The Four FASTEST Ways To Learn How To Rap
In today’s article we’re going to give you the four FASTEST ways to learn how to rap, in no particular order.
As someone who has been coaching rappers online from beginner to advanced level for more than half a decade at this point…
One of the most common questions I get is, “how does someone LEARN how to rap?”
So I figured it’s a good topic to discuss both for you if you’re interested in learning how to rap…
…Or if you’re just a fan of the culture and want to learn how people going about getting better at rapping.
(Before we begin, be sure to gain free access to our brand new “How To Rap Dictionary” with all the words and phrases you need to learn how to rap with, by clicking HERE)
1. Rap In Public (Around Other People)
This may be the overall FASTEST way to learn how to rap, to be honest.
By rapping around other people, you are going to force yourself to learn a lot of the physical (or physiological) skills needed to perform rap at a high level…
Both in a live sense AND in a recording sense.
When you are rapping around different groups of people, sometimes small, sometimes large…
You’re going to be required to:
- Project your voice properly
- Have various vocal tonalities to keep the audience engaged
- Stay on beat consistently
- Write lyrics that appeal to a crowd
- Move your body around in an entertaining way
- Use commanding body language
And many, many other skills that will be useful for you as a HUMAN BEING let alone as a possible performer of music.
Before you even ask in the comments, let me give you three quick tips to finding times to practice rapping in public:
A. Bring a portable bluetooth speaker with you every time you leave the house
When I was first learning how to rap, I would always, always, ALWAYS have a portable bluetooth speaker with me (like the one below) when I would leave the house.
This is because any time somebody learned I was a “rapper”, they would want to hear something…
…And while rapping acapella is totally fine and you should practice it OCCASIONALLY…
It’s MUCH better to practice rapping on beat until you can master “flow” AND THEN rap acapella when needed.
Additionally, it will encourage a crowd to come around you when you are rapping to a beat with music behind you, which will help improve your confidence.
Lastly, when you are learning how to FREESTYLE… you’ll want to have beats on deck at any moment.
B. Learn how to freestyle
Which brings us to our next suggestion…
YES YOU SHOULD LEARN HOW TO FREESTYLE… or “go off the top” as we might say.
The ability to rap about ANYTHING around you is an extremely important skill if you want to learn how to rap QUICKLY… which is the point of this article…
While you could avoid learning the fast, spontaneous nature of freestyle rap and STILL become a dope rapper…
(Many famous artists in fact NEVER learn how to freestyle rap)
Why make things harder on yourself if you don’t have to? If you practice freestyling consistently, you ability to increase your rap skills QUICKLY will be guaranteed…
NOTE: This article is fully about freestyle rap, so I’ll leave that to other articles and videos such as the playlist we made called “How To Freestyle Rap” which you can find by clicking HERE.
How To Freestyle Rap Playlist
C. Convince your friends to rap with you
Believe it or not, many of your friends WILL do a bit of rapping with you if you encourage them to do it as a fun exercise.
If you are a bit older (and assuming you and your friends like to party or something like that), easiest way is to get buzzed with them and then just pull out the beats.
You’d be surprised how many of my homies who have stuffy 9-5 jobs will bust out a rap or two with me once we are faded.
If you are a bit younger, show them how the ability to rap can get them more attention from girls, or in school, or cool points, etc.
The easiest way to do this is to get your rap skills to a point where your FRIENDS are impressed by YOU, and then they will get jealous and want to get good at it as well…
Young people think like that, haha.
The best way to learn how to rap quickly is of course watch videos like this on our YouTube channel, so be sure to subscribe to us and hit the notification bells ‘cause we drop a TON of videos each week: click HERE to subscribe.
2. Write To The Beat And Create Your Own Rhymes
This step is EXTREMELY EXTREMELY crucial to getting good at rap FAST.
The first part is always write to a beat… DO NOT try to fit lyrics you wrote while in the car with no beat (or in class with no beat) and try to puzzle-piece them in…
It will sound AWFUL 99% of the time.
Again, I’ve been coaching beginning artists for more than five years now and at first I would get artists who’s flow and bar-placement was super off to the beat, and it just sounded out of place…
And at first I was confused because I myself was learning how to teach as they were learning to rap…
And what If found was they were writing series of rhymes with NO beat and then trying to “SQUARE PEG AND ROUND HOLE” it into the music.
Look:
Because every beat follows a set RHYTHMIC STRUCTURE… in order words a tempo, or a meter…
The syllables in the words you’ve written have to correspond with that structure or the rap will sound OFF…
It will feel like a car driving on a street with no tires. The rubber has to meet the road in a smooth way for the car to move properly.
The syllables have to interact with the particular beat you’ve chosen in the right way or it WILL sound off.
So, always write the rhyme to the beat you’ve selected. Now, we’re not going to spend the whole article on this particular topic…
But for those of you who are interested, I’m going to give you a link to a video we do demonstrating how to count out beats and syllables to an instrumental… you can find it by clicking HERE.
The second aspect of this is making sure that you THINK OF YOUR OWN RHYMES rather than “cheating” or using a crutch like a rhyming dictionary.
Now, this is a particular point of debate among the rap education community and some channels will tell you to use a rhyming dictionary… but here at How To Rap we say…
ABSOLUTELY NOT.
First off, A LOT of the ENJOYMENT of writing your own raps is thinking of your own unique rhyme choices.
For me personally, using a rhyming dictionary is like a step away from getting a ghostwriter…
You are basically HAVING someone being creative FOR you…
And isn’t part of the joy of being an artist learning how to be creative?
Secondly, NONE of your favorite rappers ever used a rhyming dictionary, as far as I know. Certainly the greatest “rhymers” as opposed to just rappers… like Eminem… never used it…
So why should you?
The faster you learn how to think of creative rhymes YOURSELF and practice flexing your BRAIN muscles to think of original rhymes, the faster you will get good at rapping.
3. Have Prior Music Education / Experience
One of the craziest parts of being a “rap coach” is discovering information even YOU never thought possible about how people improve their chances of being a good rapper…
…And one of the first things I noticed when starting to coach rap was that people who had some prior music education…
PARTICULARLY WITH INSTRUMENTS…
Were able to grasp rap skills, particularly when it comes to “flow”…
Faster than others.
IN OTHER WORDS PAY ATTENTION IN MUSIC CLASS, KIDS.
(I used to hate music class but in hindsight I should’ve tried to learn SOMETHING, it would’ve helped)
So, usually what happens when I work with a beginning artist is we have to spend some time teaching them how to stay on beat, organize the rhythm of their words, be on tempo and things like that…
Now for most people learning how to stay on beat can take between six months to a year if they’ve never done any kind of rhythmic voice training in their life…
Sort of like it would take someone six months to a year to DANCE on beat if they had never danced in their life…
But every FIFTH student or so would say they’ve only been rapping for two to three months…
And their rhymes would be perfectly ON beat and in sync with the instrument.
I remember one particular student was not your stereotypical rapper… she was a white girl from Utah in the United States who had only been rapping for about a month…
And her very first track she sent me was perfectly in sync with the beat and her rhymes landed in the right place.
When I asked her how she was able to know to stay on beat and build a flow, she said, “I don’t know… maybe because I played drums when I was a kid?”
This was an ah-hah moment for me, because I realized that the rules of music like tempo, metre, rhythm, etc. can translate even into rap.
To be a bit more specific… here at How To Rap we define rap flow as “drum patterns in word form”…
In other words, your words are set up in specific changing rhythms over the course of the rap that are IN SYNC with the “beat” much like a drum pattern would be on a popular music song.
In any case, artists who have prior experience with a musical instrument, whether that be drums, guitar, or even occasionally just SINGING… with find it MUCH easy to learn how to rap QUICKLY.
NOTE: If you are interested in more definitions to common rap phrases like “flow”, “cadence”, etc. we have a free “rap dictionary” spreadsheet with all of the most common definitions of words you’ll need to know to learn how to rap… We’re building it over the course of the year so it’s brand new but you’ll have permanent free access if you just click HERE
How To Rap Dictionary
4. Listen To A Variety of Different Rap Styles, 24/7
While it may seems kind of obvious that you need to listen to a LOT of rap to improve on it…
Much like you would listen to a lot of guitar music to be inspired to learn the instrument…
I’ve found over the course of my coaching career a lot of artists take too long to learn how to rap because they only listen to ONE kind of rap…
Or three to four rappers…
And so they are not able to engage their creative mind enough to have the mental “elasticity” it takes to gain rap skills quickly.
So, often when a student comes to me with a session, and I ask them what artists inspired them to rap…
And they only say… “Eminem. G-Eazy. Kendrick.” And that’s IT…
Even though those rappers are totally FINE and in fact GOOD to learn from…
The fact that they are only listening to three rappers over and over and over again…
Means they are only learning three styles of rap… when there are literally THOUSANDS of different flows and vocal tonalities to choose from.
Keith Richards, guitarist of The Rolling Stones, once said, “He who has the best record collection makes the best records”…
…And that mantra can be VERY useful when deciding you want to learn how to rap.
EVEN if you don’t like all of the rap you listen to, studying the different styles can be EXTREMELY helpful in making your style EXPAND FASTER as a rap artist.
My suggestion would be make it a NEW RULE for yourself to listen to at least one album from a rapper who’s name you hear more than three times.
Even if you end up not liking the rapper, by forcing yourself to listen to that artist for an extended period of time – in other words, an entire album – you will increase the chances their style will be ever so slightly incorporated with your own.
When I was coming up, rappers before my time like Kool G Rap, Big Pun, Big L, and many others were names I kept hearing…
…And so I made it a point to sit down and listen to their work, regardless of if I liked it or not.
This is a good rule of thumb to have as a beginning artist.
CONCLUSION
Let’s review the main points we learned here today:
1. Rap In Public (Around Other People)
Rapping in public teaches you many of the physically intense skills required to rap with confidence as well as gaining fans quickly. Bring a bluetooth speaker with you everywhere you go. Learn how to freestyle. Convince friends to rap with you.
2. Write To The Beat And Create Your Own Rhymes
Write to the beat so that the syllables you choose to write will sync up with the rhythmic structure of the instrumental. Create your own rhymes to quickly progress to an advanced level of rhyme choice like the masters.
3. Have Prior Music Education / Experience
Pay attention in music class so that you can learn tempo, rhythm, and meter. If you know how to play an instrument, extra points.
4. Listen To A Variety of Different Rap Styles, 24/7
Do not limit your listening to just rappers you like or rappers YOU think are good or you will only know how to rap one or two ways. Speed up your development by listening to at least one album of rappers whose name you hear more than three times.
(Be sure to gain free access to our brand new “How To Rap Dictionary” with all the words and phrases you need to learn how to rap with, by clicking HERE)
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How to rap better
Drake