Rhyme

Rhyme

MCs use many different rhyming techniques, including complex rhyme schemes, as Adam Krims points out – “the complexity... involves multiple rhymes in the same rhyme complex (i.e. section with consistently rhyming words), internal rhymes, [and] offbeat rhymes”. There is also widespread use of multisyllabic rhymes, by artists such as Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, and Eminem.

It has been noted that rap’s use of rhyme is some of the most advanced in all forms of poetry – music scholar Adam Bradley notes, “Rap rhymes so much and with such variety that it is now the largest and richest contemporary archive of rhymed words. It has done more than any other art form in recent history to expand rhyme’s formal range and expressive possibilities”.

In the book How to Rap, Masta Ace explains how Rakim and Big Daddy Kane caused a shift in the way MCs rhymed: “Up until Rakim, everybody who you heard rhyme, the last word in the sentence was the rhyming [word], the connection word. Then Rakim showed us that you could put rhymes within a rhyme... now here comes Big Daddy Kane — instead of going three words, he’s going multiple”. How to Rap explains that "rhyme is often thought to be the most important factor in rap writing... rhyme is what gives rap lyrics their musicality.