The ILP Karaoke Bar

Fuck it. I refuse to do it again. You have no idea how many fuckin times I did this trying to get it right… and every time it turned out different. A muthafucka don’t know how hard it is to write/do a rap until he tries it… and den he knows. If I spent any more time on this thing, my head would’ve exploded.

All I ever wanted was to be able to run that shit like an Eminem or a Snoop Dog, but I caint do it, man. I just caint do it. So fuck you.

vocaroo.com/i/s0UA0Uzie6g2

I actually do know. I recorded about 40 versions of my 2nd battle rap and eventually just gave up posted what I considered to be the least horrible one.

Facing a recorder is a real motherfucker. Singing in the shower syndrome.

Maybe it’s like MF Doom says. The muses decide when it’s on, not you.

Motivation.

One thing about Eminem, I think, one reason it was so on demand for him (also he spent hour upon hour practicing), is that his motivation wasn’t s complicated. Look up his freestyle. “Jacking off in the parking lot.”

What I heard in the one you posted before last was “I’m the best because this.” I’d stick with that.

The fucking recorder. Because I guess the ghost of the audience begins to appear.

This is an issue I’ve been trying to crack for a while. Maybe what Nietzsche called the evil eye.

Yeah, I guess that would be my advice. Let the muses tell you when. But don’t stand them up when they do. Sayn?

One reason my second rap wasn’t good was that I really wasn’t inspired by the context. I did it anyway out of respect for your gesture, I couldn’t punk out. But it has to be some shit worth saying, the muses scoff at talent for talent’s sake.

The first one was “I’m so great.” The second one was “I dunno, this is what I do when I’m bored I guess.” I would rather suggest “I went to jail son, this is what that was.”

It’s gotta burn, I guess.

My best lines so far still have been the ones I just kicked around with Jakob for a couple hours getting stoned. No rules. But that lack of rules created a rapper that still cannot exist. A world has to be created first that will accomodate him.

And along the way I probably will, probably already have, strayed. So fuck it, I’m aiming for producer now.

Maybe PZR failed to take off as a rapper because what Jakob liked wasn’t what PZR liked. He liked the freestyles. Even if just as writting process. I liked when we wrote, swam in the abyss. 90% of it probably sucked, but I can safely say that my four favourite lines in rap were written by myself.

But one thing standing against J in rap, which is a problem you also have, is an avertion to being a fuck up. Remember that time? I was like “zoot is awesome, he’s a fuck up like us,” and you both were straight offended (you much more than Jakob). Rap is made up only of fuck ups. The golden toothed smile.

for myself, the problem is not ‘stage fright’ or anything like that. it’s not a serious enough endeavor such that a failure to do it right would be an embarrassment. the problem for me is finding words to fit the rhythmic meter i have in my head when i hear the beat. i can put a melody of notes over anything in my head… but fitting the melody with words of arranged syllables is a bitch. a rap is like a lead instrument, structurally speaking, but in addition to the physics of the form (proper time, flow, stanza, etc.), there is also conceptual form… which is a whole nuther level. so when you match your words to the lines of notes and figures in your head, you have to create something with semantic and syntactical substance. so there is geometric shape and direction in the meaningful content, as well as the physical content. that’s what makes it difficult. it’d be no problem if you could just go:

buh da pop dop buh ditta
hitta witta pop nopita
de wopita, copita, dah litta

my biggest problem, besides this, is being unable to remember how a particular phrase/paragraph is to be rapped after i write it down. what happens is, i’ll forget how i wanted it to be rapped by the time i get to it on the page, and then have to wing it. an example of this is when i stumbled here:

“the same threads that i get in
the same shit that i hit when”

what you hear is not what i wanted… because i forgot the specific way i had intended to say it, and i barely recovered it.

though i imagine like anything else, if you practice enough, you develop the skill. i’ve been an amateur rapper now for a week. but if i could rap as fast and clearly as the notes come to my mind when i hear a beat, i’d have a hot pink humvee and a summer home in fort lauderdale right now.

You’ve got a point there.

I like this third Zoot rap, precisely because as he says he gets in overs head and is forced to swim in the infinity of choices that a rap that isn’t written to embody its own particular rhythm will present whereby he is forced to reveal his own particular will to flow, his musical character. A few bars have this. Eventually theres the art of creating phrases about which there can’t be any doubt as to how to rap them. Thats not something all rappers do in all their songs, its only the truly good verses where at the same time you’re saying something completely original and it has an inevitable rhythm that didn’t exist before. Thats where the geometry falls into place, only when the form and the content are the same instrument.

This rhyme which I wrote in the cave is where I first found a way to do that in English. I liked the writing as well of course, its just your free styling was opening vast depths to the process.

I get riches
stack bitches
tossing midgets
like DiCaprio, all business

its hard to rap this properly because it only has one correct way.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNAUnVPc_3I[/youtube]

The game is the game.
Now you know.

This vocaroo really fucks up the eq.

rap can be great for what it is, but what it is isn’t great, if that makes any sense to you. as great as a rap may be, it’s still only just a rap. the existence of rap, to me, lies somewhere between a harmless artistic activity and a magnificent travesty expressing one facet of the slow descent of western civilization and culture.

and i wouldn’t be able to not see anyone who attributed so much greatness to rap as being part of this decline… and neither would i be able to explain any of this to someone who did so.

but check this one out. a well written rap to this groove would be epic. who among the ILP rappers shall have the courage to take up the mic? be warned; a song like this belongs only to the illest.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t0Fze6hXd8[/youtube]

Yeah, because Homer was a definite sign of the decline of western culture. :slight_smile:

you need to get these nazis off your back hombre.

Fuck your dumbasss ideology. Praise your artistic abilities.

You don’t need do do anything. But the supremacy of the boringness you become when you’re ideological is just something I don’t like.

Pezer, I must have missed one of your raps. Only heard the one that starts with goddamn, the man came up with some rhymes. Wheres the other one?

On another note, Faust killed Iambiguous. Or had him confess, at least, that he has never believed any of the crap he was writing. For the first time ever, he confessed to having a perspective.
I just gave him the little nudge after Faust had broken his pride.

I gave it a shot.
vocaroo.com/i/s0RCT030DQkJ

Bruh. That was pretty fuckin ill. Lemme talk to J Roc and Killaroo and see if I can get u in.

vocaroo.com/i/s1zEJrvM8r4E

Lol, well shit. Um. It’s a beautiful beat.

I hadn’t noticed the challenge before.

I listened to that Soldier song at least a million times when it came out.

Your challenges are pretty good.

I like the idea of a philosophers entourage, rather than a philosophers crew. Anyway thats what is kind of inevitable. Where a crew is unlikely.

Before you edited the above post, i was going to say I think your not wanting me in your crew is a wise career decision. I’d only disappoint ya. my raps are whack like a half eaten big mac or a Wendy’s double stack with just one patty. They thought they had me, but I noticed there was only one patty, so I got my money back. Yeah it’s like that. But it wouldn’t be for you if you let me in your crew.

Peez, on the other hand, has potential and shows promise. His only problem is, he’s got no rhythm. Lyrics are clever and catchy, but his delivery is too nonchalant and lazy, and he can’t get no flow going, nah mean?

It wasn’t a rejection, but accepting what you both expressed.
Id still prefer to have bunch of crazy philosophers on stage with me though.

Pezer… when we were constantly smoking in the practice building in Montreal he was kicking hard core freestyles that were definitely to the beat. But he needs to get there spontaneously in some ingenious ridiculous way, apparently the structure of it isn’t interesting to him otherwise. Im sure he could do it if he cared to prepare some headphones and a mic.

Look, Pezers first lyrics he posted on my forum, how straightforward they are, how orderly.
Theres really no other way to rap these than to cram them neatly in a the bars of a basic beat.
So he clearly knows what he should be doing.

But when he starts to rap the emotions connected to it are so volcanic that he completely loses interest in the 4x4 and tries for a pentasyncopic 20x5 or some shit. I appreciate that because I am like William Blake in my general attitudes. But yeah without tempo it doesn’t work.