Essential questions

• How is the voice another instrument for a beat?
  • How are adlibs and background vocals essential to the final sound of a song?
•  What makes a rapper a good lyricist?
• What has led to the split in the rap community between lyrical and melodic rap
• How is melodic rap changing the way we view rap music?
• How important is a rapper’s lyrical ability to a song?
• What makes a good rap album?
  • Features?
  • Melodies?
  • Punchlines?
  • Creating “wow” moments
  • The beats?
  • Samples?
• Sound poetry

• Skat singing
• Beat Boxing
• Comfort or question
  • Initially, I was going to do my project on this
  • Rap is what I truly want to spend this time on since I would spend the rest of my life on chemistry
  • Admit you were trying to game the system

Why these essential questions matter to me

I feel like there are a lot of misconceptions about rap music, and it’s tied to really weird stereotypes. I think many people may be closed-minded to new rap because it “ruined rap music”. I really want to create my own understanding of what music is in terms of rap to understand it better myself. I also really love music and I want to deconstruct music to somewhat understand how much time and effort is put into making all the pieces of a puzzle fit together.

What you see yourself doing during the experiential portion of the project to address these questions

In my time at LREI, I feel like I’ve grown a lot in character as well as in taste. I have gone from artists like Lil Pump and Xxxtentacion to Kendrick Lamar and J Cole. This has led me down a road of questioning how these two very different art styles can be considered one and the same. I begin to question what the true essence of rap really is? I will be studying different forms of rap music from lyrical to melodic to mumble rap and analyzing the different ingredients to each song. What about a beat in melodic and lyrical is the same? What about melodic and mumble features are the same? How are samples such an important part of rap music? I want to truly dissect the sounds themselves and understand them on a truer level. After this investigation, I want to see if I can apply what I learned to make a rap song that truly encompasses the essence of rap music.

The feasibility of what you see yourself doing (i.e., is what I want to do actually doable and if it is not doable how can I refine my idea so that it is doable?).

I believe that this is very feasible, for the sole purpose of it being majority research and listening to music. The production of it may cost a little for a program, but it’s not anything beyond a monthly subscription to software called soundtrap. I may also require a subscription to Spotify, but all things considered, it would total around $20ish.