Strength of Simplicity – The Rap Hook
There is a moment of anxiety when developing your flows are when you mumble out your patterns for your rap hook. Maybe you criticize yourself for being too commercial. But why? Someone might say, you’re just trying to appeal to the masses. Ok… thank you.
I am not a sell out. You are not a sell out if you make music for the masses. You just want as many people to hear your music and message.
If someone says your rap hook is too simple… Take it as a compliment.
Hooks and chorus’ in hip hop and music are supposed to be simple. Your audience should be able to hum, sing or rap along easily after a couple listens. You want it to get stuck in their head.
You ever find yourself repeating a section of a verse you heard? Just as you’re going about your daily business. That’s the effect you are going for.
Simplicity = repetition.
2. Repetition and Tempo
When your instrumental is super fast and has a really quick tempo, keep the words simple! Keep the lyrics clean, and try not to shove a bunch of really complex words onto the beat. It’s jarring.
That’s why there are so many na-na-na’s and even Eminem in Rap God when he does the “shuma luma i dun wanna” blah blah blah. It just flows with the music and the words aren’t super hard to say. Which means dumbing down your lyrics and rhymes for the sake of repetition and tempo for your rap hooks.
Alternatively, if the chorus tempo is super slow, then you can amp up the complexity of your lyrics. A really good example of this is when D Smoke rips a sick, fast, complex verse on Rhythm + Flow on Netflix. The beat is very slow, and he adds the contrast by spitting faster. Keep this in mind for hooks as well.
The reason for this is because the tempo is slower, and listeners can DIGEST your words.
3. Hooking The Listener
The lifeblood of a song is the hook.
I know this isn’t always true in hip hop. Though the feel of the song is displayed in the hook. Even if someone has the sickest verse ever, if the hook sucks, you won’t listen again. Maybe you’ll skip the hook and listen to the verse. I’ve done that with tons of Hopsin songs haha.
You definitely don’t have to open your song with a hook. Especially in rap.
A hook is often based on a sound. Like EPMD “da joint” – The hook is “da da dAH dAH dAH, dats da joint”
Or Brother Ali and the song “Blah blah blah”. The good thing about this is that the mumble rapping technique is probably one of the best ways to come up with a rap hook.
- A melody that gets stuck in ear your after one listen
One example for me that has really stuck in my head is Prof’s song “blank” – Freak I can’t remember I will replace this later. I’m on a roll right now. If I forget to replace this and you are currently reading this, I’m sorry. I have a terrible memory and you should let me know haha.
- Lyrics that move the story ahead
4. Tugging At Emotions
Your chorus should be connected to SENSES. If you were to take a phrase like “I should do my laundry” or “It’s time to put gas in the car” and then make your hook around that… I don’t think you’ll be at the top of the Rap Caviar playlist anytime soon. For real.
It doesn’t matter what emotion you are tugging at. As long as that emotion can resonate and really affect the people who listen to it.
“Oh My” by Sweatshop Union is a great example of this. They capture the struggles of everyday life, hustling, and having to work just to make ends meet. But they don’t say those words. Imagine that rap hook?
“I’m just struggling everyday/
Hustling in life,
Gotta work to make ends meet
Yaya
No.
[Hook](Oh my) oh, just trying to get by, lord I’m
(So tired) fighting to get my, trying to get my
(Low ride) though it ain’t for me lately, it don’t faze me
(Alright) cause I make money, money don’t make me
I have to say that this looks so simple. But it’s sung in an emotional and powerful way. It has stuck in my mind my entire life since I heard. It resonated with me. This is a much more creative way to get the point across.
The lyrics of your hook should be vivid and powerful. Use words that create a feeling.
Take a second to think of some of your favourite hooks ever. Could be Travis Scott, he’s got some crazy good hooks, or whoever. But just some of the first ones that come to mind. What is it about those words or melodies that make you remember it?
5. How To Write A Rap Hook
Here are some of the common exercises and things you can do to develop your chorus and hook writing ability.
Awareness
Try thinking in hook form first. As a practice technique, go listen to the top songs on your favourite Spotify playlist. Ignore everything except the hook. Now after that, move to a different genre. Maybe R&B or Alt Rock. Keep switching through the songs and only listening to the chorus.
If you do this all the time, maybe once a day. You will develop the awareness and completely remove your rambling, garbage hooks. Now analyze them. How many words? How many syllables in each line? How often are things being repeated? Write those down. Now pinpoint exactly what it is that catches your ear about the hook. Is it a certain word or lyric? Or is it the melody?
Actually Test Your Hooks
Do it. Sing it. Rap it without any instrumental background. If you do this with the hooks you’ve heard, you will see that most hooks don’t even need a musical background to be good. Crazy, right? No.
One of the biggest mistakes I see from young rappers is thinking like this… “It’s not PERFECT now, but after the engineer gets ahold of it and adds some autotune, and all the gadgets, it will sound sick”
I get it, autotune can sound good for sure. But the problem is in the thought process. If you lean on the production for it to sound good, the hook is probably not that good. And it definitely won’t sound good live, or when your fans sing it back.
Sing the hooks you’ve heard without backing yourself up on an instrument. Get a
sense of how simple they are and how little they depend on chords and arrangements. If it doesn’t work without some sort of modification, then rewrite it.
Don’t Clash With Your Verse
The hook and the verse of your song should never be so similar that people can’t tell where the verse starts and hook ends. They should completely contrast one another. Fast verse, slow rap hook and so on. Make sure that the rhythms are different and syllable counts are different and so on.
Make sure there’s a variety in the story, lyrics and melody in order to make sure your song doesn’t get boring.
