How to Become a Rapper It starts out early, the beginning of middle school when you start to form your likings in music. You live in a place wwhere Rap is looked at as inappropriate and vain in the music world. Somehow though, you turn to like rap and hip-hop. All your friends listen to metal and rock and pop. Not you however, you always loved listening to rap music. The beginning of high school flies into existence and you are still the hip-hop rap lover you were in middle school. If anything, you love it more! Your parents denounce rap and say it distracts you from your sport, and your grades. I mean look at your clothes, they scream ghetto. Blow the hate off and continue listening to it when your parents aren’t around. Begin to wonder if they were right all along. Research lyrics of your favorite songs only to find it is infested with sex, drugs, violence, and hate. It’s your sophomore year, and you are just a normal kid that is starting to listen to rock and metal like your friends. The normal bland school scene filled with nerdy kids who wear the same “hip” clothing and wear rock band t-shirts as if they actually went to their concerts. Classes are filled with boring lectures and nothing to do but doodle in your paper. You still yearn to listen to rap, and so much so you get an idea to start rapping yourself. So in class you start writing lyrics, and basic rhymes to pass the time. This is fun but never goes anywhere. Junior year hits, you start listening to rap again, it is the only music you enjoy and you can’t listen to that metal garbage. It pumps you up before games and keeps you hyped with your sad repeating routine. There are some new transfer students who come from a worse part of town who are latino and black. You find yourself attracted to them in a certain way to be friends but also don’t talk to them because they seem annoying and rude. However you are in class with the Mexican kid and black kid. They sit behind you and rap just to pass the time before the bell rings. You pay no attention and criticize their lyrics heavily. These kids, these 2 kids, a latino and black who rap. You don’t know them but in a way you feel jealous because they do something you love and take pride in being the only one around to enjoy it, after all, it’s what makes you unique. 2 weeks go by and you rush into class late as usual. This time, the 2 kids behind you bother you for a pencil. You are willing to give them one. The black kid asks for your name. you’re surprised, it was very kind, so was the latino. Alan the black kid and Bryan the Mexican kid who rapped together invites you to hang out with them after class, you reluctantly agree. After class they tell you they rap. You respond, “I heard you guys in class. I love rap.” Instantaneous friends. You find yourself going to their houses after school everyday to listen to them record and hang out. After a hard day of school you are frustrated that, while you hang out with Bryan, you make fun of him for rapping. Telling him his rapping was silly hurt Bryan. He claimed, “At least I can rap, you’re white, you can’t rap”. This takes you back and you immediately responded with, “Oh yeah? I can rap better than you AND Alan.” While Bryan was laughing at you, you suddenly have an overwhelming desire to prove him wrong. Junior to senior year summer comes and you are writing and writing when you are alone. You guys haven’t hung out in a long time, since March; it’s July. After realizing they were your only friends you give them a call to hang out. As you sit together in his room awkwardly playing videogames, you utter, “Sooo… I have been working on rapping…” In unexpected excitement he said, “No way!?” you said, “Yeah man I would love to show you.” You awkwardly hop up and grab your phone out of your pocket with your clammy hands to rap some lyrics you had prepared. After listening, he said, “that’s pretty good man, not going to lie.” Alan was just as surprised as Bryan was. After countless months thereafter working hard on gaining a voice and lyrical stamina through many freestyle jams in a dark small apartment room, you start recording your own songs. Alan has a microphone that you start recording on. Although horrible quality, it was a mic. Christmas Day, you get a mic. You spend hours playing with it and hours researching how to make your tracks sound good on illegally downloaded software called Logic Pro X that your friend helped you get. Recording after recording, you start gaining progress. Your sense of pride gained for the craft and yourself grew. Where you were born, rap is a black thing and is not for corn husking country bums like yourself. But rap isn’t about that; it’s about rapping from with in. It’s merely poetry with a beat. Senior year, you are now a part of your friend’s rapping group. You guys call yourself, The Last Original Poets. You guys are known as the rap crew. A Black, A Latino, and A White, rapping and writing about the past. Writing about equality and spreading a good message. Word got around school that you guys rap, so you got an unexpected call from the principal in 5th period one day. You show up from different classes wondering what you all did wrong. You enter the Principal’s office sheepishly. As you nervously sit down the Principal says, “So I hear you boys rap… Is this true?” Bryan utters, “…well yeah…” Principal replies, “Excellent! We would love for you 3 to rap in our Prom 2014 Pep Rally in front of the Student Body. We want your raps to be school related, clean, and encouraging.” Alan exclaims, “No way?! We’ve never done anything like this, but I am up for it. Aren’t you guys?” You and Bryan shake your heads with a nervous grin. After hours of writing and rehearsing after school, the day has come. You enter school grounds with instructions to come and set up and perform a sound check before the pep rally at 10AM. As you sit in class sheepishly with your nicest clothes on and sweaty palms as you watch the clock hoping for it to never hit 10, it came very quickly. 10AM hits, you, Alan and Bryan meet in the gym, where ASB is scrambling to set up all the microphones. As you get together and practice with the mics, your voice sounds ambient and loud. You’re so nervous that you are sweating. 11AM hits, it is time. You have come so far from the day you were told you couldn’t rap. The students flow in as a mere sign of your heart beating faster and faster that each student comes in. 2000 kids from top to bottom on the bleachers all staring at 3 kids on the gym floor. The crowd quiets and the beat starts. Your palms feeling so wet that you feel as if you had just washed your hands, this feeling doesn’t go away. Alan kills his part. With confidence afterwards, Bryan steps in the center and woos the crowd with his fast rapping ability. Your part comes in, you say a mini prayer as you calm yourself and lose yourself into the lyrics. You rap with conviction and speak every word as if it was your last. Speaking truth with power and flow that you feel like you were floating on a cloud. The rap is over as you are hypnotized by fear that you had just done that. As the crowd roars and the whistles blow, you stare at amazement at the crowd, as Alan and Bryan scream “Thank you!” into the mic. You stumble off to the side with both of them as you yell at each other of excitement. You are so excited that you say something you had never thought or said before. “I want to do this for the rest think, “I love this and want to do this, and keep doing this.”
Fast forward to now. December 11, 2014. It is near the end of the year. The support for our rap group grows as we continue to release songs. You have performed 3 times now in various parts of the city. You now are in college but all stay connected through music. You are now working on a mixtape that will be released late February in 2015. This is the beginning of becoming a rapper. of my life.” These words resonated with all of you to this day. Your own words had made you