Less is, less

Rapping is a funny medium. "Rapping" as we know it, as in hiphop, "emceeing", or as some people openly profess, a sort of talentless pontificating with baggy pants, is really just a certain way of writing song lyrics.

I listen to some song lyrics in everyday rock songs, some which are repetitive, but carefully chosen and carefully placed, and which can be super-effective and evocative, and think jeez you guys have it easy.. because rapping in some ways, as an art form doesn't fit my own personal artistic mantra of, "less is more".

A rapper as a bench mark for songs often has to have three verses (16 bars each) of relatively densely packed lyrics, with ingeniously executed rhyme schemes, rhythmic flow, meaningful content, a concisely adhered to concept plus catchy effective choruses and hooks. And people smile condescendingly as if it's a phase young men have to go through.. better that than drinking and causing a ruckus.. rapping is a super-hard discipline to master..

I think a lot of it has to do with the volume of lyrics that are often expected, particularly if you're a solo rapper. I recently watched a Jay-Z documentary "Fade to Black", and was astonished at his unique and incredibly hard-to-emulate process. The documentary showed how Jay-Z would go into a producer's studio, listen to beats until he could no longer resist the urge, go into the booth, and record basically a whole song (three verses with choruses) without using a single piece of paper or pen. It seams that Jay-Z has some sort of.. photographic type memory, which allows him to recall up to some 30 verses at a time, ready to unleash upon unsuspecting beats.

It's the stereo-typing of rapping in this country, as something that wanna-be Australian males do, thinking that they're actually black and of-the-hood.. my rapping doesn't talk about the hood, or homies, or being black (I'm as white as my Cornish immigrant ancestors). But I like using language, and using it in a musical way, and I take my lead from Afro-American rap artists such as Jay-Z, and countless others, because it seems that they have really mastered the art of writing and performing in this style.

I find it very hard to say to people who aren't necessarily in-the-know, that I spent pretty much my whole Saturday locked in my office writing rhymes. It sounds kinda juvenile. But this is what I do, I can't help it. I don't really want to do anything else..