Improve Rap Flow Step By Step
Yo what’s up everybody Edison from Rhymemakers here. We’re going to go over four steps so we can find our rap flow on any beat in hip hop.
I’m also going to follow that up with some basic understanding of poetic meter and how that can help you create different types of patterns and cadence.
I want to throw in a caption ahead of time. TRAP rap follows a different pattern of kicks and snares. The same principals apply. Beats have a tempo and rhythm they adhere too. Or it would become jazz music. Hip hop and trap follow similar time signatures. Trap will place snares all over the place, and many times on the 3rd beat. Don’t look much into this until later in the article. I will go into more detail there. Cheers.
Step 1: Count To 4 – Seriously
1-2-3-4 Each one of those numbers represents a beat. A beat is a piece of time. A bar is four beats repeated.
Step 2: Identify The Kick And Snare
The kick and snare are two different types of drum beats that create the basis of a hip hop instrumental. The kick sound is more of a thud or boom sound. The snare sound is more of a clap sound.
For example: You stomp your feet on the floor and clap to keep a beat going. Queens “We will rock you” is a prime example. Kicks can vary in types of sounds, essentially anything the beatmaker wants to use.
The snare type drums can also be any type of sound as long as there is a contrast between the kick and the snare. This is where BOOM BAP comes from. You ever hear someone say I like that boom-bap type rap flow? The boom is the kick and the bap is the snare. Cool, right?
The Hi-Hat is also a type of drum/percussion sound used. It has more of a “tss tss” type of sound. Do not focus on the hi-hat for now. Though it can come into play designing your words to go over the beat.
Step 3: 1-2-3-4 = Kick-Snare-Kick-Snare
The 1 beat is a kick.
The 2 beat is a snare.
The 3 beat is a kick.
The 4 beat is a snare.
Kick-snare-kick-snare, Boom-bap-boom-bap.
That’s the BASE of most hip hop beats today. Obviously t rap flow is different.
And that’s generally what a hip-hop beat is. Being able to identify where the kicks and snares are in the track is going to be the most important thing. Count out one – two – three – four so the kick lands on the one and three. And the snares land on the two and four beats. If you can do this, then you are golden.
You can break down many rap songs with a four-syllable word. I learned this from the rapper Common at first, he said you can break down the rap flow of hip-hop songs with the word WATERMELON. This is true because it’s four-syllables long and you can repeat it so that the beats land on each syllable of the word.
Step 4: Words Over Beats For Rap Flow
Stressed and unstressed syllables will intertwine with the count of four. Arrange words in different places over your beat to maintain a dope rap flow.
Flow in rap is the flow of how your words fall onto the kicks and the snares. You want your words to land so that the EMPHASIS or the ACCENT or the STRESS of the word OR phrase lands on either the 1-2-3-4 beat consistently. The ways you change this up will make up the pattern of your rap flow.
Some beats move fast and some beats move slow. So you will be able to either fit more words in a bar, or less words in a bar. Depending on the speed of the instrumental. BUT.. That doesn’t change the fact that a consistent count of 1-2-3-4 is moving throughout the entire song. All the time. In the background.
In general, you want your rhymes to land on the 4 beat of the bar. In order to keep it moving. The rhyme at the end of the bar is like a period to let people know you are moving onto the next line. Over time this has morphed and evolved into a complex set of rhymes mixed in with the rhyme on the 4th beats.
This is where multi-syllable rhymes come into play. Internal rhymes, skipping a rhyme on the 3rd bar and so on.
4-Bar Theory, Couplets & Quatrains
We’re going to talk about couplets, 4-bar theory and quatrains in rap flow.
Some odd names, but we’ll get to the easy explanation of what they are.
Couplets are two bars that share the same rhyme scheme.
That’s what it is in poetry, and that’s what it is in rap as well.
An example of a couplet would be:
Bar 1 Not making tracks for the fashion industry’s
Bar 2 Most raps are on the backs of my napkins and receipts
That’s two bars counted out and that’s what a couplet is, as long as they share the same rhyme scheme. Super simple but all of rap flow is based around the premise that you have to 2-4-8 bar sequences in order to get your point across.
Quatrains are four bars in a row that share the same rhyme scheme.
For example:
Bar 1 Not making tracks for the fashion industry’s
Bar 2 Most raps are on the backs of my napkins and receipts
Bar 3 I put passion into beats, establish inner peace
Bar 4 cuz for me it’s leaving scenery while travelling the streets
Why Does This Help You Improve?
The idea is that four bars generally gets across your main idea, and the verses are usually made up of 8-16 bars. So, you can have two or four sets of four bars to get across four different ideas. Then bam you have a full 16-bar verse.
That’s just how it’s structured, a lot of people will change it up and do two bar rhyme scheme, so a couplet, and then a quatrain and then a couplet and then mix it up that way.
Or do 8 bars of the same rhyme scheme or even 16 bars of the same rhyme scheme. Which we’ve seen before is well. Get creative, this is meant to teach the fundamentals. So that you can venture off and create something new and exciting.
Many times doing a full 16 bar verse with the same rhyme scheme can get quite boring. Many rappers will change up the sound of the pattern because if you keep the same assonance the whole time for 16 bars it can get quite annoying to listen too. Change up the type of rap flow, and by changing up the rhyme scheme you’re always going to change up the rap flow.
Poetic Meter & What It Can Teach You About Rap Flow
Poetic meter and what it can teach you about rap flow. There are some really cool concepts here but it’s not something that you really need to know 100%. But understanding this will make you a better rapper.
I don’t care what anybody says, poetic meter is rhythm in words. So, if you understand rhythm and words, then you can apply it over a beat as well.
This will allow you to change up your rap flow. I’m also going to show you how Migos uses one specific type of poetic meter to have that triplet rap flow. That’s where that comes from, it’s a certain type of poetic meter.
Poetic meter is the combination of stressed and unstressed syllables, that’s all poetic meter is. I’m going to try to explain this to you without a poet expert getting mad at me, because the choices of terms they use for poetic meter are pretty silly. All you need to know for hip hop and how to apply it to rap flow is there are five different types of meter to understand.
- Iambic
- Trochaic
- Spondaic
- Anapestic
- Dactylic
See what I mean? Let me break this down further.
Iambic
Iambic is made up of two syllables.
An unstressed syllable and then followed by a stressed syllable.
For example when you say the word “about”. There are two syllables. a-bout.
When you say the word, you naturally place more emphasis on the “bout” portion of the word.
It doesn’t need to be one word. As long as two syllables follow each other in this order it is iambic.
First an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed. Here is an example of iambic being repeated 5 times consecutively. And is an example of Iambic pentameter. (The pent for repeated 5 times).
Iambic Pentameter is a term I’m sure you’ve heard before. It’s a type of poetic meter and it’s one that Shakespeare used a lot.
Fun fact: You can take iambic pentameter written out in all of the different types of Shakespeare’s works and put it over a hip-hop beat and it will almost always flow.
Trochaic
Trochaic is two syllables. First, a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. For example: “Faster” The general stress for the word “faster” is in the first syllable “FAST-er”. Or in regards to a phrase it would look something like this if repeated 4 times.
Spondaic
Spondaic is two stressed syllables back to back. For example when you say “HOLD BACK” in a sentence, you would stress both syllables equally. This is what we call Spondaic.
Meter With 3 Syllables
Anapestic
Anapestic is three-syllable. First, an unstressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable and a stressed syllable.
And for those wondering about that triplet flow they hear Migos and many other rappers using.
Dactylic
Stressed syllable then followed by two unstressed syllables.
Now I want to follow this up by mentioning that you don’t necessarily NEED to know this stuff. But in theory, this can be used to create new and unique patterns of flow over beats.
You don’t HAVE to rap in iambic pentameter everytime to stay on the beat. You can fall off the beat and use pauses and sharp stops in certain bars to change up your patterns. You can combine dactylic with anapestic and then switch back. It’s just to help you understand the natural cadence of rap flow.
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