(Why) Does Talib Kweli Rhyme Off-Beat?

(Why) Does Talib Kweli Rhyme Off-Beat? Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory November 2 nd, 2017 Mitchell Ohriner University of Denver mohriner@gmail.com

The Diaz-Kweli Dispute Drake Future What a Time be Alive Album Cover

The Diaz-Kweli Dispute http://www.complex.com/music/2015/09/drake-future-what-a-time--be-alive

Critical Descriptions of Kweli s Flow Robert Gabriel: The ever-hectic flow, of The Beautiful Struggle. The Austin Chronicle, November 12, 2004, http://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2004-11- 12/237288/; Nathan Rabin: The rapid-fire and adaptive, veteran flow of The Beautiful Struggle. Talib Kweli: The Beautiful Struggle, A. V. Club, Ocber 4, 2004. http://www.avclub.com/review/talib-kweli-emthe-beautiful-struggleem-11254; Jamin Warren: His knack for corralling unruly syllables on The Beautiful Struggle. Talib Kweli: The Beautiful Struggle, Pitchfork.com, September 24, 2004, http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/4550-the-beautiful-struggle/;.

Critical Descriptions of Kweli s Flow Kelefa Sanneh, reviewing 2002 s Quality: the first Talib Kweli album on which the beats hold their own against his overstuffed verses. He still likes smother his songs with syllables, but he now pays more attention rhythm The New York Times, November 25, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/25/arts/music-in-review-pop-earnest-reasonablerapper-who-leans--the-left.html;

Kweli s own description of his flow: 2013 interview with Martin Conner: I had all these rhymes that were written a certain way. And then I would hear beats I would like, and I would literally try fit them. 2015 interview with Andre Grant: [I] found pockets and grooves in the beats that were unorthodox. And some people it might have sounded off beat.

An early flow: Don t Let Up (Kweli and Planet Asia, 2000), conclusion of verse two: You ain't got sweat the nice money, ain t no need promise me With one rhyme I probably could break down your whole psychology Niggas is Hollywood like the church of Scienlogy If I drop African thought they probably would lie and say it's Greek philosophy

Annotating syllable onsets None of the lyrical rhythms are repeated in any predictable pattern, making the rapping come across more like speech that happens take place over sampled music than like the stylized rhythms of earlier song s like [Kurtis Blow s] Basketball (Adams 2009, 20)

Annotating syllable onsets

Annotating syllable onsets Example 1: Don t Let Up, you ain t got sweat in PRAAT

Annotating syllable onsets Example 3: Don t Let Up, you ain t got sweat mixed audio

Annotating syllable onsets Example 4: a capella and mixed version of put in my partnership with artists who put they heart in it.

Annotating syllable onsets Example 5: schematic outline of time points in need of annotation measure flow-beat nonalignment. e means event, a phoneme found in both kinds of audio. s is a syllable onset, hidden in the mixed audio. b is a downbeat in the mixed audio, usually a clear bass drum.

beat(s a ) = (s m b 1 ) beat dur Annotating syllable onsets Example 6: Arithmetic for finding s m, the hidden syllable onset in the mixed audio. Definition of annotated moments in Example 5: e a 1, e a 2, e m 1, and e m 2, two pairs of equivalent points in the a capella (a) and mixed (m) audio signals, as far apart as possible. b 1 and b n, are two beat onsets on the mixed signal, n beats apart. s a is the onset of a syllable in the a capella signal, defined as the midpoint of the initially increase in amplitude of the vowel. Calculation of terms in Example 5: span a = e a 2 e a 1, the span of the a capella track between points of equivalence span m = e m 2 e m 1, the span of the mixed track between points of equivalence. One would expect spana and spanm always be equivalent, but I have found they can vary as much as 5ms per second. offset = e m 1 e a 1, the time offset between the tracks beat dur = (b n b 1 ) n, the duration of a beat scale = span m span a, the scaling facr necessitated slight differences in the duration of mixed and a capella tracks s m = s a + (offset * scale), the onset of the syllable in the mixed track

Data Used Characterize Kweli s Flow Two corpora: Thirty verses of Kweli Twelve verses of not-kweli. These are a subset of a genre-wide corpus described in Ohriner (2017). Two kids of rhythmic data: Quantized transcription: syllable lengths are measured in multiples of sixteenth notes. Continuous transcription: syllable lengths are thousandths of beats, calculated from vowel onsets.

Visualizing non-alignment

Visualizing non-alignment Example 7: Four pairs of waves, with points at zero-crossings. From left right, the pairs have (a) the same tempo and same phase, (b) the same tempo and different phase, (c) different tempo and same phase, and (d) different tempo and different phase. (a) (b) (c) (d)

Visualizing non-alignment Example 8: Visual appearance of four processes of non-alignment in hypothetical transcription, (a) complete alignment with the beat, (b) phase shift: each syllable is displaced from the beat the same amount. (c) swing shift: strong-beat syllables are aligned; weak-beat syllables are displaced. (d) tempo shift: syllables are equidistant, but at a different tempo. (e) deceleration: syllables wards the end of a phrase are progressively longer. (a) (b) (c) (d) (e)

Non-alignment in Get By

Example 9: Talib Kweli, Get By, Hook 2, combined quantized and continuous transcription 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 4 5, just, just 6, just,

Example 10: Talib Kweli, Get By, Hook 2, spiral transformation :55 0 :0 :5 0 1 2 3 :50 :10 just just just 3 :45 :15 1 :40 :20 :35 :25 :30 2

Example 11: Talib Kweli, Get By, Hook 2, spiral transformation, quantized version. :55 0 :0 :5 0 1 2 3 :50 :10 3 :45 just just just :15 1 :40 :20 :35 :30 2 :25

Example 12: Non-alignment: 6.65 min :55 0 :0 :5 0 1 2 3 :50 :10 just just just 3 :45 :15 1 :40 :20 :35 :25 :30 2

Example 13: Talib Kweli, Get By, Hook 2, spiral transformation of performed version (left) and version with adjustments phase and swing that minimize non-alignment ( optimal adjustments ) Non-alignment: 6.65 min 0 :0 :55 3:45 :50 :40 just just just :5 :35 :25 :30 2 phase: 0 min; swing: 1:1; :10 :20 :151 0 1 2 3 Non-alignment: 1.64 min 0 :0 :55 :50 3:45 :40 just just just :5 :35 :25 :30 2 phase: -6 min; swing: 1.34:1; :10 :20 :151 0 1 2 3

Phase shift in other Afro-diasporic music: Cinquillo family of Cuban rhythms: each note in a repeated pattern has a characteristic deviation from an abstract pulse (Alén 1995) Funk drumming: different instruments of the drum set are mostly behind, but vary from 10 30ms (McGuiness 2006). Jazz trio performance: rhythm section typically two minutes (on the clockface) behind the soloist (Doffman 2009). Charles Keil: all musics have be out of time groove (2005) Contrary views Keil expressed in Butterfield (2010), Madison et. al (2011), and Frühauf and Kopiez (2013).

Example 14. Density plots of optimal phase adjustment in 12 verses from the genre-wide corpus and 30 verses of Talib Kweli s. The use of phase shift in Kweli s 30 verses (M = -10.65, SD = 3.12), as compared the thirteen-verse genre-wide corpus (M = -6.84, SD = 3.78), is significantly greater (t(17) = 3.09, p <.01). Minutes behind Beat Density 0.15 "" Kweli Rap Music 0.10 Get By 0.05 0.00-5 0 5 10 15 20

Example 15a. Flow 4, combined transcription

Example 15a. Flow 4, combined transcription 18 we do or die like 19 bed sty see the red sky out the wind- ow of the red eye 20 let the lead fly some g rap shit liv- ing let die,

Example 15b. Syllable durations plotted against onset, with regressions drawn for each phrase. duration (seconds) 0.30 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 0.05 rap let bed sty fly out shit red lead die ing like eye the the someg or the we window of let the liv- red do see sky 48 49 50 51 52 53 onset (seconds)

Example 16. Density of unadjusted non-alignment, in minutes, between the Kweli corpus (black line) and the genre-wide corpus (grey filled curve). Kweli s unadjusted non-alignment (M = 11.43, SD = 4.91), compared the genre s (M = 7.92, SD = 5.62) is significantly greater (t(350) = 7.87, p <.001). Density 0.10 0.08 0.06 0.04 0.02 0.00 "" 0 10 20 30 40 Average unadjusted non-alignment Talib Kweli Rap Music

Example 17. Non-alignment vs. percent of non-alignment explained phase, swing, and tempo shift in the genre as a whole (left) and Kweli (right) 1.0 1.0 0.8 0.8 Percent explained 0.6 0.4 Percent explained 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.0 0.0 0 3 6 9 12 16 20 24 38 Unadjusted non-alignment (minutes) 1 4 7 10 14 18 26 35 Unadjusted non-alignment (minutes)

Table 1. Kweli, Get By, first verse, rhythmic features of two-measure segments section phase swing tempo unadjusted non-alignment optimal non-alignment percent explained Flow 1a -16.5 1.10 0.99 17.88 4.41 0.75 Flow 1b -9.0 1.34 0.99 9.84 1.62 0.84 Flow 2-10.5 1.10 none 10.74 1.89 0.82 Flow 3a -12.0 none none 13.63 3.49 0.74 Flow 3b -10.5 1.10 0.98 11.17 2.09 0.81 Flow 3c -15.5 none 0.96 14.57 3.21 0.78 Flow 4 12.5 1.48 none 10.32 4.18 0.59 Hook 1-5.5 1.48 0.99 6.65 0.82 0.88 Hook 2-4.0 1.34 none 5.35 1.05 0.80 Hook 3-6.5 1.81 none 8.43 1.94 0.77

Selected Bibliography Adams, Kyle. 2009. On the metrical techniques of flow in rap rusic. Music Theory Online 15(5). Alén, Olavo. 1995. Rhythm as duration of sounds in tumba francesa. Ethnomusicology 39(1): 55 71. Benadon, Fernando. 2006. Slicing the beat: Jazz eighth notes as expressive microrhythm. Ethnomusicology 50(1): 73 98. Butterfield, Matthew. 2010. Participary discrepancies and the perception of beats in jazz. Music Perception 27(3): 157 176. Chang, Jeff. 2006. Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop. New York: Basic Books. Conner, Martin. 2013. Talib Kweli Interview. The Composer s Corner (blog). http://www.rapanalysis.com/2013/06/talibkweli-interview.html Doffman, Mark. 2009. Making it groove! Entrainment, participation, and discrepancy in the conversation of a jazz trio. Language and Hisry 52(1): 130 147. Frühauf, Jan and Reinhard Kopiez. 2013. Music on the timing grid: The influence of microtiming on the perceived groove quality of a simple drum pattern performance. Musicae Scientiae 17(2): 246 260. Keil, Charles, and Steven Feld. 1994. Music Grooves. University of Chicago Press. Ohriner, Mitchell. 2017. Metric ambiguity and flow in rap music: A corpus-assisted study of Outkast s Mainstream (1996). Empirical Musicology Online 11(2): 153 179. Pressing, Jeff. Black Atlantic rhythm: Its computational and transcultural foundations. Music Perception 19(3): 285 310. Rose, Tricia. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middlewn, CT: Wesleyan Unviersity Press. Williams, Justin. 2014. The construction of jazz rap as high art in hip-hop music. In Rhymin and Stealin : Musical Borrowing in Hip-Hop, 47 72. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.