Today, I’m going to share the 3 most common beginner mistakes that will ruin your raps, along with solutions to help you avoid them—or even fix them if you’ve already made these mistakes.
[1] WRITING LYRICS WITHOUT AN INSTRUMENTAL
The first mistake beginner rappers make is they write their lyrics without an instrumental.
TOO MANY SYLLABLES
- This can cause your bars to have too many syllables which will make your bars overly crammed.
Let’s take a listen to an example of how this sounds. And for today’s lesson I’m using a JUICE WRLD type beat that I produced called SPACED OUT, which is available for purchase on my beat store.
TOO CRAMMED
I am going to try to learn to rap so everybody please wish me good luck
I know at the very beginning I’ll suck but eventually I’ll get a lot better
NOT ENOUGH SYLLABLES
- Also, writing rap lyrics without an instrumental can cause the opposite problem resulting in your bars not having enough syllables. This will cause you to stretch out and sustain your syllables for much longer than you normally would which can make them sound unnatural and weird. And sometimes it can make them feel like a nursery rhyme.
TOO SUSTAINED
I’m learning to rap wish me good luck
At first I’ll suck but I’ll get better
- And both of these issues will result in your raps not sounding musical. More on that in just a moment.
- Also writing rap lyrics without an instrumental can cause your rap to lack solid rhyme scheme patterns due to you being unaware of the musical structure and timing of your rhymes
Here’s an example of bad rhyme scheme structure and good rhyme scheme structure
BAD RHYME SCHEME
GOOD RHYME SCHEME
SOLUTION
So try to start writing your lyrics while listening to an instrumental to avoid having to heavily edit your lyrics later to fit to an instrumental. If you don’t have an instrumental use a metronome and pick a tempo to write too. Also, make a note of the tempo you’re writing too in case you wish to pick another instrumental later. As long as there isn’t more than a 10-15 bpm difference you should be fine.
TEMPO
If you don’t know the tempo of your instrumental you can use a free web based tool called TuneBat.
There’s no set amount of syllables you have to use per bar but 10-13 syllables should fill it in nicely without it being too crowded.
RHYME PLACEMENT
Also try to place at least one rhyme around the 4th beat of each bar. This is called an end rhyme. We can place end rhymes and many different places but this is a great starting point. If you want to dig deeper into developing your rhyming skills check out my series called The Science Of Rhyming
As you advance in your rapping skills you’ll be able to write rap lyrics without an instrumental if you wish because you will be mindful of the musical timing of everything and you can write to your own internal tempo.
FIXING LYRICS NOT WRITTEN TO AN INSTRUMENTAL
But if you’ve already written your lyrics don’t worry, you can still make your lyrics work over any instrumental and here’s how to do it, bar for bar.
[1] PLACE THE END RHYME
[1] Identify the word that’s supposed to be the end rhyme and place it on the 4th beat. This will typically be the 2nd snare you hear within the bar. If you only have 1 snare per bar which lands on the 3rd beat, this means you’re counting your beats in double time. In this case you will still place your first end rhyme on the 2nd snare that you hear.
[2] Now rap the rest of your lyrics while keeping your end rhyme on the 4th beat
Now ask yourself the following questions.
Did it feel too cramped?
[2] REPHASING
If so try rephrasing your bar to say the same thing with fewer syllables
Also ask yourself
Did it feel too spacious?
If so, try saying the same thing with more syllables
Did it feel neither too cramped or spacious?
Then good! That means you likely already have a good amount of syllables and if anything you may need to adjust the timing to dial in your cadence a bit more
Now just repeat this same step for each bar and your lyrics will work perfectly over the instrumental.
2. BEING TO FIXATED ON RHYMING
The 2nd mistake beginner rappers make is becoming too fixated on rhyming.
- Rhyming is awesome! But if you’re not careful, trying to rhyme too much can cause the message in your lyrics to get lost due to you making rhyming your top priority.
- This can also cause your overall song to lack direction due to you letting your rhymes dictate the direction of the song. This approach is almost like freestyling while writing instead of having a game plan for where you want your song to go.
Here’s examples of lyrics that have awesome rhymes but no cohesive message, and lyrics that have both dope rhymes and a cohesive message.
And leave a comment on this post if you can tell which ultra famous rappers style I’m mimicking here. And I’ll give you a hint, he doesn’t rap like this anymore, but he used to in the 90’s and early 2000’s.
MESSAGE GETTING LOST
MESSAGE NOT GETTING LOST
SOLUTION
Now here’s the solution to having a more cohesive message in your rap lyrics.
BRAINSTORM
Before you begin writing your lyrics take a step back and write down whatever ideas come to mind or at least do this process in your head. Don’t overthink this or be judgmental about it. And you will likely start gravitating to certain ideas more than others and this is how the concept of your verse or song can begin to solidify and take form. Doing this while listening to an instrumental helps big time, but pick an instrumental that moves you emotionally and it will be even easier.
This is a much more flexible approach to writing because instead of writing half a verse only to realize you don’t like the creative direction you took. You can throw around countless amounts of creative ideas when brainstorming before having to spend lots of time figuring out your lyrics and rap flow only to have to scrap them later if you decide to go a different direction.
It’s also okay to write down the first line that comes to mind but if it’s not meant to be like a freestyle then at some point you need to pause and ask yourself what direction you’re trying to take your verse in and then keep yourself on task.
And remember, watch out for those rhymes! When you’re thinking of which word to rhyme with next, make sure it’s going to lead your lyrics in the direction that you desire.
If you want to dig deeper into the songwriting process check out my free rap course where I take you through all the steps I took to write a song from start to finish
3. FOCUSED SOLELY ON WRITING LYRICS
Most beginner rappers begin their rapping journey by focusing solely on writing lyrics but lyrics are only half of what’s going on when you hear someone rapping.
You can think of rap as an acronym R.A.P. Rhythm And Poetry. And it’s the Rhythm part of rapping that’s the musical part that makes your raps sound so awesome over instrumentals.
Rappers are musicians and every single syllable you rap is some type of rhythmic music note so it’s important to get familiar with these notes and learn the musical fundamentals of rapping to get your raps to sound… musical.
Make sure you check out my video called Your first rap lesson
Here’s an example of lyrics that aren’t being rapped in a musical way. One dead give away that your lyrics lack musical structure is when your syllables aren’t landing on the snares which again typically fall on the 2nd and 4th beat.
In this example, on bar 1 “the” lands before the 2nd beat and “that” lands after the 4th beat.
On bar 2 “catch” lands before the 2nd beat and “like” does actually land on the “4th beat”.
Also you can visually see that these two bars cadences have no repetition to them which means there’s no pattern. Musicality is all about patterns.
RHYTHMIC MUSIC NOTES
Now here’s some examples of me rapping lyrics using only 1 type of rhythmic music note per bar to make them more musically structured.
At first when I’m only using 8th notes it’s going to sound like a nursery rhyme because songs like “twinkle twinkle little star” and “the ABC’s” use mainly 8th notes.
This is also why people said lil yachty sounded like he was rapping nursery rhymes in his song “one night”
But as we introduce faster rhythmic music notes such as 16th notes, triplet quarter notes, and couplet 32nd notes it’s going to start feeling more like rap cadences you’ve heard before.
RAP ESSENTIALS
Also if you’re new here I’ve compiled a bundle of must have free tools, eBooks, and rap lessons to help you get a jump start on improving your rap skills called The Rap Essentials Bundle which includes
- The #1 Fundamental To Rapping eBook
- Bar Sheets
- 6 practice instrumentals
- The CMS Gear Catalog
- 3 Free Rap Courses
Plus I’ll be sharing via e-mail the most essential video tutorials I’ve made that I recommend every aspiring rapper to watch. These lessons are going to teach you all the core techniques you need to be a better rapper now!
And all of this 100% FREE when you join my mailing list via this link.
Again my name is Cole Mize with colemizestudios.com and always remember, when it comes to rapping, there’s no rules, there’s only techniques. Peace!
