Nas - Halftime & Ren - Halftime - Nas Retake (Initial Thoughts)

March 15th

I've heard of Nas, but as far as I know, I haven't heard any of his songs. I know other rappers respect the heck out of him. Hiphop heads seem to like naming their three favorite rappers to describe their music taste to each other or whatever, and a lot of them put Nas on their list.

Outside hiphop, he isn't that known, at least here in Finland. The only people I've heard mentioning his name are other rappers and hiphop heads.

Nas - Halftime

Very good rhyming, especially for the time (1992). I'm still a newbie when it comes to hiphop, but I don't remember hearing that much internal rhyming in early 90s hiphop?

His pronunciation is clear, I can make out most of the lyrics. Mumble rap wasn't a thing back then (I think?) but some rappers have an accent that makes it hard for me to understand them. I understand Nas' accent just fine.

And it's such an old song the lyrics can be easily found online as well. I can't get much out of them, though, honestly. He's boasting, and talking about the areas he sees in his life, and name dropping a lot. He's got a message, it's just not translating to a Finnish metalhead.

But he isn't talking about bitches and hoes, so... The bar is low but he got over it...

I don't mind the f-slur being in there - it was a different time and he doesn't seem to use it in a derogatory way. I would feel different if the song had come out 20-30 years later.

The hook wasn't... It didn't hook me.

I listen to a lot of progressive metal and alternative music, and in those genres hooks, choruses etc aren't a given. I prefer that over what they do in hiphop, where ~99% of songs seem to have a hook.

If the verses are interesting enough lyrically and composition-wise (melody / flow) and repeating lyrics you've used before in the song (=hook/chorus) isn't adding a new layer to the lyrics when accompanied by the 2nd/3rd/etc verse(s) - and you're not a pop star - why do a chorus or a hook?

Sure, if a hook or chorus is good, I enjoy it. It makes the song catchier and more rememberable. It'll appeal to the masses. But most of the time, it's just unnecessary repetition, IMO. I am personally not a fan of hooks or choruses.

Straying off the topic, as Nas' hook on this song was better than this (it was ok, like a 5 on a 1-10 scale), but:

Often the hook is just one word or phrase, repeated over and over and over... Why??? If you cannot come up with a proper idea for a hook or a chorus, and your aim is not to make a hit for the radio (like most of pop) or sell a lot of records whyyyyyy-yy-y-yyy would you force in a hook?? Just... fuck all the norms and rules and leave out the hook. Make your verses good enough so people will latch onto those and don't do a hook. Dare to be different, even a little bit. That'll make you stand out.

In summary, this song doesn't inspire me to listen to more of his music (apart from maybe the Illmatic album, since I am trying to slowly familiarize myself with hiphop's roots and that album is considered a classic), but I definitely do respect him as an MC. My feelings towards him after hearing this song are mildly positive.

March 16th

Didn't have time to listen to the Ren song yesterday (properly enough to write about it), so I listened to the Nas song today for the second time before listening to Ren, to have it fresh in my memory.

What I didn't pay attention to yesterday, was his flow.

Side tangent:

I still have learning to do with hearing how the flow sits on the beat... Singers in other genres aren't as pedantic about certain syllables hitting certain sounds of the beat, but in rap that's the thing that makes it rap. I can hear internal rhymes a lot better than a year ago, and if rappers emphasize certain syllables or sounds on their lyrics because they have a lot of those syllables or sounds in the verse.
This is one of the reasons I like Ashnikko so much. She does all these things that rappers think are cool, like internal rhymes, emphasizing certain sounds, doubles etc. but she doesn't try and cram all of them in one song. I do understand that the more you cram them in one song, the better people consider you to be as a rapper, but... It's not that beginner-friendly. Ash does one little thing here, another one there, and once a listener has learned those are things rappers do, the listener spots them very easily from her songs. Where as rappers who cram all those things in their songs at once may be more respected among their peers, but their music is harder for a non-hiphophead to approach.

But anyway, Nas' flow is great, I can hear how his vocals fit in the beat a lot better than I did yesterday.

Ren - Halftime (Nas Retake)

I liked it a lot.

A lot of internal rhyming on this one as well. A lot a lot of internal rhyming.

"Let loose in the booth and I came to introduce, high-proofed juice like the flame inside a --" I can't make out the last word, and these lyrics might be wrong, and he keeps going after this, rhyming even more words with these ones in the upcoming bars, but this is still a good example on how dense this rhyme scheme is.

A side note: With my accent, these words rhyme, but I use an U-sound on all of these, except maybe "juice". Ren uses an Y-sound, and I've been pondering about this a lot lately, how to explain to native English speakers how to pronounce the Finnish Y-sound. And I thought it was impossible, they don't have that vowel sound in their language. But apparently, I was wrong. The speaker just has to be British and they're good :D

Or, rather, know how to speak with a British AND an American accent. And know a little bit of Spanish. And then they have all the sounds of the Finnish language covered.
I'm just tired of people butchering our names. Tarja Turunen, Simo Häyhä...

Tarja Turunen is like saying "Tárya Túrunen" like it's in Spanish (to get the R and JA/YA sounds right, and to emphasize the first syllable on every word),
and Simo Häyhä is "Simo" just like that - "si" and "mo", most people get it right. "Häyhä" is more complicated. They usually get the H correct, but then they'd have to pronounce Ä like Americans pronounce A in the word "cat", "sat", "hat", etc. but pronounce the Y like Ren pronounces these rhymes here.

The same beat as in the Nas song (duh, it's a retake), but I'm pretty sure Ren added electric guitar in there? Like, I can hear electric guitar in there, around 1:50-, but I don't remember hearing that in the original song, and I just listened to it for the second time.

Video is a one take, but I think the song has been recorded in a studio and he's just lip-syncing on the video.

I got so caught up in the rhyme scheme and pronunciation that I didn't listen to the lyrics that much... I'm playing the song again.

He's boasting. As a librarian, I like the "librarian brain" bar 😂 We're so often painted as boring old women in cardigans, shushing teenagers and "clutching our pearls", figuratively. When in reality, we come in all shapes and sizes, and ages and personalities. We do love cardigans, though, they're very convenient in our job, where we might sit in a very well air-conditioned room in front of a computer for a long time (and get cold) and have to check and put back on shelves thousands of books during the same work day (and get hot). A cardigan is easy to take off and put on depending on the task you're doing any given time. Anyway, I like this depiction a lot more than the usual one. Librarians depicted as smart people. Because most of us are. We like books, we like educating ourselves --> learning and reading increase one's vocabulary and their IQ --> literally makes us smarter than we'd be otherwise.

I didn't catch much else after that, though. Which is ironic, since I just said us librarians are smart :D We are, but we're just people at the end of the day. I don't understand everything Ren is saying, for many reasons a) sometimes it's his accent b) sometimes he's rapping too fast, I can't keep up, or I'm getting caught up listening to the rhymes instead of the lyrics c) sometimes I lack context.

He was mentioning a bunch of rappers who have died over the decades and how he feels like rap is dying because these GOATs are dying.

I think I'll end this post here. I'm definitely watching Knox Hill's, Cliff Beats' and Anthony Ray's reactions after this, to get more cultural context on the lyrics from actual hiphop heads. And they probably notice technical rap stuff and production stuff I missed as well. I really like this song, I want to appreciate it even more.