Bone Thugs n Harmony.

For the sake of this, pretend I could rap and didn't sound exactly like I sound haha...

Whenever I thought of writing a track, I always wrote sounding that would sound terrible. My mind was so caught up in the story or the purpose as opposed to "Well what just sounds good?". I think an important part of rapping is figuring out how to make stuff sound good. You know how Tupac has a certain way of saying a small collection of words together that all just sounded great? Like the lines in 2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted;

"Picture perfect, I paint a perfect picture
Bomb the hoochies with precision, my intention's to get richer"

Shit sounds really good together. It's complete nonsense, but he figured out "Ah man that sounds awesome when I say that". I think a lot of people focusing too much on the art side forget that ultimately this is supposed to be listened to and enjoyed. I've always hated Immortal Technique's Dance With The Devil because as a song, I think it just sounds terrible. He's off beat at times and he's focusing too much on the story and not enough on the actual listenability.

So there's a whole balance and if you've already got the "I can make good sounding music" part down, the world's really your oyster. You can use everything you've learned up to this point to make something people will enjoy, and then just swap out the words to tell or say whatever it is you think's important or artistic.

I know it's fairly bullshit coming from a guy who can't write let alone perform a track, but as a listener when someone can combine some stuff that just sounds good, but it's been written with an intention and there's an actual point to it where if I sat them down and asked for a purpose, they could give me it, that's what I'd call art. RA The Rugged Man in Uncommon Valor. 2pac in Keep Ya Head Up. Happy Birthday by Flipsyde. Those are examples of where I think I could say there's an artistic element, be it the style of performance, the storytelling, the concept etc.

Ill be at Arc this coming weekend in Chicago. HMU on discord G I'm always down to share art and new music with people. Expanding horizons is my thing