Learn How To Rap In 4 Simple Steps For 2020

In today’s article, we’re going to give you an overview of how your year should look if one of your goals in 2020 is to learn how to rap.

We’ve organized this article in a format that anybody should be able to follow regardless of previous musical knowledge or level of confidence coming into it because:

1. We believe ANYONE can learn how to rap using the right tools 
2. We believe that the biggest thing stopping beginning artists is consistency
3. We have been teaching rappers like yourself for more than half a decade… 

So we KNOW this stuff works!

Now, before we get into the 5 steps, of COURSE two of these easiest ways to learn how to rap in 2020 is to subscribe to our YouTube channel with notifications by clicking HERE because we drop weekly videos on everything related to learning how to rap… 

…AND to pick up your free full-length book, “How To Drop A Great Project on A Tight Budget” designed to help you learn how to release an amazing EP, mixtape, or album this year even if you’re strapped for cash. You can pick that up by clicking HERE.

1. Record Early and Often

Okay, so you’ve made the leap and decided you want to learn how to rap this year. 

You may have already written a few rhymes, freestyle over some beats, but you’re already feeling a bit of nervousness about how LONG it will take to fix some of the more difficult parts of the process of learning how to rap.

Two of the most mysterious and difficult parts you will run into in the beginning are: 

• VOCAL DELIVERY 
• “FLOW”

Vocal delivery in this case being the way you deliver your raps, how your voice sounds over a beat, how confident people perceive you as, and so on.

Flow in this case being the rhythm of your rhymes as they interact the rhythm of the beat, how often you “change” the rhythm of your words and so on.

The most common issues you will run into with these two skill sets is: “I don’t like my voice” and “I don’t sound smooth on the beat like my favorite rappers”.

It’s with this in mind that the first thing you’ll need to do to learn how to rap in 2020 is begin recording yourself immediately OVER beats in order to develop an ear for how you are sounding in relation to the beat, and where you’d like to go.

Just like an other part of rapping like choosing great rhymes or making catchy choruses, being able to reproduce the vocal tone you hear in your HEAD and the vocal tone you deliver on a track is a SKILL that needs to be DEVELOPED.

Nobody is inherently born being able to DELIVER their natural speaking voice over LOUD RHYTHM MUSIC on the very first try.

It’s not a natural human behavior… so it shouldn’t be surprising that you will need to train yourself to do this inherently UNNATURAL thing… 

In other words, delivering words smoothly over a produced beat.

Similarly with flow, our natural conversational speaking voice is not LOCKED INTO A TEMPO the way that it has to be when it comes to rapping. 

So, you’ll need to start building a practice schedule to practice your FLOW (or rhythm of your words) by starting to record.

(Before you even ask, when you sign up for the free book by clicking HERE you WILL receive a booklet of what to buy for an affordable home studio to start recording, so be sure to pick it up)

2. Follow rappers not rap fans 

The next thing you’ll have to do is make the transition from FAN to RAPPER.

When I mean by this is you will have to CONSUME music differently than your average fan will. 

Your average fan does not listen to music and try to pick apart WHY they like it, necessarily.

Some more diehard fans will do this for their favorite ARTISTS, but most general music fans… who WILL still love your music… won’t DISSECT IT.

YOU on the other hand are trying to BECOME an artist, so you’ll need to listen to music differently than a fan will. 

For example, you will need to practice quickly identifying the main sections of the song and think about WHY the rapper chose to make THAT style of chorus, bridge, or verse on THAT particular beat.

Furthermore, you will need to begin to speak to more people who actually RAP as opposed to just people who LISTEN to rap music more often.

This is what we mean by follow rappers not rap fans. 

Now, before we get a bunch of questions like, “I live in a small village with no rappers and everyone hates rap where do I go?!” Let me give you two quick suggestions: 

1. Be as ACTIVE as possible in the How To Rap comment boxes when you watch videos. 

Not only do I personally try to respond to almost every comment (you can see that in the comments of most videos), but there are literally THOUSANDS of rappers who are SELF-SELECTING online that they are like you and want to learn how to rap. 

You can reach out to them, or get a conversation going and begin to build connections with rappers from ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. 

2. Sign up for our newsletter 

How To Rap will be making a private community this year in 2020 where you will be able to work with other rappers from around the globe, so when you sign up for your free book by clicking HERE you will be notified when we get that up and running.

3. Set monthly goals

Another thing that will happen early in your process as you learn how to rap is you may lose motivation because you feel like you’re not getting good fast enough.

This will happen especially if you’re not setting up broader picture goals and allowing your mind and music enough time to catch up.

So, for example, we’ve talked about your vocal delivery and getting good at it when you learn how to rap.

If you don’t allow yourself enough time for your voice to get used to what it’s learning as you record, you will give up.

Why not set a monthly goal of “master a raspy voice tone” for JUST one month? Then, all you have to do for the month of say, February, is practice focusing on the raspy qualities of your voice as opposed to MASTERING ALL RAP VOICE ALL THE TIME and stressing yourself out.

The next month you can move on to “master an emotional voice tone” for a month using the same process.

I happen to do the same thing with the How To Rap channel. I don’t worry about making the PERFECT VIDEO every single time, but I do try to improve our subscriber counts and view counts on a monthly basis and then move on to the next goal.

So set MONTHLY as opposed to just DAILY goals and watch yourself improve over the course of the year.

4. Learning Over Liking

This is something that deserves it’s own article (which I will do VERY soon in the future) but essentially this is the concept where you don’t have to LIKE a certain type of rap to LEARN from it.

The easiest example would be how many rap fans and rappers hate on “mumble rap” or “singing rappers” ALL DAY without actually taking anything away from it that might help THEIR art.

For example, rather than just saying “I DON’T UNDERSTAND THEM THEY’RE SINGING NOT RAPPING HIP-HOP IS DEAD!” You could notice that in so-called “mumble rap”, melodic ability to valued much higher than purely lyrical ability.

Whether or not you like that, you could notice that having a good melodic ear and being able to structure a catchy melody is a skill that EVERY musician should have, and you could listen to some of the more well-known artists PURELY focusing on melody choice and chorus structure and incorporate into your lyrical raps.

This sort of mentality has been echoed by artists like J. Cole and Kendrick extensively, and that may be part of the reason why their music is BOTH melodic and lyrical.

So use 2020 to begin to learn from things, even if you don’t necessarily LIKE them.

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Comment Below: 

Which of these four steps are going to start working on RIGHT NOW? 

–Drew Morisey, @drewmorisey on Instagram and Twitter