How To Freestyle Intro
Hello everybody, in this post we’re going to learn to freestyle rap in 3 steps. I go by Edison at Rap Authority and I’ve been freestyling for seventeen years. After going through these 3 easy steps, you will kick dope rhymes off the top of the head.Quick Overview Of The Process
Step one
Step one is going to be about counting beats with stressed syllables. That’s the first step you need to learn, it’s one of the most overlooked steps in everything hip-hop. To be able to freestyle rap on beat, you need to be able to count beats with stressed syllables. And understand the placement of rhymes to keep the structure.Every rule is meant to be broken. You will learn to break the structure on purpose and come back to it afterwards. You should stay close to the skeleton of the beat. Because if you veer off, it can turn into something that’s not hip hop. It can turn into jazz or something, and we want to make sure that we have that structure.
Step Two
Step two is the no rhyme method. This is something that helps you get over your fear and anxiety of having a filter. So that you say what you want to say, or say what comes to mind. We need to be able to speak our thoughts unfiltered, being able to let go of your words is huge freestyling. In order to help you do this, the no rhyme method is perfect, say whatever comes up.Step Three
Step three is the rhyme helper method. Find an instrumental rap beat (You can get 5 free beats here from LegionBeats
) you like. Play it. Now that you’ve gotten rid of the filter, you can start to think about rhyming in your freestyle raps. This is how I learned, and I’ve taught many other people as well.
Step number three is going to rhymezone.com or any rhyme dictionary, but I recommend rhymezone.com. Because it’s good for near and slant rhymes. Type in a random word, for example, “awesome”.
How To Freestyle Rap: Step 1
Okay let’s get into the freestyle rap 3 steps. I am super excited to be getting into this because I think it’s going to be super helpful to a lot of people. I hope it does help someone fall in love with the art of hip hop. As a step one, we’re going to be focusing on how to count beats with stressed syllables. The first thing you need to know is to count beats. When I’m talking about beats, I’m not talking about the actual instrumental music playing. I’m talking about a measure of time. That’s all it beat is. There are 4 beats, consecutively repeating over and over again in Hip-Hop. Kind of like dance, kind of like a lot of things, it’s all mathematical. We use numbers like 1 2 3 4 to classify those four beats. Those four beats make up a bar.What is a bar in rap? When you hear ‘bar’ in Hip Hop, all that means is the amount of time it takes those 4 beats to play.
One bar is equal to four beats. The speed of how fast or slow those four beats go will dictate the pace and tempo of the music. The consistent and repetitive space between those beats is what we call rhythm. We measure this in BPM (Beats per minute). If you think of techno pump-up music that’s fast-paced, it’s going to have more beats per minute than a slow song.Recognizing Drum Patterns
Producers place drum sounds on top, or around the 1-2-3-4 beats. A hip hop sound has two unique drums that you almost always hear in every hip-hop song. That’s going to be a kick and a snare. The kick drum sound is more of a thud, and has a lower pitch. The snare is more of a clap, and has a higher pitch. Like. That boom bap. That’s where boom-bap comes from. The kick is the BOOM, and the snare is the BAP. Most rap keeps the boom and the bap as the base and skeleton of the beat. Unless it’s trap. A kick on the one and the three beats and you almost always hear a snare on the 2 and the 4 beats. Kick snare kick snare kick snare kick snare, and that’s the structure of hip-hop, that’s how it works. One-two-three-four one-two-three-four. There’s going to be different variations of that but that’s the skeleton, that’s all you need to know to get started. The producer’s going to lace in different types of drum sounds in between the beats. But that is what hip-hop is, one line is essentially one bar.Where do you put your rhymes?
You’re going to place your rhymes on the four beat at the end of the line.Well that’s not entirely true. In rap, there is a ton of nuance. There are different theories, but rules get broken and sound amazing. Rappers like Andre 3000 don’t give a shit about rhyming on the 4th beat. The problem is beginners don’t understand the basic structure of where hip-hop started. The basic structure. And that’s when you hear garbage freestyle raps that miss the beat. My point is that rhymes are like periods. The end of a line, the end of a bar, the end of an idea. It should be what gives your freestyle rap structure. The rhyme will not always land on a snare, not always. But it’s mostly going to land on the snare. 😉 – I know, right? Stay with me.. One-two-three-four one-two-three-four one-two-three-four one-two-three-four. It’s silly to think that the basis of such a pure art form is counting to 4 on time. But it’s true. Producers will place different sounds in-between and try different styles of snares, different styles of kicks. All you need to do to distinguish is where the one and the two and the three and the four go. If you can count to four, then you got it on lock. A great way to practice is to put on instrumentals and find the beat.Stressed And Unstressed Syllables
We need to understand how to stress syllables on top of beats. This will maintain the flow of our words. Words need to go on top of the beat in order to make rhythm. Let’s look at the word “Hater” There are two syllables in the word: “HAY-ter” In the English language (CAN) – the emphasis is always on the first syllable of this word “hater”. And there is an unstressed syllable as the second. It would sound weird if you say “hey-TER” and put the emphasis on the second part of the word. Whenever anyone speaks, there is a natural mix of stressed and unstressed syllables. This is a great resource to learn more.
Certain phrases like:
Killin me softly
The early bird catches the worm
Dime a dozen
The contrast between stressing and unstressing certain parts of words and phrases creates natural rhythm. That’s how rhythm works.
So, you know how to find the 1-2-3-4 beats.
In order to “be on beat” when freestyle rapping:
All you need to do is land the stressed syllable on each 1-2-3-4 of the beat.
I put myself in quotes – ego
Freestyle Rap Step 2
Step number two is going to be the no rhyme method of freestyle rap. So now that you know how to count beats and bars in your head we’re going to switch over to not rhyming at all. This is going to be a great exercise for you to just practice getting those unfiltered thoughts out. It’s super important to be able to do this exercise to freestyle rap to the best of your ability. I’m going to leave you with a one-minute drill that you are going to practice. It’s super simple and I want you guys to do this just yourselves. Make sure nobody’s around to hear the gibberish that comes out and just give it a shot.The goal is to go for 1 minute.
Talk about whatever you want, whatever comes to mind, and I have a couple tips for what happens if you’re starting to struggle. It’s going to sound like trash, it’s not going to sound very rhythmic, it’s going to sound really offbeat. But just try it.The drill is to talk over a beat for 1 minute straight without stopping. Just keep going and talk about anything and everything that comes up.
The biggest thing I hear is “I can’t think of anything to say when I freestyle rap”. Talk about the things around you, or just use this list of random things below:- Purple Cows
- Sports
- Indiana Jones
- Lazy
- Where you want to travel
- Something happy
- What are you angry about?
- Play-doh
- Depression
- Shoes
- What pisses you off?
Just change the results to 999.
After a while it does become habit. As you practice you start progressing naturally. This also helps so you can get out of the habit of repeating yourself when kicking a free.
The goal is to go one full minute without stopping
Freestyle Rap Step 3
Now that we have that established how to count beats, we’re going to move into step number three. Hopefully it wasn’t too bad for you when you did step number two. I know it was for me that’s for sure. Step number three is going to help you kick some dope raps. This is the rhyme helper method, and this is what’s going to help you freestyle rap the most. Go to rhymezone.com – this is my favorite rhyme dictionary.
Okay this is how RhymeZone looks, I’m going to get you to go into the blank area and type in one of these words.
- Rapper
- Token
- Lazy
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