I am making my students write raps and I wrote one too

The hardest songwriting assignment I’m giving to the NYU Pop Music Practicum is to write and record a short original rap verse. The students come from classical, jazz and musical theater backgrounds, and while many of them enjoy listening to rap, almost none have tried making it. So we are all outside of our comfort zones.

Students have the option to write their verses from scratch, or to use existing verses as a template–Toni Blackman recommends this one and this one. They can rhyme over an existing instrumental or create their own beats, but they are not allowed to rap unaccompanied, because I don’t want them doing slam poetry. There is nothing wrong with slam poetry, but the purpose of this assignment is to experience the joy and terror of trying to ride a beat.

I thought it would be only fair if I did the assignment too. Here’s what I came up with.

Here are the lyrics:

I’m here at NYU Steinhardt, teaching music as a fine art
Teaching teachers how to be teachers, how to reach us
We are broke as a joke but we stay woke
You don’t have to be a worrier, be a warrior
Knock down the barriers, stop the nefarious lies
Let’s build relationships, not manipulationships
Let’s not be afraid to be a little ridiculous

I recorded over the Funky Drummer beat, and then put in samples of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 prelude. I had watched Hamilton on Disney+ several times in the week leading up to it, and the voice of Lin-Manuel Miranda was loud in my head as I was writing, encouraging my nerdiest wordplay. After some initial hesitation, I had a great time coming up with the rhymes; I wrote most of them on my phone while walking around my neighborhood. I didn’t plan out the rhythms in much detail, I figured I would just work them out in real time while recording. As a result, my flow is choppy and unstructured. If I were to turn this into a “real” song, I’d put in some quality time adding and removing syllables to get the lines to have more metrical logic to them.

I am not the right person to be teaching rap, which is why I’m bringing Toni herself in to guest-lecture this week. The main thing I have to contribute is the perspective of a white outsider who is making a good-faith effort to represent a culture that is not my own. I am strongly convinced that my students need to experience hip-hop from the perspective of creators. White people shouldn’t do rap covers, and passive listening isn’t enough. I want to believe that it’s okay if we rap in our own voices from our own perspectives, provided that we do so with love and respect for the medium, and for the culture that gave rise to it. I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.