How To Freestyle

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of freestyling. For most of us, however, we naturally doubt our abilities to do so, and limit our opportunities to feel like that to recording ourselves alone or just around close friends and family, with the usual caveat of “I’m really bad at this but...”

Well, stop that. Freestyling is a craft like any other, and you have to work to improve your skills in any musical category. Eminem, Lauryn Hill, Busta Rhymes, Jay Z, Nas, Kid Cudi, and any famous emcee you’ve heard freestyle has worked on his or her craft. In fact, “8 Mile” is literally about overcoming fears of performing in front of a crowd and honing your abilities to the point where the competition doesn’t matter - even if you’re your own biggest roadblock.

In order to get started with freestyling, or improve your skills if you’ve already gotten over the fear, we’ve identified four areas to focus on improvement for any level of freestyler: learning to rap without stopping, creating a unique voice and delivery, and improving your vocabulary.

Learn to rap on and on, and on, and on and on

Desmond Spann (AKA DLux the Light), Lessonface’s top rap teacher (who offers free 15-minute trial lessons, by the way), has four suggestions for ways to avoid stopping a freestyle because you don’t know what to do next. Watch the video below to see Spann explain thinking and rhyming simultaneously, using associations, trying opposites, and word play.

Hone your own unique voice

Lots of people try to emulate, and that’s a great place to get started with rap and lyrics. But after you’ve grown comfortable with your lyrical content, it’s time to create or refocus your delivery. That means improving your rap voice. Nobody wants to listen to a whiny little voice talking about how tough he is or a sloth-like delivery from a rapper talking about “how fast she spits it.”

You’ve got to match your lyrical content with your delivery.

Spann has three more suggestions for improving your rap voice: vocal inflection, vocal exercise, and love. Watch the video below to find out what he means by “love.”

Up your vocab

Ever seen a dictionary? That’s your friend. Dictionary.com can set up alerts to teach you a word a day, and while it may be unilikely you’ll use “thusly” too often in your raps, there’s no sense in missing an opportunity to add something unique to your repetoire.

Another option is to include other languages in your flows. You’ll want to make sure to match any efforts in another language to your audience (i.e. don’t spit a whole verse in Arabic to a crowd of Spanish-speakers), but a word or two here and there can help no matter who’s listening. WordReference.com is a great resource for learning words in another language.

Above all, remember to keep learning fun. Stress is a killer, so take breaks, listen to great emcees for inspiration, and study with experts and you’ll be on your way.