Aha!: Rap

I love those "aha!" moments. The point when something that never quite made sense to you suddenly snaps into clarity. That's one of the best parts about figuring things out by yourself. You get the satisfaction of knowing the answer to something as well as knowing that you arrived at the conclusion yourself.

The past three years have been particularly full of those "aha!" moments. After being thrust into the music world in the spring of 2006 I was inundated with information, and had to slowly wade through it all and make sense of it on my own. Then, gradually as I learned more and more, things I had learned earlier on made so much more sense. And things that I might have passed by before were suddenly relevant and the pieces fit together to make a satisfying picture.

Rap never made sense to me. And that which we do not know is often that which we avoid. I did not understand the point of rhyming over a beat or repetitive loops. The problem was, I was trying to analyse it from the wrong perspective. I was applying my knowledge of and experiences with other kinds of music, which didn't jive.

I don't remember exactly when it was that I understood, but I was struck by the simplicity of the answer and I gained a new appreciation for the genre.

Rapping isn't about the music per se. There is no harmony or melody to speak of because that's not even the point. The endless looping leaves no room for development or change because there isn't supposed to be any. This repetitiveness stems from freestyling, and rappers would have a hard time anticipating their rapping scheme if the beat, tempo or loop kept changing. Imagine trying to improvise over a constantly changing chord progression. If you didn't know what chords were coming up or how long they would last, picking the right notes, arpeggios, chords and rhythms would be very difficult.

Establishing a regular pattern turns it into a group experience, too. Now the audience can anticipate along with the rappers. Part of the enjoyment, then comes from knowing the pattern of the beat, feeling out how the rapper moves along, anticipating the upcoming rhymes/rhythms and then feeling good when you guessed correctly, or being surprised when the outcome is different.

Understanding all this gave me the chance to take a new look at the art and form new opinions. Now that I was comfortable listening to it, I was able to weed through the things I liked and didn't like about it, and I realised that I actually like it a lot. I think rapping, and particularly freestyling is a really impressive skill. I came to realise that it is particular styles that I didn't like. It wasn't the rapping though--it was the content. I didn't like the attitude, the lyrics or all the hype around it that seemed to overshadow the music itself. However, I've come to appreciate what it has to offer now that I know what I'm looking for.