Transcript
Okay. So, for everybody who’s just learning about how to write lyrics for hip hop, one of the first things you want to do is to actually listen to other rappers, especially old school rappers, because by practicing, it’s almost like tracing over somebody else’s picture and learning to draw.
Then you kind of get an idea of shapes and size and how to do certain things that you just may not be able to do yourself. And then, from learning how that person did it, then you can do your own.
Another way to write lyrics is once you’ve learned how the cadence works, because that’s the hardest part about rap, is the cadence in which to flow on the beat, but I like to also study literary devices. Literary devices are tools that you use to convey what it is that you may want to say in a cool, slick, and creative way.
So, one popular literary device is a metaphor. And what a metaphor is is comparing one thing to something else without using “like” or “as”. For example, you can say something like, “I’m sicker than an AIDS patient.” Sick, in hip hop, means very good. So, that is a way of using literary devices in a rap song.
If you study literary devices and you study the old school rappers, or rappers that you like today, modern rappers of today, you can discover how to write rap lyrics.
