Book of Rhymes by Adam Bradley Page B

try to read a rhyme in the same way we would a literary verse—that is, with our minds attuned to the metrical clues imbedded in the lines themselves—we are likely only to approximate the MC’s actual performance; rappers, far more frequently than literary poets, accentuate unusual syllables in their verses. Consider the following example from the opening lines of Jay-Z’s 1998 hit “Can I Get A. . . .” Keep in mind that Jay-Z is generally considered to have a conversational flow, one that falls comfortably into conventional speech rhythms.
However, when presented with a beat that challenges his natural cadence, Jay-Z responds by crafting a flow that emulates the track’s pulsating tempo.
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    Can I hit it in the morning
without giving you half of my dough
and even worse if I was broke would you want me?
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    Without having heard the beat or Jay-Z’s idiosyncratic flow, one would be hopelessly lost in discerning the precise pattern of accented syllables. One likely could not, for instance, discern the following unusual stresses that Jay-Z gives to his performance:
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    Can I hit it in the MOR ning
without giving you half of my dough
and even worse if I was broke would you WANT me?
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    By exaggerating the penultimate syllables in the first and third lines, he not only achieves a distinctive rhythm but actually creates the illusion of a rhyme where no rhyme exists (“morning” and “want me”). This is only possible in oral expression; it depends upon the interrelatedness of two spoken words and the relation of that same pair of words to the beat. For a rapper whose style is normally distinguished by its conversational quality, such self-conscious artifice is a testament to his rhythmic versatility—or, as Jigga himself might say, to his ability to switch up his flow.
    It is worth emphasizing again that both a rapper’s ability to fashion a rhythm pattern and to depart from that pattern are equally important to a rapper’s flow. Both of these factors
are ultimately conditioned by the beat’s tempo and the variety of musical elements on the track. This is the reason that rap songs are almost always produced with a rapper writing rhymes to a beat rather than with a producer making a beat to a rapper’s lyrics. The rhythm of the human voice is adaptable in ways the beat is not; a slight slip-up in the voice is usually of little consequence, while in the beat the results can be disastrous.
    When a rapper’s flow is fully realized, it forges a distinctive rhythmic identity that is governed both by poetic and musical laws. There is a tendency to associate flow almost exclusively with the smooth, liquid rhythms of MCs like Big Daddy Kane or LL Cool J. Flow includes the idea of effortlessness, of not struggling against the beat but working within it to accentuate the rhythm in human tones. Sometimes MCs’ flows can so dominate their styles that they overshadow other elements of craft. For instance, Black Thought, the prodigious lyricist for the Roots, has a powerfully rhythmic flow that marks his signature rhyme style. Set within the complex soundscapes offered up by the rest of the group, Black Thought’s liquid flow at times nearly washes away his meaning.
    Could it be, then, that a rapper’s flow could be too smooth? Could flow potentially compromise poetic complexity in rhyme, wordplay, or other elements of style? In an insightful interview with The Guardian, British rapper the Streets makes a reasonable case for the potential excesses of flow. “What you find with a lot of rappers is they work out their flow—the rhythm to their words—and the better they get, the more tidy the flow becomes, until everything has to fit in, the same way it would with a poem,” he argues. “But I
tend to think that if it all gets too tidy, the words don’t really stick in your mind when you hear them—the smoothness