3 Mistakes I Made Learning to Rap

My 3 biggest mistakes learning to rap.
1. Not Learning In Parallel
Writing - Writing Rap - Acappella Battle - Acappella Verses - Music - Music Production
This means it’s really easy for me to write at a high level, hard for me to flow, and I barely know how to make music at all.
I have spent lots and lots of time studying lyricism and hardly any time actually studying music.
Same with my intentional practice. Lots of time trying to write in particular ways, hardly any trying to flow or make music in certain ways.
And I’m sure it shows.
2. Perfectionism Mindset
I started into rap through battling. So, for a very long time, I was trying to tune into what other people would like and vote on. I didn’t want to put anything out until it was “perfect” because in a battling context it would mean a loss. This does not translate that well to being creative. Much better to adopt something like a casual sports mindset, where you go and put out your best effort and let it lie there.
3. Not enough community
When I started, I was mostly writing and battling and I was doing that with a group of other people. Over time, I lost a lot of interest in battling and switched, somewhat, to making music and writing verses. But I didn’t combine that with finding an actual community to engage with (and didn’t engage with the people on the channel very well).
Not only did that slow down my learning, but it also sort of took the enjoyment out of things for me. It’s eventually why I stopped for so long. I just couldn’t feel the connection.
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That’s all for this video, feel free to ask questions in the comment box below.
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[@Solaimane_rajuelkahf]

❤❤❤❤❤

[@donovonj]

👋

[@Proph77]

Funny how Donovon been feeding me gems since I was 9. 😂 True, though, about the imbalance.

[@donovonj]

Yeeeeeeeesh man I forget how long I’ve had videos up. 👴🏻

[@JunyL]

I guess the Mistakes we make as a beginning we forget that rappers are musicians and we think they are just stars I guess it would work better if you work , 1 rhythms 2 flow 3 lyrics And I guess most of us focus on lyrics

[@donovonj]

Yeah. You have to give the music at least as much weight as the lyrics and writing if you want to make music that sounds good. I have almost exclusively focused on writing the whole time and it's very noticeable.

[@JunyL]

@@donovonj me too I thought I was a rapper because I could rhyme lol but now I can call myself a musician also a rapper tooo

[@koryleonard8147]

I'm first.

[@donovonj]

👋

[@abandonedbuildingexplorer]

Hi Donovan! I just came across your channel. I have been loving hiphop since the early 00s when I was a kid, but have never tried to write my own rhymes. I want to start doing it! :) It's cool you play football/soccer too! I messed up my ankle bad in January, unfortunately, so I haven't played this season. I'm a goalkeeper. What's your preferred position? Would you recommend I purchase a copy of the Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms (or an analogue)? When I watched MF Doom's 'Bookhead' music video, he holds up a copy when he's in the library (1:00 into the record; kzbin.info/www/bejne/oIWmepKYprKcldkfeature=shared&t=59). That lead me to think that he's spent time digesting that book or something similar as part of his process. When i was young, I thought rappers literally sat down and read the actual dictionary like a Christian may read the Bible, or a Muslim the Quran. Finally, I feel like I need to gain access to instrumentals that are very interesting to me and given that I am not a producer, how do I go about finding stuff to use as I write in parallel? Could you recommend free-to-use repositories where producers upload their stuff that's ready to go?

[@donovonj]

Hey! Competitively I was a center back, but play more striker these days. The injuries are really rough. I don't think you need to study the dictionary or anything (though, some rappers really have done that). Instead, I think it's more useful to do things like try to maintain long rhyme schemes (for example, 8 lines that all rhyme together). This will give you more practical experience that ties to rapping. Just reading rhyming or dictionary words is a bit more abstract whereas you can get some of that knowledge directly while building other rap-related skills. If you're just going to practice, KZbin has tons and tons of instrumentals. Spotify has a lot too. You can't use them for commercial projects, but it sounds like you're a few steps out from that. I'm also starting back into this though, will maybe update with a video or something if I find some better resources. I used to just know producers but it has been a long while.

[@abandonedbuildingexplorer]

@@donovonj Definitely, definitely, many steps away from making anything that would run me in trouble with copyright issues. Thanks so much for replying! Wishing you many goals this season!