When I’m in a cypher, I don’t have time to plan my rhyme, I don’t even want to use that part of the brain. I start thinking about your rhyme scheme, or even consciously formulate a rhyme and I lose the beat– and the beat is everything. A rapper who establishes a rhythm with their voice might not say anything meaningful, anything funny, anything dope, but they won’t get laughed out of the cypher. And yes, I’ve been laughed out of the cypher.
The only thing worse than losing the beat is choking—when you open your mouth and no words come out. Think 8 mile. That’s never been me, but I’ve seen it happen a lot. My boy’s a talented producer, but he isn’t a rapper. Sometimes he drops a hot verse when he freestyles. Sometimes he raps about anime characters. Once he shouted out fake dead homies (“Rest in piece Li’l Jamal, and Li’l Bobby….what did I say?”). But about half the time he just says one line, pauses to think, and never stops pausing. Verbal impotency. It’s not easy to think of words at 88 BPM—anyone who tries to drop a freestyle without having practiced just won’t, it’s a skill that’s hard to earn. The great freestylers– Mos Def, Ludacris, Black Thought, they’ve been doing it for years, maybe their whole lives. What a real MC does in a cypher is different, it isn’t like the mortals. Look at this Ludacris freestyle
“Snatch the furniture, here’s the plan, kidnap Big Tigger and hold him for ten grand/tell BET if they want to see him again, bring free Sinaa Lathan and a bottle of gin.”
He freestyles a punchline, shouting the last line, audibly laughing after he finishes it. The energy he puts into his delivery is something else.
“Jump back, I can’t stand myself/just bought a crib in Miami just to tan myself.”
The wordplay here is incredible, from the assonance in jump back/just bought/just to, to the multisyllabic rhyme that makes the punchline. Thematically, he parodies the commercialist aspects of rap, with “enough money in the chain to keep a country fed”, at the same time embodying them.. He’s thinking so fast, poetic virtuosity, improvising like a jazz cat, with words. That “WHAT?” he shouts at the end, extemporaneous to the text and several seconds after his last line, like it’s taken him time to process just how dope his freestyle was, doesn’t add anything to the freestyle, but it’s a good appraisal of it. In a minute and a half, Ludacris freestyles a better verse than most could write.
For people who aren’t mic gods, it isn’t like that. A few times I’ve heard someone drop a great verse, I’ve been like “word, that was freestyled?”, and I’ve heard the rappers answer “Nah, that was a pre.” There’s always some guilt in their voices, they know you shouldn’t pass off a pre as a free, claim you’re something you’re not. I’ve heard too many average verses which rhyme, which have no screwups, but sound like every other verse in every other cypher. And I’ve heard great freestyles, from cats who can’t normally rap that well, who just go in for two minutes like they can’t even stop, who have the people nodding to their lyrics, not even hearing the flaws in the moment, who only stop rapping when they’re physically out of breath. Once in a while, I’ve been that cat.
