2008 October | Songwriter Advisor Blog

How To Write Rap Parts For Your Songs

October 7th, 2008 orlando5 No comments

Some of the hardest hitting pop songs enlist the talents of star rappers to write rap parts, and without a doubt, the rap parts become integral parts of those songs.

For example, the recent hit “American Boy,” by Estelle, an English hip hop singer, featured rapper Kanye West doing his thing while will.i.am. produced and also co-wrote the song.

If you’ve ever been a rapper or a songwriter enlisted to write rap parts for a song, you know it appears easier than it actually is! It actually takes much practice and talent to pull it off.

Rap has been known to cross over into many genres over the last several years. Jazz rap was huge in the late 80’s and early 90’s, but can you imagine how cool and refreshing you can possibly make a song if you feature a rap part on it? For example, take a straight-up, powerful rock song, and depending on the feel, see if you can write a rap part and sing it yourself, or feature a local rapper on the song. I believe you’d be amazed at the results. This goes for any music genre, too!

To get yourself off to a good start, here are a few tried and trusted tips from pro rappers to help you sound professional:

1. Listen to few songs from well-known or favorite rap artists such as Kanye West or 2Pac, and study the rhyming scheme they use.

For example in American Boy, Kanye raps:

Just another one champion sound
Yeah Estelle about to get down
Who the hottest in the world right now.
Just touched down in London town.
Bet they give me a pound.
Tell them put the money in my hand right now.
Tell the promoter we need more seats,
we just sold out all the floor seats

What can we learn here? Kanye used one of the most common rhyming techniques, which is to; rhyme lines two at a time, and sometimes use the same words in the rhyme. Notice how he rhymes sound with “down” “now” “town”, etc.

2. Let your lines breathe! For example, using the beat you’re working with, it gets tiresome to hear the same amount of syllables in every line. If you’ve just rhymed 4 lines with the same general meter, vocal delivery, and rhymes, change it up the next 1 or 2 lines to add interest.

3. One of the marks of a truly great rapper is the ability to match rhymed syllables in a fresh way. To do this, after you get a rough draft of your rap, start with the word at the end of each line and try to emulate the following example:

Look at West’s first 4 lines and notice how smooth the endings are in all 4 lines.

Just another one champion sound
Yeah Estelle about to get down
Who the hottest in the world right now
Just touched down in London town

champion sound flows seamlessly with about to get down, and
world right now flows perfectly with London town

4. Focus on what your song’s topic is about and try to flavor it with whatever desired effect you want it to have! For example, if the song were titled, “I Need More,” and was about a person needing to see more of their lover for the relationship to survive, you could approach the song either as an outsider telling the person to forget about the person or as the lover trying to fix the relationship.

Categories: Songwriting Help Articles Tags: American Boy, Kanye West, write rap

Faced With A Deadline: How To Write A Few Quality Songs Quickly!

October 2nd, 2008 orlando5 1 comment

Oftentimes pro songwriters are faced with deadlines, usually when they’re either competing with other music publishing company songwriters to pitch songs to a certain artist by a specific date, or when they’re trying to fulfill their contractual obligations to complete “X” amount of songs by a specific date as staff songwriters.

Amateur songwriters sometimes also impose deadlines upon themselves or band members when they’ve committed themselves to writing and performing original songs for a variety of reasons.

So what can you do if you’re a songwriter who needs to come up with 3-5 killer songs with in the next couple of weeks?

Relax.   You can do it. You just need a clear path and a little direction. Let me give you an example, and hopefully you can take something useful from the following experience I had:

Before I was signed to a staff songwriter deal at Warner/Chappell, I had just begun shopping for a songwriting deal, and through a mutual contact, I was able to get my foot in the door to Warner/Chappell Publishing Company. Yes-I was in la-la land! I couldn’t believe that on my first try I was going to meet the bigwig of Warner/Chappell.

I presented then-Vice President Ellen Moraskie and her associate Giuliana Fragala a demo consisting of 3 songs I thought were pretty darn good while my hands trembled. Both ladies apparently liked what they heard, and they instructed me to provide 3 more songs so they could hear what else I had to offer, and probably to see if I had any depth as a songwriter. After that meeting I think I drank 5 cups of water because of my mouth was so dry from the nervousness!

I was thinking, “They want to hear 3 more songs within these next two weeks?” How am I going to do that? I had just spent nearly a year trying to complete my first demo of 3 songs (I was a newbie back then), and now they wanted what seemed to be a miracle! Well, I convinced myself I could do it, and I did!! Instead of providing 3 songs, I provided 5!!!! Of course there were some duds, but I showcased the best two songs as the first two on the demo. I was signed to a staff songwriter deal within 3 days after that!!

The following simple but powerful method is the one I used to create songs while facing a two week deadline while still holding a full time job:

Day One – time spent: 3 hours

1. I made a conscious decision to come up with 5 song titles and from these, if I ended up with 3 songs in the end I would be happy. As it turned out, I created 8 song titles!!

2. I memorized the song titles for about an hour and wrote down the song titles on 8 separate sheets of paper in large letters so I could refer to them for the next step.

3.   I began playing chord progressions on acoustic guitar by fiddling around in the 5 keys I love to play most; Key of G, C, D, E, and A, just to get the juices flowing and a feel for some new, original music. I tried to place the match the feel of the chord progressions and I decided to sleep on what I had created so far.

Day Two - Time spent:  3 hours

1. I continued playing chord progressions, but this time, I was really “feeling it” and began matching each song title to each chord progression, and constructing each song using verse-chorus song forms for the time being.

2. I systematically took one song at a time, until I felt I had the feel of each song, and a general idea of where I wanted to place the song hook/title of each song. I practiced each song for approximately 10 minutes, then wrote down the chords for each song above the song titles on the 8 different sheets of paper so I wouldn’t forget them!

After that, for the next few days, I started working on the rough draft of the lyrics one song at a time, and although some of the songs were easier than others to write, after a week I was left with 3 fairly complete songs, and 5 songs half-way done! How did I come up with melodies? I used a combination of melody first for some songs, lyrics first for others, and chords first for another few. Using this method, I found it to be the quickest way to write quality songs.

After the first week all songs were done in rough draft form. They were written on 8 different sheets of paper complete with the chord sequences written on the top of each page. I selected 5 of those eight songs and systematically practiced each song for 2-3 hours (one a day) starting on the next Monday and ending on a Friday. By working on a song a day, I was able to completely focus and acquaint myself well, with each new song.

By that Saturday, after two weeks of extremely hard work, I had 5 songs completed. I didn’t have time to record them, however, so on the next Tuesday, I was able to rattle off the 5 songs “live” in front of Moraskie and Fragala. They were impressed with the work ethic and the quality of the songs, even if I didn’t play some of them perfectly. And yes-I was still nervous!

I was signed, virtually on the spot!