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(1) But even if the process is more complex than Adams recognizes, his critique of the traditional approach to text/music relations stands: that approach could be applied to rap music appropriately if and only if the text of the lyrics precedes all the features of the music (including the features of the rapper’s voice). Other scholars have provided more nuance to the process of rap composition as an iterative collaboration between an emcee and a producer, one in which the musical content of a track both suggests aspects of the rapper’s flow and responds to it ( Williams 2009, Manabe 2009, 309). Since, in his view, the music often precedes the text, and since the text’s meaning may be “difficult to discern,” Adams suggests that the analyst ought to look at how the rhythm of the rapping voice responds to aspects of the instrumental streams, not how that rhythm interacts with the meaning of the text.
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Though obviously intended to be humorous, this verse has neither an overarching theme, nor an identifiable plot, nor a systematic and consistent use of imagery. Without passing judgment, one can say that the literal meaning of is difficult to discern. Furthermore, Adams cites several examples of rapped lyrics whose meaning is unclear, undermining any attempt to connect their meaning to the meaning of the music: In rap music, according to Adams, the composition of the music (i.e., “the beat,” created by a deejay or producer) often precedes the composition of the text (i.e., “the flow,” created by an emcee), thereby undermining the mapping of meaning from music to text. In most of the classical repertoire, a composer sets a preexisting text to music, and this invites analysts to investigate how the meaning of that preexisting text maps onto the meaning of the newly composed music. In his 2008 article in Music Theory Online, Kyle Adams notes that existing methods for analyzing texted (classical) music are inapt for rap music. Revisiting text-music relationships in rap delivery through
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In demonstrating one way in which rhythmic delivery can affirm the expressive meaning of lyrics, I hope to provide tools that enable hip hop scholars interested in rhythm, rhyme, and meaning to sometimes talk to each other rather than past each other.Ĭopyright © 2019 Society for Music Theoryġ. Subsequently, in examining three lines of the verse, I document an analogy between flow-beat alignment and topics of vitality, moral rightness, and knowledge in the lyrics. In particular, I present methods for measuring and visualizing the alignment of syllable onsets (i.e., the flow) with events in the accompanying instrumental streams (i.e., the beat). This article begins bridging that divide by relating details of Kendrick Lamar’s rhythmic delivery to the meaning of his lyrics, focusing on the second verse of “Momma” from To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). It is only slightly hyperbolic to suggest that the former analyzes rap music as music without text while the latter analyzes it as text without music. KEYWORDS: Rap music, flow, Kendrick Lamar, rhythm, prosody, expressive timing, text-music relationshipsĪBSTRACT: After twenty years of published analyses on rap lyrics and flow, a divide between music-oriented and literature-oriented writing remains.