also very impressive).
Would love to see analysis of how rap more. The lyrics are always worth analyzing but analyzing the flow and how that works into the meaning is something that I don't feel like I have seen a lot, except on songs where it is very obvious like Tech N9ne's Wither.
im a drummer who doesnt listen to the lyrics to any song. hip hop sounds like drum solos to me, it doesnt get better then that
Vocals as an instrument without "lyrics" are a concept I think a lot more people need to grasp. It's on full display listening to music in a language you don't speak, but I'd bet a large portion of western audiences have never listened to a song that wasn't in english outside of Despacito.
12:09 - "The Blues runs deep in Metal".
That was deep, brah.
@@user-rc4re5fo2f I mean, that was some odd shit to say in response to a comment that was simply a throwaway phrase to elicit some humour from the context of the piece of analysis that 12tone provided, but I'm going to try to parse what you said to understand where you're coming from.
_"no it wasnt deep because it has been so obvious to everyone forever, except you I guess."_
Brah, no need to be so snide about it. Who hurt you?
I'm fully aware of the influence that blues music has had on Rock/Heavy Rock/Heavy Metal (and most genres of guitar music since the early 50's, if we're getting into it), I've been playing guitar (amateurishly, if I do say so myself) since I was 13 years old and I'm 44 now, I studied music at school and at college, so I'm reasonably well grounded in the basics of theory, at least from a "western" composition view (something that 12tone and Adam Neely have touched upon in recent videos, but I digress). So, yeah, you guess wrong.
_"Listen to the first black sab album from 1970 or any heavy rock from then thru the 80s"_
Preaching to the choir, Brah, I grew up on that shit through both of my parents extensive record collections. Black Sabbath was like the bread and butter to my musical dinner.
_"and its mostly all blues derived pentatonic at it's core, until thrash and harder styles came in the 80s."_
See my responses above about my history of, and exposure to music.
_"Odd thing is most blk ppl dont like blues anymore"_
I'm guessing you know most of the black people that listen to music then! Congratulations, Brah, I can see you're clearly doing your bit for the side there! It's nice to know that you got that covered for them, I'm sure they appreciate it.
Sure would be amazing if channels like yours could use clips of songs for analysis and teaching like you do :/
Literally the reason fair use exists and UA-cam cares so much more about whether they can monetize everything
Maxwell Monheit It's worse than that. Watch Tom Scott's video on copyright law for a deep dive on this, but basically, UA-cam's claim system is actually one of the *more* reasonable compromises to deal with how fundamentally terrible copyright law is.
@@ConvincingPeople such a good video, I've seen it lol, thanks for correcting me! ya copyright law is bullshit for the same reasons, has nothing to do with artistic integrity and everything to do with treating media as a commodity
On the topic of "is rap poetry?": Well yeah! And so is other music. Some of my favorite poems are song lyrics, "Kiss this thing goodbye" by Del Amitri, "Closer to Fine" and "Hammer and a Nail" by the Indigo Girls for just two examples. Not only is music vs. poetry a false distinction but hip hop is some of the best poetry around.
I disagree, and I hope I'm able to express my point here. I don't think rap is poetry, but I think rap contains poetry. Saying "rap is poetry" to me is analogous to saying "you are your brain". Clearly your brain is an important aspect of you (perhaps even the most important part). But you are more than your brain. You have the whole rest of your body which definitely contributes to who you are. And I also happen to believe that you more than the sum of your parts (gestalt), just as rap is more than the sum its parts: poetry, rhythm, beat, sound elements, etc. Once you put everything together you get something new. As you mention, poetry is a part of other forms of music too, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a distinction between music and poetry. There definitely is.
@R. L. Dodson I think asking "is rap poetry" is like asking "is poetry music". I think the answer to both is no, but rap is LIKE poetry in a way that other musical style are not. Just like poetry is LIKE music in a way that prose is not.
@@omeragam8628 Yes, poetry can be music. Very easily. The tradition of lyrical poetry is very old and is mostly gone except for in East Asia, but poetry can definitely be music. Teresa Teng's most famous song is based on a lyrical poem from the Tang Dynasty, around the 700s CE, rearranged for modern tastes. It's quite easy for poetry to be music, but the rules are strict.
@@BrandonJamesJohnson110 Music can be silence, as shown by John Cage.
@@weirdofromhalo Cage's 4' 33'' is blatant plagiarism - a minute's silence for the dead played at a slower tempo.
As a huge fan of both music theory and hip hop, I'm extremely excited for the videos to come.
I've given rap a shot... it's kind of the vocal equivalent of a drum solo, and I get just as bored as I do listening to those. But that's okay, people can like what they like, and not like what they don't like. That's the beauty of art. Like what you like, it's not a contest.
John T. Mickevich Yeah, I really don’t care for rap, along with modern pop and metal. They don’t have the sort of complexity that I like, and, more importantly, I just don’t like the soundscape they create.
yea also you just gotta explore abit more. Youll find an artist you'll like in rap and such
Listen to Nujabes
While I do agree. You should check out Bone Thugs n Harmony. The do bring the harmony.
There are artists out there that use both jazzy instrumentals and intelligent lyrics. A few recommendations: a tribe called quest, the pharcyde, digable planets, blackalicious, common and Jurassic 5. All of these guys blend the musicality of jazz and pop with the flow of hip hop, and if that doesn't get you into hip-hop then that's ok too
studying mf doom's music could be its own field of study lol
Doomology
Well, Nas broke down "It Ain't Hard To Tell" with a Harvard poetry professor, so it is plausible.
@limelight81 im sorry 😭 you're absolutely right
This is why, as a metal fan (amongst love of many other genres) I really hate metal heads attacking hip hop and rap . . .
Look at the best metal vocalists. When you are wailing, shouting or screaming lyrics (as you often have to in metal) rhythm, flow and timbre are exactly what conveys the meaning. Its the same with rap.
Its recognising that you don't necessarily have melody to play with so you have to push the other options available to you. And it works brilliantly. The vocals almost become a percussion Intrument, which - if anything - lends more weight and more importance to what it is you're actually saying. The lyrics become the nuance of the vocal line because the melody can't be.
Also, we have to, as rock fans (which I also am) acknowledge the contribution of black people in creating rock music. It seems such a homogenous 'White genre' these days, but it started with people like lil richard and sister rosetta tharpe . . . We cannot deny or ignore the contribution of black artists in what are generally considered 'white' genres today
@@creamwobbly Rubbish. Occam's Razor tells you the simplest explanation that fits all the fact is the most likely one. As a white non-racist music lover I don't like rap because it doesn't do the things that I want music to do. I don't like metal either generally for the same reason. I would rather listen to blues or jazz, both types of music that came from black people. Metal and hip hop are very different and the music itself is the simplest explanation for people liking one and not the other.
If I like Berlioz but not Messiaen am I both a francophile and a francophobe?
And what about all the rap fans who don't like metal, which is probably most of them? Is that racism too?
Fun fact: Buddy Holly was invited to play at the Apollo because the promoters decided with his sound, he must be black. They never saw a picture of him.
@@nightjaronthegate Thats more personal preference and you gave a vaild reason why you don't like it. the problem is when people dont have an actual reason why they don't like it and don't give a chance. I will recommend some rap artist you may like. MF DOOM, Slum Village, A Tribe Called Quest, Kendrick Lamar. They have heavy influence with jazz and hip hop
@@nightjaronthegate Funny you should mention Berlioz, as he's probably the only French composer (possibly Chopin, though he was really polish) that I really enjoy. I tend to prefer central and Eastern European music. Give me Bach, Mozart, Liszt, Sibelius or Tchaikovsky! I too like jazz and blues, but also rock and metal and I actually really quite like alot of earlier 90s hip hop and UK grime and hip hop acts like Dave & Akala.
@@frizzlefriar4417 A similar thing happened with 'Black' radio stations playing Queens 'Another one bites the dust'.
In Hip Hop the harmony is pretty simple, even compared to other pop music. The lyrics and rhythms though can be really complex and interesting.
I'd say that the harmony is not just a hip-hop thing. Hip-hop emerged and was influenced by the production techniques of house and jungle music (as well as many other genres), and so no wonder it's loop based (which I guess is my way of saying it's not uniquely lacking harmony, that it's a product of electronic music production).
Yes! Many other genres such as reggae and funk tend to vamp on a single chord for entire songs, which serves to divert your attention from the harmony and focus it on the rhythm and the lyrics.
Maybe you still haven't found complex harmony in hip hop but it exists. Try some Tyler The Creator stuff, just to start from a popular one, then if you like it, dig deeper
Jazz rap is an essential part of the hip-hop scene. In Kendrick Lamar's TPAB, all of the music was written and produced by black contemporary jazz artists including Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin, and Thundercat. Those songs don't have simple harmony compared to pop music, they are complex and authentic jazz, created by virtuosos and titans of modern jazz who continue to push the genre forward.
Listen to To Pimp a Butterfly and try to say that hip-hop is harmonically simpler than pop music. Listen to The Roots, listen to Tyler the Creator, listen to Anderson .Paak, you really don't have to dig deep or even listen to anything challenging.
And while you're at it, listen to some contemporary jazz, like The Epic by Kamasi Washington, Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery by The Comet is Coming, and Wisdom of Elders by Shabaka and the Ancestors, it's good for your soul.
Please stop making over-generalizations about hip-hop, or about any genre, there's so much music that there's literally no point.
The harmonic *progressions* are pretty simple, but that doesn’t mean the harmony itself is simple. Especially if you’re listening to the sample-based stuff, the coloristic harmony is insane.
I've been enjoying rap for years now, and for a while now I wanted to try to study its theory, along side just enjoying it.
I never got to it, and this video is awesome because it opens it up to me.
listening to the song's you speak of and then hearing the analysis, that is really interesting.
"that's not a thing that most traditional forms of analysis are set up to catch, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just means we're not very good at finding it" is such a great quote. really.
I love how I found this channel 4 days ago now and have watched almost every video so far
I'd love to see an analysis of something from Mos Def's Black on Both Sides album. Mos Def's flow is somewhat sing-song at times and I feel like that adds another layer to his music.
I’m really happy you’re making more videos on hip hop. I love your channel, your topics, and the music you discuss. However my one true love will always be hip hop. I’m glad to see these two things meet.
Thank you for this analysis. I knew rap was music but I didn't know how to analyze it. I'll be listening for this now
Hearing 12tone talk about MF DOOM just filled a hole in my soul
Some click for the thumbnail, but I'm stuck looking at 12tone's thumb's nail, doing his best to save his brothers from bail.
Nice video.
1. Thanks for that Picasso Easter egg. His bull series is one of my favourite of old artworks.
2. Such a great idea to refocus things more onto hip-hop. I also come from a classica-music background, and I look at a lot of what rappers do through the lens of classical-music concepts such as metrical modulation, melodic decisions, etc. But so much of the extant criticism looks at it purely as poetry, and this is ofc to have only half a picture of what's going on.
3. A suggestion: I would say that for you to do this effectively, you need to include more musical examples: writing out, in full, rhymes and lines in question, and more snippets of music (even if reperformed through your voice and a MIDI backing). I found it extremely hard to keep track of some of the details of your points in this vid.
Anyway thanks and fair play to you!
First of all, I really respect the pinned comment as well as what you went into during the last part of the video, and I loved the video. I agree with you completely. That said, in case you might find it interesting: I used to rap a lot and have listened to the genre since I was little. My music wasn't the best but I feel like I have a good understanding of how it all works, and when I was more active I talked with a lot of people who were making their own songs. Most of us started out with the things you're extracting from the lyrics. We would come up with the flow first - the vowel sounds and the rhythms, usually - even if it was just one line followed by a verse of gibberish, then we would fill in words until we had something. Even when I met professional rappers at record store events they told me that's how they did it too. Started with the flow, filled in the lyrics. After a while you get good enough at it that you can say what you want to say within the boundaries of the syllable counts and rhyme schemes afforded by the flow you're putting words to. Exact, specific things? Maybe not, unless you use a flow that creates rhythmic patterns with syllabic emphasis as opposed to assonance (e.g. Versace by Migos). But with any flow, even ones which require specific sequences of vowels and syllables, if you're practiced enough you can get the gist of something communicated, even while having to sometimes write yourself out of a corner. For example on "Accordion" I wouldn't be surprised if DOOM started with "Freudian" as just being something which rhymes with "accordion," because he was rapping over a beat with an accordion sample, then figuring out "slip like Freudian" as a way to make it work. Other times when you have a deeply personal song, like "Moment of Clarity" by Jay-Z, in the first verse when he talks about his dad it seems like he injects the Uncle Ray line because it's a way to be truthful and on topic, in this case regarding things he'd say to his dad, while fitting the rhyme scheme. So in that sense it's almost like he's searching a round peg to fit a round hole, that can be shoved in without much modification. But it still has to fit. At minimum, one line establishes a structure that the next line mirrors or compliments, to form a couplet with some cohesion. The more consistent and complex the flow, the more abstract and creative the lyrics, usually, because the more specific your rhyme scheme gets the more likely it is that you'll have to really contort yourself to fill it in with lyrics. But ultimately, even though sometimes the vocal track is more poetic than percussive, when you get super complex with your flow you can feel like you're playing a big set of toms in a drumline. Sorry for the wall of text! It's 3 AM and I'm probably rambling.
This video is so damn important larger meanings even than just music. Beautifully done. You got my like and subscribed!
As a metal guitarist of 21 years, I've always had a respect of rap. Hell, I love Body Count. It's a real art form, and I really love the analyses of these various kinds of music genres.
Of course, classical is great, I love jazz, love rock, blues, and metal, but everyone loves to pick on rap. Rap is awesome. Music is awesome. Listen to what makes you happy.
:)
I would love more rap lyric analysis. I look forward to a closer look into hip hop in general and really appreciated your work on this video! I also appreciated that all 3 songs you referenced were new to me. I look forward to listening to those albums.
I think it's worth talking about the technical death band Archspire. As a techdeath band, most people wouldn't assume they have anything to do with hip-hop as the music sounds so different with it's emphasis on technicality. However, the vocals are heavily influenced by rap, as the vocalist studied the technique of rappers in order to perfect his rapid fire delivery. Part of that technique is realizing that he needed to write lyrics in such a way that the flow works, and in that manner the technique of hip-hop was incorporated along with the technique of other technical genres that influenced Archspire.
I have never in my life met anybody who claimed not to like Rapper's Delight.
This is the type of analysis of hip-hop I was waiting for.
Harmony isn't the focus of jazz, it's improvisation. Harmony serves to facilitate interesting improvisation.
I'm a lifelong rocker who was introduced to the likes of Aesop Rock, El-P, Atmosphere, P.O.S., and others in the underground hip hop scene in the mid 2000s. Aesop immediately caught my ear as a brilliant lyricist, taking my "the more complicated the better" philosophy of music as a whole and planting the hip hop genre firmly in my wheelhouse. I still have a lot of disdain for the simplistic approach of many of today's hip hop artists, but fortunately for people like myself, there are just as many brilliant artists out there doing groundbreaking work for the genre every day. Great work on this channel!
Thank you for making this video and look forward to your others on HipHop.
The thing someone pointed out to me about HipHop that really opened my ear to was when someone compare the rhythms of the Rappers with that of the ride cymbal in Jazz. The ride cymbal is the main focus of the beat and the good drummers are not only driving the rhythm they are making subtle variations other are playing off of. A lot going on in HipHop with you really listen to how all the parts fit together.
I just discovered this channel yesterday and I've been binge watching all day.
I'm all in for seeing you go deep into analyzing a rap song, it's the genre I find most rewarding to delve into, always changes how I view the song and makes it that much more enjoyable
If you're at jazz and want to get into hip hop, I can't recomend "to pimp a butterfly" by Kendrick Lamar more. It's as jazz as any jazz, and it shows wjat hip hop can offer in terms of musical complexity and richness. It's one of the worlds best albums and I got into hip hop a cupple of days ago. It's worth it, listen to the whole thing in order (even if the first track is one of the weaker), 'cuz the progression will make you see so much cool stuff and have it all connect. It just so good.
Thank you for that end segment, it's super important.
This is a very big part of my music, dubstep also has a lot of 1 note bass leads, relying on timbral variation instead. The line between harmonics and notes can also get blurry with sound design, and aside from that, incorporating elements separate from the harmony can also sound either great or terrible, and it's hard to tell what truly makes it work. I've heard rappers that were technically using detuned scales that had nothing to do with what's going on, but it sounds so natural, it's like magic to me.
thank you. I'm excited you're going to do deeper dives into Hip Hop.
I used to not like hip hop/rap, but then I gave it a real listen, not just hearing it on the radio, and now I really love it
When talking about rimes in music I am sad that i cant talk about Øystein Sunde with anyone that is not Norwegian. He once called him self word smith from the hysterical institute, and it describes his lyrics quite well.
That is a dilemma with (I'd imagine) all the best Scandinavian troubadour-with-clever-lyrics genre. Why not try translating some songs yourself? It's not easy by any means, but it could be fun.
Also, and I mean this in the kindest way possible- this generally isn't the conversation to bring that up in, especially at the moment and in a 'public' forum. The entire idea of 'hip-hop as art', and further the 'be honest, 90% of music you listen to has its roots in a black musical movement' still seems objectionable to some people, and denigrating rap/hip-hop has been a major component of chronic racism in the US and elsewhere. What you said could def come across as insensitive/oblivious at best and kinda 'what about white people?' at worst-- not to imply either of those things describe you. I hope I wasn't too patronising with all that, but I figured it'd be better to be very specific, just in case.
@@elgatonegro1703 America doesn't own the internet. Your petty internal squabbles don't overwrite someone else's right to voice their opinion and talk about an artist they admire during a discussion about art. Get off your high horse.
@@0000Sierra117 fat chance. It's pandering time in the pandemic!
This video sums up a lot of why I fell in love with hip hop. When it's good it's next level.
I love your video and your cute art metaphor (elephant, bass fish, etc..) is just the cherry on top.
I'd really like more videos focusing on song groove and funk. Why do songs make you want to move? I feel like black artists have really established what is dance worthy in the US and it would be awesome to understand more of that nuance.
Three points:
1. Why treat poetry as something negative? It IS poetry. You analyse it using tools developed for analysing poetry. You demonstrate that there's some awesome poetry in rap. That's high praise in my vocabulary. And of course, if something is poetry, that doesn't exclude it also being music! (Think of Dylan getting a literature Nobel, undeservedly, IMHO, but you won't deny him being a musician because he's received recognition as a poet, right?)
2. What about alliteration? As significant a device!
3. Folk music, especially epic song (Homer and the like), is comparable in how the words become central to the song.
Because the claim he is rebutting is that it's *just* poetry, i.e. not also music. Of course, like nearly all other lyrical music, rap contains poetry. But it cannot be reduced to merely poetry.
And this video was all about something that rap has that most poetry does not: flow.
7:13 trying to be a rapper yourself huh
Beautiful.
Hiphop has way more technical aspects than any other lyrics.
Tricks with syllable structures, rare word usage, timing and delivery
Cadence and projection is an instrument
Multies with roll in and roll outs. I love this breakdown. Liked and subscribed.
I wrote a verse that every single line rhymes with itself. Every syllable of every every word connects. So any beat, any genre, it can magically adapt. You can shuffle every line and it will still flow smoothly.
It was far more difficult than I care to admit. I could write any other genre in a few minutes but good hiphop takes hours upon hours.
Your playlist is good. Gift of Gab is one of he greatest. Tech n9ne Krizz Kaliko would have been good examples to use. Since Kaliko can sing he blends it into rap
Thanks for the content.
The line between poetry and music is a fine one, and often an artificial one. Poetry relies on rhyme, meter, and structure, really the only difference is the existence of specific notes and accompaniment, and in its defense it brings to the table deeper linguistic meaning that resonates with the human psyche more than any combination of notes and meter, regardless of how brilliant, could. Ultimately, I think we as a species should learn to recognize art in all its forms and not try to artificially divide it based on our limited and biased perspectives. I appreciate Dr. Dre as much as I do Bob Dylan or Mozart or Silversun Pickups or Quentin Tarantino or Bob Ross. The right brain in general is something to be celebrated, not segregated, and you, 12tone, have been instrumental (pun definitely intended) in making this happen. Keep up the good work!
You make the basic relation of words, meaning, emphasis and rhythm sound exactly like Qira'at - the traditions of Qur'an recitation.
See, for example "The Art of Reciting the Qur'an" by Kristina Nelson.
Try this: Listen to an adhan, then listen to "Statesboro Blues" by Blind Willie McTell. There is no doubt in my mind that African-American roots music was nourished by Islamic music and poetry via the Mali Empire.
@@eritain I'm sure of it.
Maqam is... "Modal", littered with "blue notes" (microtones), improvised from "licks"... The list goes on...
For another hint in this direction see
books.google.no/books?id=kurkDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA583&ots=Cvb7DPF7Nx&dq=eman%20tai%20calligraphy%20of%20thought&pg=PA583#v=onepage&q=eman%20tai%20calligraphy%20of%20thought&f=false
Great analysis! It's really got me rethinking my opinions, and actively looking for Hip-Hop/Rap that I will enjoy. I also think a lot of points about the rhythmic aspect of the words themselves can be applied to death metal vocals as well.
Cool thanks for opening my eyes 👀 to rap I hear it differently, I've known about the metal thang for ever. Its based out the blues. Black Sabbath started as a blues cover band, basically anyway. I like how you know music history and the way you use it in your videos. THANKS for putting them out
I had no idea how intresting analyzing music is. Thank you for sparking my curiosity!
Anyone who says rapping is just talking never tried to rap ever.
You should make a video on how rappers use sampling to create completely new musical sounds, Chance the Rapper's I Need Security is a cool choice if you want to break down the musicality of it. Jazz rap is a cool subgenre to look into too, A Tribe Called Quest really helped make it mainstream. Sometimes I Rhyme Slow is a cool example of the rhythm of the lyrics and flow completely changing the feel of the song itself too.
You mentioned Blackalicious and I think analyzing Lotus Flower would be awesome. First time I heard that song was on accident. I ended up on some chill beats channel by chance and it was playing at the time. I grabbed a pen to write down the name of the song so I wouldn't forget it and I could find it to download it (before Spotify existed lol). It's so haunting. The mix and master are phenomenal. Not to mention the lyrical style you just went over. Oh and the bass with off-beat drumming. It's one of my favorites.
Glad you did this one. Common is one of the GOATs - lyrical genius
"Four elements:
There's DJ'in'
There's breakin'
There's graffiti
And then there's the mc"
"Attention all space cadets, hip-hop is the triple threat
Expandin' like the Internet, come and place your bets"
MFDOOM "One Beer" line
There's a line that goes:
""How's there only one left? The pack comes in six!
Whatever happened to two and three?"
A herb tried to slide with four and five
And got caught like, "What you doing, G?"
The song is called One Beer, and a pack comes in Six. He legit broken down a six pack of beer, all while referencing the Title name. THATS INSANE.
Or Madvillains (MFDOOM and Madlib) "MoneyFolder":
Own his own microphone, bring it everywhere he go
So he can bring it to you live in stere-ere-o
In the song, if you have heaphones on he switches the feedback to the left channel on the line "stere-ere-o". Making a joke about how stereo heaphones have a feeling of the artist walking around you, but he says it the line in Monophonic. MFDOOM is one of the best rappers out and I really recommend his albums.
MM...FOOD, Born Like This, Op. Doomsday, DangerDOOM, Madvillain.
I have been waiting for a nice analysis of the position of language in music for quite some time. Very interesting topic!
I find it fascinating. Placement of words and unexpected emphasis are one of the skills I admire in hip hop. Giving words their own pulse, including syncopation and polyrhythms, mixed with rhymes that create a sort of micro pulse within those rhythms. I have heard it done masterfully in hip hop.
Great video! Flow has always been a difficult concept for me to conceptualize and this helped a lot.
I loved that your honesty about black influences in music. Not only in the US, but throughout Latin America, African influence in rhythm is prevalent. Samba and rumba are clear examples of an African rhythm brought over with the slave trade, that influence today's music.
I think its great that you're going to put more focus on hip hop on your channel, while you're at it you should talk about UK grime and its similarities and differences to american hip hop
I don't often comment but that's an amazing video, looking forward to more hip-hop analysis on the channel.
My intro to hip-hop happened after other genres weren't built to tell it like it is. I get the need to explore harmonies and deeper feelings, but while exploring something in between, touch of surface issues can overwhelm the unpredared.
super hyped for the future hip hop analyses. i love all the videos you make about various genres but rap is one of my favorites and i’m happy it’s going to get some recognition from you!
I always appreciated the internal rhyming of hip hop, but didn’t understand how that rhyming worked. This is a good start.
Never expected to see MF Doom show up here. I'm definitely on board with some attention brought to the musicality of hip hop.
I don't want to sound condescending and just "request" a song to be analyzed because really you do what you like, but I wanted to mention Stargazer by Rainbow. I'm still really just starting music theory but this song feels to me like it's infinitely deep, I'd love to see you cover it! But again, just an idea :)
I don't really enjoy rap or hip hop as a genre (some exceptions) but I respect it and appreciate where you are coming from.
I'm not a music theorist. It's never been something I've been very interested.
Until now.
Subscribed
I never thought I'd live to see hip hop musically analyzed seriously, but now there's dissect, Switched on Pop, multiple Kanye podcasts, and now even 12tone.
I hate to be the "as a black man" guy, but as a black man who loves metal, pop, jazz, romantic, and hip hop, i thank you for using your voice
I started watching Jamel_AKA_Jamal's reaction videos a few weeks ago. It's quite refreshing to see what a music fan whose core early experience of music was hip hop engages with and calls out. Him getting the feels on Led Zepp's Babe I'm Gonna Leave You is obviously a more intense experience experience than me as a teenager encountering Rapper's Delight and The Message...
This is a great analysis for those of us who don't understand the mechanism of rap. I grew up with the false belief about it that you were talking about, and honestly it took Epic Rap Battles of History covering subjects I thought were funny for me to actually hear and appreciate the art of it and come to recognize flow as a thing that existed. I may never actually enjoy Coolio's work, but thanks to ERBOH breaking down that delusion I held, I can listen to it for the artistry of it now.
But I also didn't know what flow was until this video just now. I realized it was the pacing and vocalization, but I didn't realize it was potentially so complicated or that the placement of the syllables of the words themselves were what was creating the music.
And to the commenter 3 years from now randomly wandering in and asking why I would listen to the artistry of something I don't enjoy - you can enjoy appreciating art without enjoying the resulting art. It's a bit like solving a puzzle in reverse, extracting the layers of meaning in a thing. A large part of why I don't enjoy rap is because the most common pacing of it is uncomfortable to my musical upbringing, so I'm not going to veg out listening to rap the way I do to a lot of music. George Watsky is an excellent example of this - he can rap about a subject I can normally fall asleep to, but the flow is very engaging. It's like sandpaper to my ears (his faster work specifically), but I can take apart what he's doing at about 1/1000th the speed he can spit it out and his verbal craftsmanship and rate of enunciation are amazing. And now from this video I'm learning that there was another layer I was completely blind to.
Love this video. I feel like you could do a whole series on breaking down flows, so I'm happy to hear you're shifting the focus of your channel. I also thought the commentary at the end was really genuine and heartfelt while at the same time staying true to the point of the video. Keep being you, 12tone. I love it.
This has been one of my favorite music channels on UA-cam for a couple of years now, and I can't wait to see more content like this. Just rung the bell, keep up the good work!
The emphasis on the text as the determiner of musical structure arguably makes rap closer to plainchant in ethos, which is a sublime irony that makes me really question what "Western musical traditions" the most virulent anti-hip-hop polemicists are upholding. To whit, I dare anyone to look at a rhythmic transcription of one of MF DOOM's flows, or even the flow of a less critically lauded artist like, say, Big Sean (coming out of the whole Detroit school of bar construction), and tell me that any of that is "simple." Those are incredibly complex rhythms being internalised. Of course, these are the same people who think Europeans invented vertical harmony when Subsaharan Africa, Melanesia and the ancient Caucasus would beg to differ, or downplay the value of non-white classical oral traditions for not preserving the names of composers when we know just as little of Perotin or the architects of Notre-Dame.
Maybe the problem is not that rap is not music because it is poetry. Maybe the problem is that people don't recognize poetry as a form of music.
This video opens up a whole new perspective for me. Now I understand why it seems that many classical musicians tend to not put a lot of thoughts or emphasis on the lyrics. Lyrics seems like nothing more than the set of syllables used to vocalize the melody from their perspective. It's only a matter of time until the academic scholars starts to research and acknowledge Hip-Hop as a part of music theory.
Speaking of Syllables and Hip-Hop, I often wonder how it feels to create Hip-Hop music is in East Asian language. With their particles and syllabic language, the process of creating Hip-Hop music must've been quite interesting.
12tone's comments about the words in classical music were nonsense (see my reply to his pinned comment).
Most classical musicians play instrumental music most of the time, but there are classical singers, and their principal domain is the opera house. An opera is a musical drama, the libretto (the words) is the script and the singers are the actors. They do put a lot of thought into their interpretation and performance.
Ray Pradana Rap breaks DO seem very common in a lot of K-pop songs...so I guess it works well in Korean? No idea what they are rapping about though.
My current favorite album is Splendor and Misery by clipping.
i had never listened to/heard of blackalicous but i listened to it because of this and i really like it, thanks
I've actually played around with taking rap songs and making them into melodic pieces without lyrics. Thing is, it is never just a single note being repeated. Rappers generally do use different pitches in their delivery.
So anyone who reduces it to one note is clearly not even listening.
It still usually sounds more monotonous than normal speech.
I really liked your point about the different focus of different genres.
Awesome vid!!! I’d love to see your take on Raining Blood by Slayer, as I haven’t yet found a decent analysis on the song as well as it’s meaning. Hope to see more awesome vids!!
Honor Killed The Samurai, Nights Gambit, Orpheus vs The Sirens and Grief Pedigree are MUST LISTENS
This is a higher level of abstraction. The maestro himself --Barry White --said he was astounded at what rappers were doing with lyrics. He freely admitted that they were above him in that aspect.
Can't believe I just found this channel 😣 12 tone I love you
As a linguist and a classical pianist, I so appreciate your insight. I wish there were a "love" button.
Thanks for this. It’s always good to be clear about the difference between why we ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ anything and whether anything is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I’ve listened to a lot of hip hop and the less melodic the lyrical delivery the less I am able to genuinely enjoy it - but I would never say hip hop is in any way inferior to other forms of music. I’ve had the same experience with opera - but it is notable that substantially fewer people seem comfortable with saying opera is crap just because they don’t enjoy it. Why ever might that be....😜
1) Blue notes are common in traditional Irish/Celtic folk music. While the Blues did originate with African-Americans, Black people do NOT have an exclusive, metaphorical "copyright" on blue / bent notes. It can even be argued that the Blues are a mixture of African and European musical elements, just like Jazz. Alot of Southerners are of Scottish and Irish descent, so there was some culture mixing going on.
2) Yes, American Heavy Metal, especially early on had a lot of blues influence. You could even say that early Heavy metal was just louder Blues music. However, certain European styles of metal such as Gothic Metal, Viking Metal, Symphonic Metal, Black Metal, Death Metal, Neo-Classical metal have exactly 0.0000% blues influence. They have more in common with classical music than anything else.
Even modern American metal largely lacks blues influence. I fail to hear any blues elements in brutal Djent metal that has been popular in the past decade.
3) The current wave of immensely popular rap styles such as mumble rap, emo rap, SoundCloud rap etc. have much more melody in the vocals (albeit simple and heavily autotuned) than hip-hop traditionally had before.
YES! I would love to see more, not so much lyrical analysis, but musical analysis of rappers’ word choice. Or even non-rap, but I’m down with some videos like that!
As someone who is not a hip hop head, but just trying to appreciate the musicality of the genre, this is wonderful. Thank you so much.
I'm not sure what's more impressive, thinking of so many things to draw, or doing with with such crazy-long nails!
Great video!! Rap needs more videos analysing it