So I found a new UK hip-hop group to listen to, one friend recommended them a long time ago but I have not really checked them out properly until now.
Asides from purely appreciating the lyricism and effort an artist or artists put into a track, one can also pick up on techniques that have been used. In the case of Melanin 9′s (Or M9′s) work, the track Spiritual Scrolls (video below):
Now for those who read a lot, you most likely came across a passage written by an author which is made up of short and abrupt sentences. If each sentence is descriptive then it will produce the effect of time moving fast or of a collage of images inside your head which relate to one theme.
This track features something similar. If you go to 35 seconds in, these lyrics follow:
Gods locked in the morgues
Glocks to your jaws
Coppers watching from their choppersSitting in the cockpit door
The clock hits four when feds lick the locksmith’s door
The rest has after has been a little hard to catch (I am trying though). But these short lines describe a dark, dystopian reality of the underworld. To say “Gods locked in the morgues”, I think, is a poetic way of simply saying that morality is collapsing, a place where people do anything just to get what they want; selfish materialism that blinds the soul.
If I happen to write lyrics once again, then this is a technique that I will definitely consider using, but it remains to be seen whether I will be good enough.
