The Art Of Making A Rap Album (Article)
Hello world. You know what it is, Sky Bento here once again on the check in. Big Bento Energy is most definitely in total effect. Hope you & yours are doing well, knowing the vibes, protecting your mental health, and drinking your water.
So I’m a teacher right. And I’m also a rapper. And I’m also a producer and many other things. All in all, I consider myself a musician but enough about that, teaching pays my bills. My students know of my musical endeavors and walking into work today, one asked me when my next album was coming out. So I says, “Don’t nobody listen to albums no more, y’all just listen to 30 seconds of a song and make a Tiktok to it”. And I was only partially joking. The only joke was that I said NOBODY when in fact I still do listen to albums front to back as a full listening experience. We live in an increasingly singles-driven market, with many artists pretty much remaking the same song over and over again. While I do like how this can help artists further develop their own distinct sound, there’s nothing like the experience an album provides. So as an artist and as a fan, I thought why don’t I go over what I think makes a real album.
As always these are my opinions and do not reflect the views of TDN as a staff, label, or a m***********g crew. Feel free to argue with me about my opinions on Twitter @plzsaythebento
Iight, let’s get into it.
THE INTRO
I think it goes without saying that a good albums starts with a good intro. Literally. Intros set the tone for the rest of the experience. From the first note, chord, or lyric, you should feel yourself getting prepared for the rest of the album. This can be accomplished in a multitude of ways, sometimes not with a song at all. 50 Cent started his classic debut Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ with the sound of literal change dropping. Some albums like XXXTentacion’s 17 benefit from not having a song as an intro. “The Explanation” begins the record by literally explaining what the album represents to him and what you should come into it expecting for the best experience. This works because the album is meant to be an intimate, emotional experience, so a debrief from the artist himself with no accompaniment goes a long way toward connecting artist with listener.
Other albums like Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III benefit from give the artist a chance to go dumb and bar out like “3Peat”. In the years since Meek’s classic intro, it’s become increasingly popular to use a beat switch to really drive home the point of the journey an artist is taking you through. On Dreams & Nightmares it works especially well because of the duality between the first half representing dreams and beginning with lush pianos and strings and establishing an inspirational tone before it explodes into a choir-backed trap beat with darker sounding pianos and a whole lot of bass (obviously representing nightmares). This formula has been repeated many times like Drake on “Tuscan Leather” off his best album. These records show a lot of skill and set a tone that usually lets us view the artist through a larger than life lens, which works very well for albums that center themselves on a rags-to-riches narrative or a coming of age story.
Track 2 & Beyond
Where an album really differentiates itself from other albums is its track 2. I’ve gone on record as saying track 2 is the most important part of an album. Track 2 tends to be the quintessential song of an album, sonically speaking. When you think of what Illmatic sounds like, you think of “NY State Of Mind”. Whereas an intro can set a tone and establish a voice, you can think of track 2 as sort of like a mission statement. Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers features “N95” as track 2, a record about taking off one’s own metaphorical mask and seeing who we really are in the real world. This is a fitting mission statement for an album about his own savior complex and admitted flaws as a man. Ye started The College Dropout with “We Don’t Care”, a record about following your own intuition and being/believing in yourself against all odds. The album then proceeds to tell a story about breaking out of the mold of expectations and pursuing his own personal greatness at all costs. The 1-2 punch that is an album’s first two tracks should give listeners a great idea of what the album is all about.
Themes and cohesiveness
The audience should be well aware of an album’s theme by track 2, if not right away then at least on a repeated listen. The theme of an album is just like the theme of a book or a movie. It could be super apparent right away and given more context as the experience continues on. It could be a title track or something way later in the album that states it clearly, like on Young Jeezy’s “The Inspiration”. It could be just planting the seeds in tracks 1 & 2 that the rest of the tracklist will follow, coming together as a guided experience. I personally think track 3 or 4 is a great time to introduce some variation. Maybe choose a different production style or introduce an interesting or unexpected feature. An album should not be stagnant and feel like one long song, despite aiming for cohesiveness. The records should all fit together but still take you on a journey. What is a movie with no conflict? Napoleon Dynamite was great, but there’s just something about stories having an actual arc that is just innately satisfying to a human heart. So if an album is about an addiction to prescription drugs or something, maybe track 3 is about struggling with the urge to relapse and that could play out in stark contrast to the previous songs about the high itself and the decision to fight for sobriety. Just a thought.
Even stronger than my opinion on track 2’s is my opinion on an album’s cohesiveness. Cohesiveness really gives an album its identity. Typically, this appears easier to accomplish with shorter albums like Pusha T’s DAYTONA. Less room for filler means an artist can really focus on the message, theme, or narrative of an album. Or at least accomplish a good consistent vibe like with Young Thug’s JEFFERY (Free YSL). Like I said above, this does not mean that the songs all sound of feel the same, but rather that they go together real bad like Caresha say. These could be through similar production choices, similar vocal stylings, similar lyricism, or other similarities. It could even be some combination of them all like the out of this world flows, pronounced nasally delivery, and spacey production of OutKast’s ATLiens. But there should also be enough differentiation that there is room for experimentation. To make these outliers fit better the overall album, you have interludes and transitions. Whenever an album is about to take an unexpected turn, it should probably be signaled by some sort of preparatory transition. Preventing audio whiplash is key to an enjoyable listening experience. It’s important to strike a balance between an album dragging from too many songs in a row feeling the same, and songs being all over the place and introducing new sounds seemingly at random. Ye’s The Life Of Pablo is an extreme example of this, but in it’s case the chaos IS THE THEME. On the other hand you have Yeezus (Ye really know how to make a record), which takes you through a bunch of abrasive industrial sounds before throwing you a curveball of an outdo by returning to the sound of the Kanye we all know and love for its conclusion, “Bound 2”. This does provide a bit of a whiplash, but much the TLOP it works to the album’s theme as it closes out the angry rebellious Yeezus with a calm, intimately nostalgic sounding love song.
How to end an album
Which brings me to my final point - the conclusion. Good albums should be crafted with replay value in mind. Proper sequencing of songs goes a long way toward making the journey seamless but naturally what we remember most when anything is over is how it ends. So of course, you want your album to end on a high point. The conclusion should wrap up the message or story of an album in a logical way. Bonus points if the last second or so ties into the very first sound of an album. This can create an endless loop so that on repeat the album doesn’t have an easily discernible end, or it can connect in some other way like the same chord being played like on Tyler the Creator’s IGOR. Regardless of how an album nudges you toward starting it over from the beginning - it should have a sense of finality and completeness. The tone should’ve remained consistent enough throughout the project from track-to-track that there’s just something apparently different about the final song. It could be an epic closer that plays up previous sounds or it could be a stripped-back dreamless track. Whatever it is, it should reach a logical crescendo. Even if the final track as a whole does not have this sense, the end of the final track should still have a feeling of “wow, that was an album”. Roddy Ricch’s Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial ends with the record “War Baby”, which by itself may be another Roddy Ricch song, not unlike the rest of his album. But this melodic trap banger separates itself at the end by layer a gospel choir behind Roddy’s final hook. This ties the album together on a repeat listen as you may now notice mentions of prayer and similarly gospel-influenced melodies throughout the project. This is the kind of subtle consistency that separates great albums from good albums.
So class,
What have we learned here today about making albums? Catch a listener’s attention with an intro. Establish a mission statement with track two and continue to establish the listening experience through consistency and cohesiveness. But do not play it too safe and fall into redundancy, else an album will get stale. Variety is the spice of life, but spice is a seasoning not a main flavor. You don’t put steak on your pepper. So make sure there is an established sound for an album so that there is a foundation to stray from in the first place. Just don’t stray too far, and don’t stay too long in any one zone. Detours should be signaled with interludes and transitions, before you finally arrive at your destination. At the conclusion an album should make you think back to your favorite moments and want to relive them, encouraging replay value. I haven’t touched on album artwork much, maybe that’ll be a separate article, but these are all important parts of the listening experience that tie a project together to match its cover. Following these “rules” might not make you go platinum, but it’ll definitely turn a collection of songs into a full listening experience worthy of being compared to our favorite books and movies. Music is a very valuable art form. Let’s treat it this way.