Friday 15 November 2013

A rap song.



This week's blog topic seems to be as open-ended as that of last week, it so happens that I was just listening to an old school rap song, I believe this would make for an interesting artifact to study. There are many facets to rap song, and various interpretations can often be given by different people to the meaning of a song or even a single rhyme within it. Contrary to popular belief, rap can often be a source of positive inspiration (Lockhart, 2001), as such, the first thing I would pay attention to when studying a song would be the nature of the message behind it. Rhythm is an important factor in music so I would ask myself is this a song for listening? dancing? or both? I would then consider audiences, can the song be listened to by people of all ages? Then I would pay attention to how the rhymes are put together, do the lyrics rhyme? How much of the delivery is on point with the beat? Is the author painting a picture? Can I visualize the story and relate to the lyrics? Was this written or improvised? How catchy is the hook? Is it easy to remember?


Lockhart, V. D. (2001, Dec 12). Rap song takes kids to new levels.

1 comment:

  1. Hey Sam, I just wanted to comment that I think this was a really interesting choice of artifact. As someone that appreciates rap music and its origins as well how pervasive its appeal is, a rap song is definitely interesting medium of information transmission (given rhyming patterns, autobiographical storytelling, use of samples), if you will, that definitely warrants more study in an academic setting. I'm going to dig those papers up.

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