Follower the Leader
Rhythmic formation is a type of poetic technique that doesn’t earn the academic respect as other techniques. It’s overlooked because most people don’t know how to truly listen to it. There are two main factors to keep in mind when listening to hip-hop, are the patterns that are used and the intricacies of the rhyme, which is a fancy phrase for flow, it’s how the words fit with the music or beat. This type of poetry is found in modern music as well, many artists such as LL Cool J use this formation to help writing music. Artists such as Biggie Smalls manipulated the use of stressed syllables in words changing the way to create consistent patterns. Flow is a big part in this type of poetry, it helps allow rhymes to be vocalized.
This form consist of bars and beats. A bar is a line of music with 4 beats. There could be any amount of words in between the bars as long as theirs 4 beats. B.I.G is constantly changing his beat pattern, it’s always changing through the song, theirs also many different rhyme schemes within the poem. Changing the patterns helps make the songs more smooth.
‘Follow the Leader’ by Eric B. & Rakim uses slant rhymes in the poem’s rhyme scheme. “I can take a phrase that’s rarely heard / Flip it — now it’s a daily word” (Eric B & Rakim) They used words like heard, and word, which are considered slant rhymes to create a rhyme scheme in the song. The function of the slant rhymes is to keep the flow in the rhyme scheme, it adds stress to the meaning and allows the flow to bring the whole piece together. Some bars had rhymes throughout their whole lines.
