Hip-Hop Rhyme Formations: Open Your Ears by Tracie Morris

Tracie Morris’s Hip Hop Rhyme Formations: Open Your Ears” really interested me because she really shows how poetic hip hop really is. She explains that many hip hop artists use different language patterns and rhythms that deserve the same attention that poetry does.” Some folks dont understand hip-hop because they don’t know how to listen.”(223) I was really interested by this quote because Morris is showing to us that many people don’t like hip hop because they dont know how to listen to it- she shows us that we have to listen to it as if it is a poem. When she starts to break it down into the flow, structures and rhyme, it helps us to be able to understand how artistic rap lyrics are in the hip hop culture and helps open our ears to the real meaning of this genre.

This all changed with the introduction of Rakim who used different rhyme patterns to portray his message. The message he is trying to show the audience through his song, specifically in the line, “Dig ’em/ I neva dug ’em he couldn’t follow the leader long enough so I drug em’ ” (224) In this line he is trying to tell everyone that he is the leader and if they cant keep up with him he has to drag them along with him. Rakim is trying to give everyone the idea that he is the best in the rap world and everyone else slows, or drags him down.

Finch, Annie, and Kathrine Varnes. An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. University of Michigan Press, 2002.

University of New York in Prague. “50 years of hip hop — popular culture, social commentary, political inspirations.” University of New York in Prague, 16 Oct. 2023, www.unyp.cz/news/50-years-of-hip-hop-popular-culture-social-commentary-political-inspirations.