Rap's Post-Lyrical Phase Pt. III: What's the Point of Post-Lyricism?

First, before reading this or uh, in addition to reading this, go back and read the comments in the other two parts which totally take this discussion in places I hadn't thought of or connected. My apologies for not being able to more actively engage the comments like usual, I was too busy buying comic books this weekend.

As suggested in the first part of this, the point of "post-lyricism"--whether it knows it or not--is a sort of total breaking away of "the Nas formula". There are plenty of flaws in calling it "the Nas formula" (the formula certainly existed before Nas) but it's also an easy way to communicate the kind of lyricism that's both undeniably great and simply not happening as much anymore (certainly not on the radio) and not really working anymore either.

The word "formula" too, is used advisedly, not as any kind of slam against Nas, but to note the way the signs and signifiers of Nas and company's type of rapping has devolved into a bunch of things you can do to get a lot of dumb people (which is most people and therefore, most raps fans, including "serious" hip-hop heads) to think you're good or celebrate because it opposes say, Soulja Boy.

Certainly, it isn't this simple and the assertion I'm about to make's a little too cynical, but following or not following "the Nas formula" is in part, an economic choice. And not in the sense of rapping like Nas makes you "serious" and not rapping like Nas makes you a sell-out. In the current rap climate of declining record sales and all that crap, choosing to rap in one way or the other determines your rarified audience. Take someone like Immortal Technique, who no doubt, thinks he's in the vein of Nas or something. His choice to be in some ways "throwback", along with his contact, has given him a very specific and dependable audience of nostalgics and left-leaning rap fans (these categories of course, overlap a great deal).

When there's some college open mic or when your favorite college radio rap show opens the phones for listeners to kick a free style, following "the Nas formula", if you're not completely wack, will get you a lot of love right off the bat. By following "the Nas formula" you court a small, but powerful and devoted groups of listeners that will like you. In many ways, "the Nas formula" is easier and safer too. Who knows where the hell say, T-Pain came from, but if you stuck him on any stage as an unknown, he'd get laughed the fuck off the stage! Now, that could be used as evidence that it's absurd this rappa ternt sanga's so big right now, but it also points toward the way very popular music is often weird and uncool before it's popular.

Even the Soulja Boy-style fan of rap music, when confronted with "the Nas formula" in person or without the context of it being hot or not on MTV or the radio, will respond positively to this tried and true formula, because it's still what kids do in middle-school when they're "freestyling" with their friends. Of course, stick that freestyler in the studio with access to some real equipment, maybe some background singer girls, and corporate pressure to make a hit and he won't make the next "It Ain't Hard to Tell".

The economic choice in rejecting "the Nas formula" isn't really worth going over, is it? Slower, simpler, makes it easier on the ears, more crossover appeal, etc. etc.

While many would be quick to defend "Nas formula" rappers as not making so much of an economic choice, but as keeping it real or true, that argument or that simple argument rather, can't be made for the post-lyricists. And no doubt, a lot of rappers (or "rappers" if you want to be a dick about it) adopt the post-lyrical style out of a lack of talent or creativity of patience, and while the tone of this makes Kanye and Wayne into hyper-innovators that they are not--as I said, they're kinda hopping onto a trend, they just happen to be more famous--there is a sense that a whole bunch of rappers are simply not interested in doing "the Nas formula". Whether they lyrically have the talent to do it or not is not the issue, at least for me. It's probably true that Picasso couldn't paint like Titian or some shit, but who cares and we save the discussion for 'Post-Modernism in Art 101' or some shit.

In many ways, "post-lyricism" can be stuck on Andre 3000. Certainly one of the brightest and more lyric-oriented rappers from any region, Andre's also been pretty weird and out-there since the first Outkast album. Over time, he increasingly played with meter and rhymes and adopted a purposefully rambling, off-topic style, all while remaining, for the most part, conventionally "lyrical" or lyrical enough to not be labelled wack by anybody.

Take a listen to ATLiens, the album before Outkast got rock-critic "weird" and were just weird and an inarguable rap classic no matter where you're from. Sure, it contains plenty of brilliant lyrical moments resembling "the Nas formula", but it's also got plenty of purposefully bad similes ("tight like nuts and bolts" from "Two Dope Boyz (In a Cadillac)"), or tangential near-non rhymes ("Elevators"). His recent "return" to rap, which some people perceive as "overrated", dives further into these post-lyrical tropes and comes out at times awkward or weird, but always affecting.

The moments of conventional, "Nas formula" brilliance are punctuated by stranger rhymes, jokes, nonsense, and round-about ways of expression. From the conventional "lyrical" definition, Andre's inconsistent, but all those inconsistencies and idiosyncracies are being used towards a greater point/message/feeling whatever and wouldn't resonate half as much if he stayed within the bounds of "the Nas formula". Take Ghostface's work outside of the Wu since Supreme Clientele and you'll find a greater breadth and depth of emotion than is found on even really real shit like "Tearz". What those two greats did was take parts of "the Nas formula" and build upon it and occasionally, fall back on it.

Of course, you'll get barely anybody complaining about Andre 3000 or Ghostface they way so many complain about Kanye or Lil Wayne, but their post-lyricism comes out of Andre and Ghost's post-lyricism. It's got even less to do with "the Nas formula" and therefore rhymes less and takes the lyrical carnival games and joke punchlines to even goofier places. And still, despite what their detractors say, Kanye and Wayne can still drop a brilliant line or verse and are quite good at moving from the obnoxiously dumb to the really poignant.

Worshippers of "the Nas formula" might call this inconsistent but that's sort of the point. Additionally, there's some added level of emotion to these lines because they're dropped in between a lot of shit talk and cutesy douche-baggery. You're caught in a loop of the latter two things for a bunch of lines or even a few songs, and then Wayne drops something like his domestic abuse reminisce in "Playing With Fire"--"Remember when your pussy second husband tried to beat ya?/Remember when I went into the kitchen, got the cleaver?"--or another obnoxious Kanye song about why fame and money sucks stumbles into a lyrical, almost like conventionally poetic line like, "You're on the other side of the glass/Of my memory's museum". Because it's not hot line after hot line, or even poignant emotional detail after poignant emotional detail, the ones they focus on have added weight.

In the past, I've called this "rap minimalism" and it works a lot like Minimalism as a music genre in general. Basically (and I'm super simplifying here), through repetition, the slightest variation takes on greater meaning or importance. Clipse are certainly rap minimalists--and sorta post-lyricists too--because they fall back on almost nonsense punchlines and repetitive material, but every once in a while, the guilt and world-weariness fumbling around in the background gets really clear for a verse or line. We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2 is pretty much a whole album of post-lyrical tropes (although delivered in "the Nas formula") until we get to Malice's "All the money in the world..." verse on the last track, "Ultimate Flow".

Young Jeezy, a more clear-cut example of post-lyricism, is pretty much not even rapping most of the time, so that when he does enter something resembling flow or reveals something, it means a lot more. For whatever reason, Jeezy's "They lock us in cages/The same nigga that's a star when you put em' on stages" is something that more than one teenager has brought up to me as a line that made them think.

So, the point of "post-lyricism" outside of some general want to move away from "the Nas formula" is to in some way or another, take bits and pieces of "the Nas formula" and meld it with less tried and true lyrical formulas and create something new, which has the emotional resonance and effect that "the Nas formula" once had. There's no denying that rappers of the "Nas" mold are simply not engaging new and younger listeners to rap, while Kanye and Wayne certainly are. And for all that's annoying or terrible about them to dudes like me and most of my readers that grew up on "the Nas formula", they are in their own way, as bizarre and rarified as any of those inexplicable Golden Era personalities that also had some pop appeal.