“The Biggest Challenges I Faced as a Beginner Rapper (And What I’d Change If I Could Start Again)”
In this video, I’m going to be reflecting back on the biggest challenges I faced as a beginner rapper and discuss what I’d change if I were to start over from scratch.
1 RECORD YOUR IDEAS DOWN AS YOU GET THEM
I can’t tell you how many times after writing a verse, I would forget the timing of how the verse started, or I would struggle remembering some of the complex cadences and ways I structured the rhyme schemes. It’s super frustrating to work hard on perfecting something only to end up losing elements of it which ruin the whole thing.
And I no longer work like this. Now I record my vocals as I’m writing my song. Sometimes I even record before I’ve written the lyrics down. This means I’m recording small pieces at a time, like 1-4 bars. And these typically won’t be the final vocals, this is what I call my reference track which is basically just documenting all my ideas so that I don’t forget them. And I’ll typically go back and rerecord everything later when I’m perfecting my delivery.
2 SPEND MORE TIME PERFECTING YOUR PERFORMANCE
Which leads into the next biggest challenge I faced which was having a poor performance also known as delivery. Delivery is the acting part of rapping. After we’ve worked hard on perfecting our rap flow, dialing in our rhyme schemes, and pouring our hearts out through our lyrics we have to deliver that with emotions that will move the listener.
Back in the day I recorded my verses really fast. Sometimes I would record the entire verse in 1 take and call it done. The problem was, that’s exactly how it sounded! And I eventually realized when listening to my favorite rap songs that their rap performance sounded so much better than mine because they spent more time perfecting their performance in the studio and a lot of them were not recording their vocals like I was. They were punching in alot!
If you don’t know what punching in is, it’s when we either re-record sections of a song we’re trying to improve upon. Or you’re just recording in small sections so each new recording picks up where the last one left off.
At the time I looked at punching in vocals as something you did when you messed up while recording your vocal. Then I realized punching in is something we do also to perfect our vocal performance.
Punching in is no different from when you see a movie being filmed and they record the same scene over and over again to get different emotions out of the actors. Then later they can go through the different takes and pick which ones they like from each section to create one masterful performance.
Every single recording you will ever do will be unique and this is where the real magic is at in your raps. It all comes down to your performance. You could have the wittiest lines and smoothest rap flow but if you don’t deliver with the right emotions it’s not going to move your listener.
3 EVERY BAR DOES NOT HAVE TO BE A SENTENCE
And the 3rd biggest challenge I faced was I would run out of breath quite a bit and oftentimes my words would get slurred. Also sometimes I would phrase my lyrics in a really unnatural way which sounded weird and all of this is due to one issue. I was overcramming my bars!
As rappers, we have a tendency to wanna be all gas and no breaks with our raps. Rapping can be really aggressive so we have a tendency to just want to fill in our bars as much as possible all the time in our efforts to show off how hard we can go!
But here’s the thing, pausing isn’t just something we do when we need to breathe. Pausing is a musical part of our cadences and overall rap flow. What creates a groove or a cadence isn’t just where notes are landing, it’s also in where the notes are not landing.
In addition to this another trap us rappers will fall into, is we’ll treat each bar as a sentence. And this forces us to limit the amount of space we have to convey what we’re trying to say. And a bar isn’t alot of space! There’s nothing wrong with fitting an entire sentence into a bar, we do it all the time, but don’t limit yourself to it.
Sometimes you need 2-4 bars or more to complete a full thought. This opens up so many more possibilities of what you can write and it will prevent you from overcramming yours, slurring your words, and running out of breath.
Check out this example of Eminem doing this on verse 1 of his song Marshall Mathers
Each of these colors represents Eminem’s sentences. For the majority of the time he gave himself 2 bars to complete a sentence. And his first 4 bars is basically one long run on sentence.
RAP GUIDES
And if you’re looking for more quick tips like this to improve your rap skills be sure to check out my Quick Rap Guides which are short eBooks filled with just the golden nuggets you need to succeed. No fluff, no BS, just straight to the point tips on being a better rapper now!
THE RAP ESSENTIALS BUNDLE
And if you’re new here, my name is Cole Mize and I’ve been helping rappers perfect their rap skills for the past 10 years.If you’re needing guidance on what you should be focusing on as a rapper then be sure to get my FREE Rap Essentials Bundle which includes
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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!
