Poem about Enzymes

[Al B. Sure!]

Rappers freely violate meter and rhythm, at least in the poetic sense. Look where you put those commas--they're breaking up the flow of the work, making you stutter in weird places as you read it so you sound like you're doing a half-assed Porky Pig impersonation. Likewise the meter; the lines vary in length, again apparently at random. Rappers do the same things, easily, without having to worry about breaking from the very simple, monotonous background beats they use.

That herky jerky porky pig **** is ****ing IAMBIC METER!!!!

Jesus. unstressed syllable, stressed syllable, unstressed, stressed, and so forth. Do you comprehend iambic meter?

[Elok]

Yes, I do. It's what Shakespeare used, it's frequently used because it matches the natural stresses of English conversation, and it's not what I'm talking about. The problem is a matter of arbitrary pauses, generally caused by the practice of internal rhyme, and line length. I'll grant you that I don't listen to rap much, so maybe they don't all do it.

[Elok]

Specifically, Shakespeare (and Marlowe, etc.) used iambic PENTAmeter, i.e. five iambs. Rappers seem to use iambic whatever-I-don't-care-meter, i.e. lines of whatever length will allow them to squeeze in the desired amount of pidgin social commentary. Which is part of why they sound jerky.

[Al B. Sure!]

You're going to have to give me an example. I don't understand what you mean. Unless you mean what DJ's used to do where they would scratch through vocals and make a stuttering sound? But that was never prevalent on anything beyond some hooks and breaks.

[Al B. Sure!]

Specifically, Shakespeare (and Marlowe, etc.) used iambic PENTAmeter, i.e. five iambs. Rappers seem to use iambic whatever-I-don't-care-meter, i.e. lines of whatever length will allow them to squeeze in the desired amount of pidgin social commentary. Which is part of why they sound jerky.

There's a very set system that most rap songs ascribe to: a 16 bar verse; 4 beats per bar; 4 bar chorus repeated twice.

Despite your impression, most rap songs follow a very set formula. Every line is 4 beats. Typically, rhymes will be placed on the 4th beat of each bar, with use of internal rhyme within the bars.

And this appears ad hoc to you?

[giblets]

Construction/function is technically a feminine rhyme (last syllable only), which sounds lazy and weak to my ear, but if you insist, fine.

Whoah, hold on there. You've got it backwards. It's masculine rhymes that are one syllable only.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminine_rhyme

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/204113/feminine-rhyme

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masculine_rhyme

But I agree that Al's poem is annoying.

[Elok]

Huh? Okay, so it's a problem with delivery. They haphazardly overemphasize or something. Honestly, I try to avoid listening to them as much as possible, so I have a small sample size to work with. Possibly the internal rhyme thing, combined with the slurring and the excessively fast delivery, makes it sound that way. Either that or you're just messing with me. In any case, it's jerky and ugly and I'm damned if I'm going to subject myself to more of it to settle a point I don't much care about. If we're agreed that the OP poem was an abomination, I think we can finish up here.

XPost; gribbler, we'd come to that conclusion ourselves, but thanks.

[Al B. Sure!]

Elok are you talking about something like this?



Obviously, this guy is doing it all with his mouth but what happens is that in the early 90's, it was popular for DJ's to take rap vocals and scratch them to produce that stuttering effect.

This can't be what you're talking about, right?

[Al B. Sure!]

Huh? Okay, so it's a problem with delivery. They haphazardly overemphasize or something. Honestly, I try to avoid listening to them as much as possible, so I have a small sample size to work with. Possibly the internal rhyme thing, combined with the slurring and the excessively fast delivery, makes it sound that way. Either that or you're just messing with me. In any case, it's jerky and ugly and I'm damned if I'm going to subject myself to more of it to settle a point I don't much care about. If we're agreed that the OP poem was an abomination, I think we can finish up here.

XPost; gribbler, we'd come to that conclusion ourselves, but thanks.

No. I'm not ****ing with you. Most rap is surprisingly formulaic. I think part of the reason for that is because aspiring rappers rely on other people's beats which usually have a set structure (that 4 beat bar/16 bar structure). Think about it, Elok. What up and coming rappers have a band or something to make unique music to fit their vocals? They fit their vocals to pre-existing beats.

Rap started with rapping over disco breakbeats, which were dance beats obviously. It was always using what was already formed.

And excessively fast? False. I posted a song once for Asher to hear and he remarked it was very fast. I counted words and syllables per minute. It was within the range that is industry standard for audiobooks.

Rappers do not rap fast. They rap at conversation pace. The problem is people not used to rap don't know how to engage in active listening. Singing has a lot slower syllables per minute rate than normal speech. Most rap, on the other hand, is in the range of normal speech.

To prove my point, all you have to do is listen to acapellas. Eminem has a reputation for rapping faster than average yet if you listen to Lose Yourself acapella, he's speaking slower than most New Yorkers:



That most rappers rap fast is a myth.

[Elok]

Al, I'm saying almost all rap, including the one example you posted that I started listening to (the one that talked about pulling wool and NASDAQ heart attacks and whatever), sounds stuttery and annoying to me. I never stopped to analyze it closely, but it sounded like the line lengths and pauses were somewhat arbitrary. Now you tell me that's not the case, and so I suspect it's mostly a matter of overemphasizing syllables or something. Honestly, there's no way I'm going to listen to more rap to figure out what exactly is bugging me, so let's just give it up. I hate your poem, you think it's bad but tolerate it like an ugly stepson, good enough.

[C0ckney]

al is right that rap is formularic, but that's true of most forms of popular music.

edit: actually as i recall al started a thread about rock music and had some very strict criteria about the sort of structure the song had to have.

[giblets]

XPost; gribbler, we'd come to that conclusion ourselves, but thanks.

Sorry. It's hard to read through this thread.

[giblets]

I write something like this as part of a verse... I've annotated all the rhyming sets. Yet I guess not a single one of these is a proper rhyme in Elok's bizarro world despite shared syllable sounds.

She's got my heart aching¹ with her smiles² and sunshine³
Time⁴ wasting¹, mind⁴ racing¹ while² my tongue's tied³
They say love lies³,
But it's me that I'm being dishonest with⁵
trying to be all calm with it⁵,
portray the proper ambience⁶
Cause women want a man with self-confidence⁶
But every time I try to be smooth,
I get lost in self-consciousness⁶,
Making promises⁶ with myself⁷,
I insist I got to get some help⁷...


And a valid pronunciation of ambience is with the soft a as in father. look it up.

"Aching" and "Wasting" and "Racing": masculine rhyme. Rhyming "ing" words this way is kind of pathetic
"Smile" and "While": rhyme
"Sunshine" and "tied" and "lies" do not rhyme by any stretch of the imagination
"Time" and "mind" do not rhyme
"with" and "it" do not rhyme
"ambience" and "confidence" are masculine rhymes I guess but don't rhyme with "consciousness" and "promises"
"myself" and "help" do not rhyme

So out of your seven examples of your efforts only three contain any instances of actual rhyming. Well done.

[Al B. Sure!]

Let's do the math.

The typical rap beat is 85 bpm (Lose Yourself is at 86bpm). 4 beats to a bar and 16 bars to a verse means there are 64 beats in a rap verse.

The average rap line is 10-12 syllables. In Eminem's Lose Yourself, this is the case (for example, "His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy" is one bar with 11 syllables. This is genre standard.).

Because Eminem used mostly monosyllabic words in that line, he managed to fit 9 words in 11 syllables. Because most lines have more syllables, let's say he'll typically have 8 words per bar.

With 8 words per bar that means there are 2 words per beat (because each bar is 4 beats).

At 85bpm, that means there 170 words per minute.

From wiki:

Audiobooks are recommended to be 150–160 words per minute, which is the range that people comfortably hear and vocalize words.[17] Research has demonstrated that adults can listen with full comprehension at 300 wpm.

Okay so 170 wpm is a little on the high end, but Eminem IS faster than average for a rapper. Most rappers are in the audio book range. But people are capable of full comprehension at even twice that speed.


See. Rappers rapping fast is a myth.

Honestly, if you have problems understanding rappers because they rap too fast, I actually question your intelligence and how you function in day to day life. You wouldn't be able to understand an audio book.

[Al B. Sure!]

"Aching" and "Wasting" and "Racing": masculine rhyme. Rhyming "ing" words this way is kind of pathetic
"Smile" and "While": rhyme
"Sunshine" and "tied" and "lies" do not rhyme by any stretch of the imagination
"Time" and "mind" do not rhyme
"with" and "it" do not rhyme
"ambience" and "confidence" are masculine rhymes I guess but don't rhyme with "consciousness" and "promises"
"myself" and "help" do not rhyme

So out of your seven examples of your efforts only three contain any instances of actual rhyming. Well done.

You're an idiot.

AAAAAching... WAAAAAAAsting.... RAAAAAAcing. Do you need hear the ****ing AAAAAA sound?

SUNshine TONGUE's tied LOVE lies

you know what... **** you.

Yo have no understanding of rhyme.

CONfiDENCE CONsciousNESS PROMisES


I already made my argument. I used the IPA pronunciations. How the **** can you tell me that syllables that share the same sounds aren't forms of rhyme?!