If you’re a seasoned Hip-Hop listener, this is not for you. This is for your friend who doesn’t listen to Hip-Hop. I’ve got plenty of posts for you in the future, but today this one is for the newcomers.

Hip-Hop is a way for people to express a point, make an announcement or tell a story by rhyming it out. If it’s good, the rhyme will come in the form of metaphors, similes and with punchlines (purely based on my own opinion). This is what is heard with the ‘naked ear’ but if we go a little further, songs will have hidden codes and messages contain the following things:

Beef
This will be swipes for rivals and competitors. Battling was an early aspect in Hip-Hop, whether it was to have the best party, best break dancing moves or just hurling abuse at each other via records. This has never stopped and will never stop. This is like boxing with no blows thrown; fencing with no genuine stabs; snooker with added trash talking. It’s a competition of the mind, where people will try to get into each other’s heads and without control it could end up being fatal (RIP Biggie and Pac). However, like any competition or soap opera, this is extremely exciting and sells extra records. It will always be encouraged and will always happen, so you need to learn to enjoy it and not be intimidated. You aren’t intimidated by sport are you?

The Hustle
Hip-Hop started on the streets and on the streets there is no snitching. Being a self-proclaimed Hip-Hop connoisseur, I do not endorse snitching, so I’ll try and keep this light. If you really want to understand certain tracks, you may need to look at a rappers name, their nickname, their album titles, their common topic of choice and what their words ‘could’ mean. With rappers that are about their hustle, believe they are talking about their hustle EVERYTIME unless proven otherwise. Examples of rappers like this are Jeezy the Snowman, Yo Gotti, and even the Notorious B.I.G.

Homage
This is when the rapper is paying homage to a rapper they look up to (or with the ego’s found in rap, they could be paying homage to themselves). If you are a rap fan and recognise a lyric that came from a particular song, chances are you were meant to recognise it. Rappers are all rap fans, hence why they started rapping in the first place. To take it a little further, many times you will hear a rapper mimic another rappers rhyme pattern. This is not them stealing the rhyme pattern (unless the rapper is shit), this is them paying homage and showing that they listen and recognise what that person is doing. Homage is a very dangerous route for a rapper to take because if used incorrectly, it can be interpreted as taking a shot. Many acts of homage are in fact secret shots at other rappers e.g. Ludacris’s not so sneaky diss at T.I. (who is also know as T.I.P).

Common Slick Shit (CSS)
Calling this code CSS works perfectly as it is very stylish (hope you saw what I did there). Rappers that practice CSS say things just to provoke people, make people giggle or make you think using a simple metaphor or simile, usually through a line that has a few meanings. The ‘laugh’ a rapper gives after doing this will indicate what they are trying to do. If you wonder why they laughed, I can guarantee you didn’t get the lyric. Rewind the track and listen again, maybe a few lines back so you can get the context. Sometimes you have to hear the whole entire verse to get the context, but either way the CSS will let you in on their secret joke. Examples of this come from Brooklyn rappers Fabolous and Jay Z.

Please message me if there’s anything you don’t understand in the first edition of our monthly Hip-Hop 101 series. In the next edition, I will be solving cases of Beef, selecting two rappers and bringing the shade they throw on each other to light.

The Hip-Hop Writer
@HiphopWriter