“10 From 11” Song by Song - “Prove It”
I chose 10 beats on the same night and ended up using them all over the course of 10 days for the album “10 From 11”. This beat I ended up using early on. I think that I’d finished 2 or 3 or 4 songs in the days prior to this one, all in a typical verse, chorus, verse structure, so I wanted to switch it up and just rhyme a bunch.
”Money where your mouth is time, if the bars aren’t a problem” - The bar says it right there. There are a lot of nice emcees out there. I know it. I’ve met a bunch, I’ve found a ton more online, and I’ve heard enough to know that the talent pool has no bounds. So yeah. If you’re gunna be a rapper, get to rapping, this isn’t that tough and there’s plenty to say, now as always. Some guys do release a lot of music. A lot don’t. Shit, I understand, it’s costly, and time consuming, and life gets crazy. I’ve stepped away too. Some think it’s less important to release music than to be out and about and “active in the community.” That’s probably valid too. Whatever. Those nuances don’t have the same impact for a lyric though. Sometimes you gotta sacrifice some sensibility to add some weight.
The line later on about how “this is as close to freestyling as I actually do,” was freestyled on the fly as I made shit up after running out of written lyrics. I think I wrote a chunk of this song and then just jumped in the booth, recorded that written part, and kept freestyling a few lines before I fucked things up. That’s when you stop the recording, go back, and continue a new recording from where you left off. You rhyme along with the last few words you said so it sounds smoother and then carry on. You can do it with written bars, of course, or you can do it freestyling a few bars at a time. I saw a video of Lil Wayne doing this way back in the day, and realized that I’d been duped with the “Lil Wayne freestyles all his songs” narrative, even though it wasn’t fully a lie. Dudes engineer punches like a boxer. Wayne probably never wrote anything down, but he wasn’t freestyling entire songs at one time either. It’s a studio process.
The technique, for anyone who’s never recorded vocals before, is referred to as “punching in”. Depending who you talk to it’s a taboo in rap. Some feel a “real emcee” is expected to be able to practice breath control and memorize tongue twisters to the point where they should be able to do their verses in one take, just like they would live on stage. Being able to rap a verse live is undoubtedly a talent that we all should try to achieve as emcees. No denying that. I love live shows, and I love rapping so hard I’m dripping sweat by the end of a show. When it’s live and I’m in front of a crowd, I don’t just hype myself while the DJ plays the full song behind me, I rap my bars word for word over top of the instrumental. In my opinion, yeah, live, you better be able to rap your verses. I don’t really understand what we’re doing here if you can’t.
In studio, as long as you get a finished song that sounds good, I don’t really care how you end up there.
Somewhere between authentic freestyles and preconceived writtens, a studio setup allows an emcee to deliver in some grey area between the two, and that’s what I was doing here for most of this song. Was I planning the lines? The first one coming off of whatever the last line was, yeah sure, but then I’d keep freestyling a few more bars until I said something I could improve on. It’s the kind of switch you throw when you’re just trying to have some fun and finish a song off but don’t have anything in particular that needs to be expressed. I’ve done it before, but not really with the intention of releasing it to the world.
Middling somewhere between freestyles and fully orchestrated, well rehearsed masterpieces is a good way to get some of that face slapping conversational value that you might not get from overly technical, over thought, perfectly constructed, multi-syllable written rhyme schemes. If you go too far into obsessing about written perfection you can end up creating something that isn’t organic feeling enough, so blending writing and freestyling sometimes feels like a good compromise.
Legends are whispered about which golden era emcees were one take wonders who could step into the booth, say their rhyme flawlessly the first time, and leave the engineer to finish the mix. The reality of most music that we hear in any commercial capacity isn’t that. Artists go into studio to make things sound as good as they can, whether it takes more than a couple tries or not. Some would definitely be at the far end of the spectrum compared to a freestyle, with a ton of planning and multiple sessions allowing for analysis and rethinking of songs as they evolve, making edits along the way. I enjoy that type of work flow too, but “10 From 11” was intentionally rushed. I wanted to see what I could make in a time span when I could dedicate every thought to the album, no distractions.
It’s not like I’m saying I could freestyle a song and improvise it start to finish and be this intricate with it. If I’m forced to genuinely freestyle, I can, but I’m not going to come with many bars with deep meaning or double entendres or metaphors or slick wordplay a lot of the time. I like freestyling for audiences that know my work already, not as an introduction. If I have to rap live on a radio show or something, chances are good I’ll opt to kick a written and sound like I know what I’m doing rather than risking tripping on my words and making a bad first impression that means no one ever will check the rest. There’s always those miracle moments where you manage to say the illest shit ever off the top of the head, but speaking in generalizations, emcees I know, even the guys who are freestyle beasts who practice all the time and gladly do live-action stream of thought improvisation on stage, are better when they write. I think that only makes sense. No one goes up to a painter and says “bust a water color Mr. Draw” (Thats a Mos Def quote from a documentary called “Freestyle”), but as soon as anyone hears they’re in the presence of a rapper they want to make sure you’re able to think of something really quick that rhymes with the color of their shirt or figure out a way to rhyme with a phrase beside you on the wall, or something else you can see as you look around. Just to prove you’re really Mr Rap Man. I mean it’s impressive or whatever, it’s just not really the same thing as songwriting.
Anyway. Now I’ve thought more while I wrote this than I did making the song.
Stay Up.
