Freestyle rapping can be overwhelming at first, but following these easy steps will get you to the mic in no time.
Step
Part 1 of 3: Singing Your First Verse
Step 1. Listen to lots of freestyles
Freestyle raps that aren't written straight from the dome may be rougher and less polished than songs you've ever heard, but they can also be more unpredictable and overwhelming. Freestyle has its own flavor and listening to freestyles from other rappers is a good way to learn a trick or method from an experienced one.
- Check out live fights or hip-hop freestyle competitions if your city offers them. Go and listen. It can also be a good way to meet poets who provide aspirations and build connections.
- YouTube is a great source for videos of freestyle fights from all eras. Everything from rap Notorious B. I. G. on street corners at 17 to classic Eminem fights to small groups from underground freestyle rappers to new Kanye West songs is good research.
Step 2. Start with one tap
Take a beat without any words online or repeat an instrumental of a song you like on YouTube, and let it play for some time. Get a feel for the beat. If you've got the verse already written, start there, or try writing a new verse when you hear a beat. Repeat over and over until you've started to get a feel for the rhythm of the song and how your flow fits into the beat. Don't worry if you miss the beat the first time.
- Start with the initial/downbeat beat. Most rap music is written in the traditional four-four, also known as Common Time. This means all sizes will have a strong initial beat initially: ONE-two-three-four-ONE-two-three-four. Start with this beat.
- Often times, there will be an empty space on the song while the rapper is waiting to enter. If you don't have access to instrumental tracks or YouTube, you can use the free space for practice.
Step 3. Improvisation
Once you've got a feel for the beat and have mastered your lyrics, take a tentative step toward freestyle. Repeat a line you've already written but make yourself come up with a new verse for the second part of the verse.
Don't worry if what you say doesn't make sense the first time. You're trying to get a feel for the beat and have your mind rhyming at the same time. No one heard either
Step 4. Stop thinking
If you think too much about your next line you will make a mistake and stumble on the line you are singing. Practice letting your thoughts flow freely from one thought to the next. The best freestylers are relaxed and comfortable with the beats they are working on. If this doesn't work, don't try and force it. Listen to the beats and try to write a few verses to get started, or try another beat.
Lock yourself in your room or in your garage. No one needs to hear your practice if you don't want them to. Spending a few hours alone will ensure that your debut for listeners will be even more spectacular
Step 5. Keep it flowing
Even if you make mistakes, train yourself to keep going. If you stutter at a word or two, say something like, "Did I stutter? My singing should be smooth as butter." Rap is like comedy: timing is everything.
Experienced freestylers often have a spare row, as a fire extinguisher in a red box mounted on a rap wall and only used in emergencies. This is a line or phrase you use when you can't think of anything else but need some time to suddenly change lines. The better you are at freestyling, the fewer phrases form. Very good freestylers will use one-syllable filler lines such as "Yo" or "Actually". In the end, your spare filler line will be something you can start saying without knowing it
Part 2 of 3: Building Your Freestyle
Step 1. Change your opening row to core row
The best way to increase the speed of your stream and improve your freestyle playing is to reverse the way you rap. If you've been practicing by starting a line you've already written and then going from there improvising, get yourself started with a new line and work your way up to a line you've already written and you know it's good.
This is where the rhyme group will form you. If you have a particularly good core line, practice rhyming as many different things as you can. Practicing around those lines will ensure you have lots of different options when you improvise next
Step 2. Play with words
At first, it will make more sense to freestyle with hard-ending rhymes like "bear" and "chair," but eventually the words start to get stale and lead you to weird rhymes.
- Slanted rhymes distribute consonant sounds without having to divide vowels directly. "Vowel" and "bowl", for example, are italics.
- The use of words with similar vowel sounds and similar word beginnings is the way in which vowels and consonants, consecutively, are repeated in one line. Edgar Allan Poe in his famous poem "The Raven," uses both at once: "the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" repeats the "s" sound and the "ur" sound.
Step 3. Develop figures of speech
Like Cassidy's line of "Goin' platinum like Sisqo hair" or Raekwon's line of "I get deep like a baby seal," the unexpected and creative tropes of comparing one thing to another are the cornerstone of freestyle hip-hop and poetry.
In a notebook, think of different endings to make an allusion. Fill several pages with "like a _" and experiment with combining all the tropes in one line: "My flow is cold / like a rainstorm" or "My flow is cold / like a sperm whale" leaves a very different impression. You may be surprised yourself
Step 4. Be yourself
Unless you're Rick Ross, it's going to be hard to make a great claim to your global cocaine-trafficking empire if you're a teenager from the suburbs. Share what you know and be honest. The most important thing (and what other freestylers will know) is when your skills are underpinned by perspective and honesty.
While this is a good way to develop and learn, repeating lines or other rapper styles is considered very taboo in the freestyle world, and should be discarded as soon as you feel comfortable
Step 5. Freestyle in front of some friends
When you're relatively comfortable, invite understanding friends to watch and critique your abilities. This will help you get used to freestyle in front of a large crowd and they can provide input and encouragement.
- Incorporating your audience into the fun atmosphere by having someone pick a beat for you to start rapping will set you up for a possible competition or fight if you're interested in trying. You can also ask a friend to pick up a topic, or an object in the room, or a word and shout out loud. Start freestyle about the topic, item, or word. This forces you to stay fully focused because your friends are directing where your freestyle is going.
- If you have friends who like to freestyle too, swap lyrics. When one loses its groove, the other returns it. Try to start freestyle for a moment when they stop and do it on the same topic or rhyme scheme. If you build a rhythm together, you can create a group.
Part 3 of 3: Building Vocabulary
Step 1. Write
The more you write rap and rhyme, the more rap and verse you will know well. As you write rhymes, practice to come up with several variations on words that rhyme together. This group of verses will help you when you start freestyle, as you will be able to think things through quickly if you have used these verses before.
- Try different exercises, such as taking five words at random and combining them into a rhyming structure of several lines.
- Don't worry if what you wrote isn't "rap." Keep the pen moving. Building good habits of journaling and writing will keep your mind disciplined with words and thoughts when it comes to composition, things you'll need to create quickly if you want to freestyle.
Step 2. Reading
If you wish to freestyle, words will be your medium. Just as painters use paint and sculptors use clay, rappers use words, so you need to gather as many common words as you can so you can use them in your poetry. Reading books, comics, online articles, and magazines of a wide variety is the best way to do this.
Read the rapper's biography. You can dive into the water by reading about hip-hop while developing your vocabulary together
Step 3. Have a poetry dictionary
It will become your best friend in the world very soon. Look to the verse dictionary less as a crutch and more as a creative resource. It's not cheating to look at the words of the rhyme when you're in the middle of writing a rhyme, because it might give you a little leeway that you never thought about before.
Good and inexpensive dictionaries and encyclopedias are good resources too. Your verse will become more interesting as more variations of the word are created
Step 4. Actively learn new words
The SAT or GRE study guide is a good source of vocabulary. Look for words in a rap song that you don't recognize and learn what they mean. Hip-hop often contains a lot of jargon, using regional words, locations, and phrases, so it can be helpful to check online. Chef Keef's "Love Sosa" makes no sense when you think it's about baseball players.
Try sticking small note cards with meanings of new words around your house. You can learn a new word while making breakfast or brushing your teeth if you have note cards glued to the kitchen and bathroom walls
Tips
- Start mastering shorter, simpler verses. Remember, have a good flow but mediocre rhymes are better than shattered streams and good rhymes! This means you have to start strumming words that have common sounds like "it", "at", "water", and so on.
- Another good time to practice is when you're, for example, waiting at the dentist, or walking home from school, or on the bus, and it's even better if you bring your cell phone to write your rap if you're too shy to take notes in advance. general because it will look like you are sending a short message.
- Keep practicing every day. Do not give up. If you keep practicing you will become a fantastic rapper.
- Confidence is everything. Just be yourself and rap about what you liked the first time.
- Explore your home, and see things in new and exciting ways. This might inspire you to write lyrics.
- If you can't think of anything start with something you read: "wikihow, wow, who doesn't need advice right now, I suck at rap so I'll give it a try"
