\.2 tRAP

Amen.

The quality of your composition is not to be judged.

The quality of YOUR composition is not to be judged.

I can’t stress that enough.  So don’t be afraid to share.  I suppose it’s not always necessarily your fear of judgement that you may not share but I always want to encourage anyone to give me that opportunity to listen. 

This brings us to…

What?

What do we do with what we write?

Well, you don’t need to do anything.  Your work should be entirely for your own satisfaction, and to my brothers and sisters, it should be nothing short of Praise and Glory unto Him, Truth.  So please, no blasphemy.  Whatever you write, whatever is in your notebook doesn’t need to be performed or recorded.  You are an artist regardless.

“Come get your Kool On, stars are made to shine”

             - The Roots featuring Truck North & Greg Porn, in the album Undun

With that said, I can’t say it doesn’t leave an unsatisfied feeling in my heart whenever I encounter true talent just not motivated enough to share.  When you record you have to understand the power of that MP3, the potential weight it can carry.  The beauty of technology today is that recording has become so easy and at any given time or place you can probably record whether it be with your laptop, phone or whatever.

Recording doesn’t always mean you have to put it out to the world, remember that don’t forget it.  90% of what I record never makes it onto the net and is either archived in my HD or is deleted the moment after I record or the day after.  Recording helps build you as a performer as well as writer.

Perspectives.  Ever record yourself sing?  My first experience was horrific.  My adolescent tone-deaf-self drew blood from my ears the moment I heard my voice for the first time in a recording.  Our bodies work in weird ways we cant explain, especially our ears.  I was so surprised listening to myself for the first time and realized that what I thought I heard come out of my mouth was actually totally different from what I had imagined.  What does this mean?  Basically, your mind has a way of making you sound totally different from what others hear.  Recording yourself is sort of like giving you the opportunity to be your own audience, the opportunity to pick out certain things about your singing/rapping that you need to work on.  You will see huge improvement, I promise.  It takes time, it took me years to change even the littlest things about my voice that I didn’t like and I’m still working on it but don’t let that discourage you.  It took me 6 years until someone noticed my work, not saying that I write for attention but who doesn’t like a bit of attention, yeah?

Quick note on technical stuff.

You don’t need an expensive condenser mic or jacked up software like $600 DAWs.  That’s stupid.  Got a Macbook? Use Garageband, and the mic built into the Macbook.  I’ve been through a bunch of DAWs but found Cockos Reapers to be the most comfortable (what I use now).

What I Use?

- Blue Yeti

- Cockos Reaper

- Basement

- Asus N53S

As for the “instructional” part of this two-part post I think I’m just about done.  It starts with a pen and paper, it’s up to you where you want to go from there.  The moment you find yourself learning more about rap on your own you will realize that there are so many things I haven’t touched upon.  Some things you have to learn on your own.  There are a couple of things I really wanted to write about but I don’t know if it really fits into this post (Hip-Hop, What rap was and has become, Rap artists, Rap race, and so much more), so I will save those for later maybe.

I’m still recording and hope to come out with a new cover track soon but been busy focusing on writing and preoccupied playing with spoken word.  Learning so many things these days and realized I lack performance and spoken word is just that.  Still a baby.

Word.

"Now keep in mind that I’m an artist and I’m sensitive about my shit."

"We are so caught up in what we visualize, the ojos, most concerned of the “Oh Hoes” instead of the no-no’s. Don’t act like you don’t know.//"

"I’ll create obscenities with dream-like scenes just to show you that there’s more to me than Creatine and Power Cleans.//"