In most of the classical repertoire, a composer sets a preexisting text to music, and this invites analysts to investigate how the meaning of that preexisting text maps onto the meaning of the newly composed music. In his 2008 article in Music Theory Online, Kyle Adams notes that existing methods for analyzing texted (classical) music are inapt for rap music. Revisiting text-music relationships in rap delivery through In demonstrating one way in which rhythmic delivery can affirm the expressive meaning of lyrics, I hope to provide tools that enable hip hop scholars interested in rhythm, rhyme, and meaning to sometimes talk to each other rather than past each other.Ĭopyright © 2019 Society for Music Theoryġ. Subsequently, in examining three lines of the verse, I document an analogy between flow-beat alignment and topics of vitality, moral rightness, and knowledge in the lyrics.

In particular, I present methods for measuring and visualizing the alignment of syllable onsets (i.e., the flow) with events in the accompanying instrumental streams (i.e., the beat). This article begins bridging that divide by relating details of Kendrick Lamar’s rhythmic delivery to the meaning of his lyrics, focusing on the second verse of “Momma” from To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). It is only slightly hyperbolic to suggest that the former analyzes rap music as music without text while the latter analyzes it as text without music. KEYWORDS: Rap music, flow, Kendrick Lamar, rhythm, prosody, expressive timing, text-music relationshipsĪBSTRACT: After twenty years of published analyses on rap lyrics and flow, a divide between music-oriented and literature-oriented writing remains.

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