Lyrical Prowess Is Not Interesting If They Don’t Speak Your Language

Recently I got a message about somebody with a connect for bringing a famous rapper’s son into town. 

Now with my limited experience with the Montreal market I’ve noticed something. Underground English Hip Hop struggles to sell here. The more the rapper is focused on being the best writer in the game, the less people fully connect with it.

Being a cunning linguist is going to backfire on you when the audience mostly doesn’t understand the nuances of the language you speak. 

Now keep in mind, this is not a conversation on musicality. Nor charisma or presentation. It’s a question of bars, and how well they may, or may not connect with an audience.

Especially in a place where only 13% of the people speak English as a first language.

People may not be able to process clever lyrics fast enough to enjoy them live

I was at an event that took place during Mural Fest one year and people were off the dome freestyling to the crowd.

One of my peers grabbed the mic and proceeded to drop some stellar on the spot wordplay. Double entendres, classic sports references, nostalgia grabs and other amazing techniques that blended together perfectly. For the most part it fell flat on the audience.

Now this frustrated a girl next to me, who pompously lectured me on how she knows Hip Hop and this crowd does not. She was literally annoyed that the crowd did not get how good the wordplay is, as though they were unappreciative. She felt this way even though the crowd was basically people walking by on the street during a festival designed for local merchants.

This was not a crowd of people seeking out Hip Hop. The majority of them probably didn’t even speak English as a first language. They were regular folk out there spending money taking a quick break to enjoy what looked to be an entertaining show.

And it was. 

I don’t know about you, but when I’m out and about and about having a chill time, I’m not always trying to use my noggin to break things down.

It’s worth questioning if breaking down complex poetry on the fly is entertaining for a crowd of casual consumers.

Especially consumers not well versed in the language being presented to them.

When you listen to music in another language you focus on everything but the lyrics

When you don’t know what a person is saying you fall back on details you can process.

Things like the medley and flow become more prominent. How the words sound takes precedent over their meaning. Using DeepL to tell you what a song means is lovely but the translated poetry is not what’s in the song.

You are unaware of any nuance. You don’t get the jokes. How can you have any measure of a credible opinion on if a song has well written lyrics unless you speak the language?

You can’t. 

You can still decide if the performance is good or bad. You can still have an opinion on whether you like it or not. However, to try and make a critical assessment on the quality of is ignorance. 

Instead talk about the quality of the songwriting with regards to how it sounds and how it makes you feel. 

Keeping everything you just read in mind, picture a person, who just ate some delicious street food, who speaks French, who comes across some rappity rapping. They stop and nod their head but clearly don’t see the brilliance of the wordplay.

They like the performance well enough, and in their ignorance, go about their day never seeing the brilliance in front of them.

Can you really blame that person for not getting it?

Is It Really Well-Written If It Takes Expert Level Knowledge To Understand Why?

Not every classic artist from the older times wrote complex over the top lyrics.

A lot of the time it was their brevity and concise use of language that made it brilliant. They were able to expertly place the right words in the perfect order to say multiple things at once. Words that were understood by the people that were meant to hear it.

Often the lyrics would slap in a superficial and direct, even simple kind of way. But then, would have extra meanings for people in the know. What made it brilliant was how the complex gets compressed into something coherent that is both simple and deep at the same time. 

It creates a hook that gets people on board in the first place but also layers in something for the people who go digging.

Now when this is done correctly it’s not about complex language use. It’s about complex meaning and emotion baked into digestible language. It’s also about understanding how that language sounds, and making sure the flow of each word makes sense.

There’s a reason a lot of simple call and response chants work to this day. No matter what language you speak, you can understand what’s going on and participate.

The super advanced stuff is for your superfans that show up with every word memorized. When you are with strangers, be like Harry Mack and have fun with it. You’ll do better.

Or do what but be self aware that they may not get you if they don’t speak your language. 

Live Long and Prosper Everyone