How to Rap

Beginning to learn to rap

So where to begin? By this point you should have a favorite artist, someone who inspired you to start this process in the first place. This is a good jumping off point. You probably also have some of your favorite songs memorized to the point that you can rap at least a whole verse without any music to it at all. Figuring out what kind of rapper you want to be comes next. Do you want to be a freestyle artist? Do you want to be a storyteller? You will eventually need to master both. For now, just start practicing your skills. Everyday commonplace things can become little rhymes. You’ve literally been doing it since you could talk. Just walk around and start rhyming things you can see, “I see my TV”, then start going down the list of all the words that rhyme with TV. When you first start learning how to rap do this everywhere you go, all the time.

As you start to get better and build up your vocabulary over time, you will also start to find your natural rhythm. Open up a dictionary, newspaper or magazine and pick the first word your finger finds. Repeat the process of going down the list of words that rhyme with that word. Start doing crossword puzzles, they train the mind and are great for new vocabulary words. Some believe that you should just read a lot of books and brush up on your English skills to enhance your vocabulary. While that is sage advice, with crossword puzzles you don’t just get great vocabulary words, you also get meanings as well. You don’t need big words to rap and simple is effective but rhyming ostentatious erudition with something in a rap battle is going to be a mic drop moment. Dead silence will fall while your opponent and just about everyone else in the room tries to figure out what you just said. We’ll bet you’re looking it up right now. We’ll save you the trouble, it means bragging about how smart you are.

Learning to rap means writing rhymes

Now that you have a good vocabulary to work with, it’s time to start writing them down. Just like you have been doing with the rhymes, write down some of your best lines. Again, do it everywhere you go and all the time. What you’re doing now is simply building up a library of lines that will someday become a verse. Remember, rap is rhythm and poetry (RAP). Writing all of these down will help you when it comes time to actually freestyle, really it’s the only reason to write them down. Memorize those lines and have them ready when you need to keep the rhythm flowing. Few things are more embarrassing than having to pause because you couldn’t grab a word you needed from your brain. Another thing to keep in mind when you’re writing is your cadence and breathing. If you write a really long verse, it’s going to be a while before you can take a breath.