It’s rare to find examples of good musicianship in rap/hip-hop beats. Too often beats are drab 4 or 8 bar loops with little or no progression, that serve as suitable backdrops for rhymes, but present very little of interest for more open-minded listeners.
Being a fan of Progressive Rock, Progressive Metal and Fusion bands such as Planet X, Liquid Tension Experiment, Ring Of Fire and others, I have a love of complex musical concepts, particularly odd time signatures and the shifting and manipulation of beats by drummers in such genres.
That’s why I was both surprised and delighted when I recently listened through Eminem’s Relapse. Though the album was mostly a disappointment, the closing track, Undergound, contains some very, very cool rhythmic metamorphosis that is both supremely impressive and – so far as I know – unprecedented in commercial rap. [To listen to the track, click here.]
Following the free-time intro, the anthemic chorus kicks in, ostensibly in 5/8. Brilliant! I have long waited for someone to rap in an odd time signature, not counting 3 of course, and now I was going to witness one of the most gifted rappers of all time do it. However, when the first verse hits, Em’s flow is in 4/4 and seems disjointed, an out-of-place rhythmic hodge-podge. Naw.
At first I was disappointed, another opportunity to do something unique and potentially groundbreaking squandered, but after further scrutiny I realised the beat was far more complex than I had assumed. Though it sounds on first listen that the chorus is in 5/8 and the verse 4/4 – with perhaps a tempo change separating them, or some quavers dropped here and there – this is not at all the case. The beat is in fact 4/4 throughout – sitting somewhere around a comfortable 90 bpm – with the relatively simple drum loop remaining unchanged. The chorus, though it sounds like it’s in 5/8, is in fact comprised of sets of quaver quintuplets, the groupings of which begin on the ‘4 and’ of the last bar of the verse.
Yeah, I know right? Let me explain.
Below is an abstraction of the drum beat from the verse, (for non-drummers, from top to bottom the notes represent the hi-hat, snare and bass drum).
the drums, the drums
The bass, snare and hi-hat remain constant throughout the track, perpetuating the 4/4, with the vocals and strings shifting the beat and implying the 5/8. As mentioned above, the vocals and strings are quaver quintuplets – with each group of 5 notes distributed evenly into the space of 4 quavers – and the groupings begin, with the bass drum, on the final semiquaver beat of the previous bar. A picture will perhaps better demonstrate.
Below is the final bar of the first verse – at 01:38 – leading into the first three bars of the chorus, (apologies for my crude notation, my illegal version of Sibelius committed suicide).
Verse 1 into the chorus
The result is a brilliantly crafted, intelligent rap song, and once you get used to the jarring transition between the two feels, you can appreciate the true brilliance in the track’s composition, and enjoy Em’s dynamic flow and relatively strong rhymes.
Credit for this rhythmic ingenuity must either go to Trevor Lawrence Jr., a highly skilled drummer and prolific producer, or keyboardists Mark Batson and Dewaun Parker, three of the track’s five credited writers. My guess is that Lawrence was the mastermind behind it, as this is the sort of musical japery that skilled drummers revel in. Dr. Dre and Eminem on the other hand, though a brilliant producer and rapper respectively, are no musicians.
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