What’s up world? Your boy drew my son here to show you how to ramp and in this video we’re going to show you how to start rapping step by step.
As someone who has had the privilege of traveling around the world rapping, making lifelong friends and even a few bucks along the way, it’s my pleasure to present to you the very basics of how to get started in this wonderful art of rhetoric.
So if you want to learn how to start rapping from somebody like yourself who didn’t have any musical training, I didn’t necessarily plan for this to be something like a full-time career but was able to get some of those nice perks.
This is the video for you.
And of course, before we dive right into it, be sure to subscribe with notifications.
This channel is all about how to read. It’s called How to Read and if you’re wondering about the art and science of creating rap and hip-hop music of all sorts, you can do it too.
This is the channel for you.
In any case, let’s rock into these 10 easy to follow steps to learn how to start. Step number one is to make a goal to start rapping as opposed to becoming a rapper.
The first thing you need to realize is that the ability to rap is a skill regardless of your previous musical knowledge or what you think is required in order for you to get good at this. You can get good at this no matter how far along you are. This skill of rhythmically putting rhyming words together with a beat is something that you can get good at, as long as you don’t get too hung up on what you think a rapper is supposed to be
A lot of people give up too early on getting good at rapping because they’re so hung up on what a rapper is supposed to look like, what they’re supposed to talk about, all manner of things that will discourage you if you think that’s the only way to become good at rap.
Look at the end of the day.
A rapper is somebody who raps, writes writers and people who play actors. A rapper is somebody who reads, so focus on getting good at reading, focus on reps and rapping.
And don’t worry so much about the expectations of what a rapper is supposed to be.
Step number two is to write at least 16 lines every single day. The number 16 rap is commonly divided into bars, which is a phrase that essentially means one line from beginning to end.
Now, bars also have a very specific musical definition that has to do with the music and the tempo.
We’re not going to cover that really really in depth in this particular video because we want to give you all the tips to start rapping, but be sure to visit the first link in the video description box below where we’re going to give you a free how to read dictionary with the definition of bars and other top 100 phrases you’ll need to start rapping. That’ll be the first link in the video description box below.
But for the purposes of this video, you can just think of a bar as one line of bread.
Over the history of hip hop, certain patterns have evolved around how long your average rap verse was.
And the most common length was 16 bars, or 16 lines of reading.
More recently, with the advent of streaming and shortened audience attention spans, many rap verses have been shortened to 12 bars and even eight bars.
But it’s better for you to go for the full 16 so that you’re writing more and you’re getting good at rapping faster, which is what you want. Right step number three is to write a topic at the top of each rap that you write.
This is something I was fortunate enough to do from the very beginning because I had a rad mentor who pretty much showed me from day one of writing rap how to look right at the topic at the beginning of your read so that you have practice being on topic and having subject matter.
It could be something very simple, as you start, it could be shoes, girls’ school, whatever.
But just from the very beginning, you start rapping. I want to be able to stay on subject by forcing myself to think about the topic or subject matter.
Every time I wrote, even as a beginner, it helped me to be able to speak more authentically as an artist because I was practicing speaking on a topic the way I saw it as opposed to what I thought people wanted to hear. As you get better at rapping, you’re going to be asked to do features or pauses based on other people’s ideas, sometimes even theme songs, so you want to be able to deliver a rap based on the requested topic or subject matter. Step number four is
The truth of the matter is, most hip hop bands have people that will spend a lot of money on their careers and you know they will ride for you and die fans.
They want to consume your music, enjoy your rap in song form, something that they can sing along to, something that’s very memorable to them.
And because of the nature of popular music, most people may expect to hear it in song form with a really identifiable catchy chorus.
So, from the very beginning, you start rapping. The more you practice writing catchy parts that people can sing along to, the more likely you are to make raps that people want to become fans of.
This is where you hear expressions like he’s dope but he can’t make a song to save his life.
And then on the flip side, you have artists like Drake, who make millions of dollars just by doing courses alone. Even Kendrick Lamar, one of the most respected lyricists in the game, has courses like humble or re don’t kill my vibe.
And those are iconic to many people as his raps on those particular songs.
So take notes from the greats and the people making the big bucks. Have a full time career and add a course every time you start practicing.
Now if you’re interested in learning more about the songwriting aspect of Brent, I’ve done an additional free course called the Top 20 Songwriting Secrets of Full-Time Rappers, which you can pick up by visiting the video description box below.
Step number five is to start just focusing on rhyming the words at the end of each bar or at the end of each line, and then add in more complex rhymes later on.
For the first few weeks after starting to rap,
I don’t want you to think about trying to run a million words and every single word needs to run into the kidney like m & m or Kendrick or whatever. I want you to just get into the flow of rhyming consistently.
The easiest way to do that is by writing the words at the end of each bar or line of rap, but you got to understand that right now you’re just getting your mind used to putting itself in weird positions creatively to think of ways to come up with original rhymes. For example, my dad, who gave me my first guitar, told me to practice Look, your hands are not going to be used to moving in the directions that the notes to play the guitar need to the chords, or the way you’re striking this plank of wood with the strings on it, but don’t get discouraged if it feels weird at first. Over time, your hands will get used to doing the weird movements that will eventually become notes on the instrument.
Now if you want to jump ahead a little bit and learn more about how to stack rhymes, check out our Learn to Rap video. It creates an infinite number of rhymes in under 10 minutes and is probably our most successful video with over a million views.
I’ll put that in the video description as well.
Number six practice As a person who’s learning how to start rapping as opposed to just writing or doing poetry, you’ll need to learn that it’s often not just what you say, and sometimes it’s not what you say at all.
It’s how you say what the vibe, the feel that the audience gets from your rap. You’re gon na have the most lyrically intricate bars ever.
But if you deliver it monotone with no confidence, nobody’s going to want to play your music.
With this in mind, I want you to practice delivering every single rep that you write, even from the very beginning, even if it’s by yourself. I want you to practice delivering it out loud so that you don’t become a text see a taxi, which is internet slang for someone who only writes text, runs into comments, and probably doesn’t really read in person.
Think of it sort of like a person playing fantasy football and believing that makes them more likely to play in the NFL, or in the Premier League for soccer.
Overall, these are keyboard warriors and you don’t want to be like that if you really want to consider yourself a rapper.
Additionally, as you practice delivering these out loud, you’ll notice how some words are easier to say or some syllables are easier to stack than others, and you’ll be able to get used to organizing syllables based on the way that you deliver them, which is an excellent skill. As you become a more advanced rapper, you’ll be able to start handling any beat as you see fit because of your practice.
Step number seven is 16 for 16. This is a new idea, a new concept I came up with, but 16 to 16 means right 16 bars. Of course, we mentioned right 16 bars with no me for 16 days straight, and then start writing to a beat.
This is a little bit like learning how to benchpress properly with just the bar before adding weight to it, or learning how to roll your wrist properly before actually putting a basketball in your hands.
Anybody who has learned how to play basketball knows that skill.
In any case, I want you to practice just writing in the steps that we’ve led you up to so far without worrying about a beat. If you are brand new again, if you’re brand new, do not worry if you’ve already started writing, it’s like you can follow everything we’re saying with beats, and the next steps will be discussing beats, but if you’ve never read before, and you’re watching this, just go through the 16 days doing it the way we said,
When I first started, I just wrote with no beat for about two weeks, following the system you suggested.
And then, once I knew I was committed to trying to learn a rap, I moved on to beats. Additionally, part of the reason for doing this is to show yourself that you can commit to writing raps without worrying about things that might overwhelm you, like beats and stuff. Right?
Like I get hit up all the time with people who say, “Oh, I want to learn how to rap. This is my only dream etc.”
And I asked them how many reps they have written in the last two weeks and they were like one, two. Basically, it is not enough to get good. These people are talking to talk and not walking the walk.
So one really good way is to give yourself a 16-day challenge, knock that out and prove to yourself that you’re also going to walk the walk.
And well, just talk the talk and then you can move on.
Number eight is to learn basic flows, learn how to ride a beat very simply, and then increase the complexity of your rhythm in your flow.
After you started writing to the beat, you’re going to need to learn how to choose the best rhythm of words for the flow of each instrumental as you go forward.
I would suggest if you’ve never played an instrument before, you’ve never had any musical training, start off very simply, like just writing very simple flows to these beats and then increasing complexity rather than trying to, which I’ve seen a lot as well.
Rather than trying to start with something, I’m writing this rap.
I’ve been rapping for two months now, trying to compete with M & M on Kamikaze or tinned recon dam, which usually sounds like a jumbled mess when a beginner tries to do that, because they haven’t practiced handling and staying on deep in a simple flow.
So trying to compete with people who have had 20 years and trying to emulate them is just not gon na work.
Now what I’ve done to combat this issue is compiled a wrap flow techniques playlist that I’ll put in the video description where we’re going to count out the simplest flows and show you different flows that you can use with very well-known beats from Kendrick, Lil Wayne, and a bunch of different rappers, and I’ll count them out with you and show you how you can organize and format even as a beginner, different flows.
So check the video description box for that step number nine is wrapped in front of people as soon as possible.
Start wrapping in public, start wrapping for your friends, start wrapping up.
It started until very recently, with the wave of emo rap for most of hip hop history.
It was also required even when they were saying to present some kind of macho image whether or not the artists had it or not. In your case, as an artist, you should have a side of yourself that doesn’t always have to be that way.
But you should have a side of yourself where you present that confident bravado side as a rapper, and you need to practice doing that by delivering your reps in person to other people confidently. Additionally, no matter whether you become a superstar rap artist or not, or you get a regular job down the road, start a family, whatever the confidence building you gain from performing in public, this kind of cool artistic version of public speaking will serve you for the rest of your life.
So it’s all upside by practicing rapping in front of other people.
Now I have a 30 minute video free training on YouTube about how to perform your raps live again. I’ll put that in the video description box below.
And the last step is the streets will tell you this expression comes from my rat mentor that I mentioned before, where he told me Look when you’re ready for the game.
When you’re ready for the big time, the streets will tell me. I don’t need you to tell me. You don’t need to tell yourself. You’ll know because the streets will tell you. I’ve always kept this in the back of my mind because, let’s be honest, people’s reactions are pretty genuine.
They are genuine games of how good you are at reading, much more than whatever we tell ourselves in our minds to try to work ourselves.
Right.
You know, by the way people react to your reading, if you’re ready to move on to the next phase, even if it’s just as a beginner watching this and somebody says, “Oh, that wasn’t completely terrible.
You only have the rabbit for two weeks, and then you’ll go on to beat or on the bigger level where you’re like, Yo, I listen to your album every single day.
You’ll know it’s time for you to get signed and start your own record label.
But the streets will tell you to write about other people’s reactions.
You know, we all know in the back of our heads that people are really messing with us.
We don’t need to convince ourselves, we don’t need to lie to ourselves.
The streets will tell us when it’s time for the next phase of our career.
Alright, so that is today’s video.
Again, be sure to subscribe to notifications.
I really appreciate you watching different sorts of back to basics, back to fundamentals videos in the comments.
I’d like to know what one song is just one track. You’re tracking the artists that inspired you to want to write raps as opposed to just being a listener?
Right.
So I’ll see you in the comments with your answer to that question.
And be sure to visit the video description box for all those free goodies that we hand out all the time here that are wet.
So appreciate you watching the big call. It means rule and I’ll see you on the next one.
Peace.
