Why the GOATS Were Young: Age, Poetry, and Lyricism In Hip Hop/Rap Music
Comparative analysis in hip hop/rap music is always a tricky endeavor. Taking different rappers and different catalogs and different eras and comparing them together? That tends to yield more super fan-based arguments than it yields insight on the world’s #1 music genre. However, there are those rare cases where empirical evidence is undeniable. Those cases where, when we look at the facts on the surface and beneath, we find a consensus. And when we look at the GOATS of hip hop/rap music, now roughly after 50 years of its history, we can see this level of undeniable consensus is one particular area: Many of the GOATS were young when they made their marks on hip hop/rap music.
But why is that?
To answer this question, we have to look at the sign of the times. This means, we have to pause the reality of today’s information machine — the internet — and travel back to a time when information wasn’t just a click away. A time when you couldn’t quickly read Twitter threads and commentaries and act like you were more knowledgeable on a subject than you actually were. A time when information was hard earned. A time when information was gathered, for some more than others, out of curiosity and a hunger to learn.
Poetry In Black Cultural Spaces… and More Words Per Stanza
By the early ‘70s, poetry in Black cultural spaces across America’s inner cities had become something powerful. Poetry in this vein wasn’t the stuff of kids nursery rhymes — It wasn’t a docile thing. Poetry, especially against the backdrop of Black power movement and the streets-to-prision pipeline, was a mechanism used to fight and cope with oppression. And since Black music artists like Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, and Isaac Hayes, just to name a few, were all considered to be poets, in addition to being singer-songwriters, poetry was not only prestigious, it was popular!
Such a climate placed a premium on words (especially slang). The ability to express yourself though poetry was considered a valuable thing during these times. So the capacity to distinguish yourself through poetry was absolutely priceless.
Looking closer at poetry, one of the chief mediums of the written word, we understand that poetry depends a great deal on the choice of words for its impact. Unlike a short story, a novella, or a novel, with a poem — and here I’m talking about the short form that is commonly associated with modern poetry, not the epic, book-length poetry of John Milton — the author has less time to make his point. Couple that with the standard 3-minute song length, and you see how a rapper’s time is both limited and liberating all at once. Traditional songs can do well with just three 4-line stanzas and a 1-line refrain repeated to taste. Rappers can’t get away that! Rap songs, however, require “bars” — more words per stanza.
The Purpose of Teaching Poetry In School
Here, let’s pause for a moment and think about how poetry was taught in school back in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s. Just as music education was considered to be a vital part of a healthy education — this was before music education became a casualty of budgets at schools everywhere — poetry was once seen as one of the best ways to help students develop writing skills. Of course, implicit in the purpose of teaching poetry to young students was the aim of getting students to develop a love for reading.
You see, whether or not you have math skills beyond basic arithmetic, multiplication, and division; whether or not you go to or graduate from college; whether you take up a job where you use your head or hands — There is no skill more important to your personal development, more critical to your ability to advance in life, than reading. And reading comprehension is developed both through regular reading and writing. Since poetry is the most accessible, least expensive form of writing (practically all of us have tried our hand at, whether in school or private notebooks, journals, and…rhyme books), it was always considered as a fundamental teaching aide. One byproduct of this was emergence countless budding poets.
The Chief Currency of Poets
Vocabulary is the chief currency of poets. Sure, you gotta have style, you gotta have a voice, a recognizable sense within the poem. You gotta be good at arranging words. But without the vocabulary, a poem can’t really cook. And your vocabulary, poet or not, can only be developed in two ways: By what you hear and by what you read.
And those who read better, hear better. And those who read and hear better, write better!
Now, let’s also remember the fact that Vocabulary is also, without a doubt, built up orally. The first five years of our lives, we mostly learn things orally, not by reading or writing. We pick up and mimic what we hear. Then as we learn to read, we don’t simply add new words to our growing vocabulary, we also draw connections between the words we already know. In this paradigm, the poets develop a parallel sense for the construction and arrangement of words. Think about how this translates to a rapper’s rhyme skills.
Now let’s turn to information.
Information Gathering and Intellect: A Hunger For Knowledge, A Curiosity About the World Around You
In the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, did teenage Black kids spend hours in the library?
Nas dropped out of high school when he was 14 years old; at 19, he recorded Illmatic (1994), arguably the greatest hip hop/rap album of all time. Kool G Rap was already full-on in the streets by 16; at 18, he recorded “It’s A Demo,” a song that pioneered the multisyllabic rhyme style and help change the face of hip hop/rap lyricism forever.
LL Cool J dropped his debut album, Radio (1985), at 17, and by his account, he’d been maneuvering since age 15 (not spending hours inside a library). Rakim, who changed the entire course of hip hop/rap lyricism on his first album, was 19 when Eric B & Rakim’s debut album, Paid in Full (1987), was released.
Ice Cube was 19 when lead N.W.A.’s powerful debut album, Straight Outta Compton (1988). Run and D.M.C. (Run-D.M.C.) were both 19 when they recorded “It’s Like That”, “Rock Box”, “Hollis Crew,” and “Hard Times” — All songs would appear on their debut album, Run-D.M.C. (1984), an album that catapulted hip hop/rap music to another stratosphere.
Big Daddy Kane was 19 when he recorded his debut album, Long Live the Kane (1988), an album in which he introduced what I call the “showmanship delivery.” Prodigy (of Mobb Deep) was 19 when he wrote and performed one of the greatest verses in hip hop/rap music history: verse 1 from “Shook Ones, pt 2”, from the classic album The Infamous.
Snoop Doog appeared on “Nuthin But A G-Thang” when he was 21, and by that time, he’d already earned a name for himself as a respected gang member. Slick Rick, the greatest storytelling rapper in hip hop/rap history, was 23 when he earned that prestigious mark on his debut album, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick (1988).
Like Sick Rick, Raekwon was 23 when the world first heard him on Wu-Tang Clan’s rap shattering “Protect Ya Neck” in 1993. Kendrick Lamar had released a number of mixtapes years before dropping his debut album, Section.80, we was 24.
What these 12 GOATS illustrate is the fact that, while the library is great place for information, you need not “spend hours” in the library to read a book or a newspaper. Nor do you need to “spend hours” in a library to develop your vocabulary or have a hunger for knowledge and a curiosity about the world around you. The quest for knowledge and enlightening information is not an institutional thing, it’s a personal choice. And it can be manifested in many different days.
Equipped with basic communication skills — i.e. the ability to listen to, talk to, and express your ideas to others — and basic reading skills, we learn how to gather information. And there’s no equality when it comes to information gathering. Some of us are more enthusiastic about it than others; some of us are simply better at than others. Some of us see information gathering as a vital part of everyday life, something that you turn on regularly; while others see information gathering as a minor tool that we use just when we need to know something.
For the poet, information gathering is always on, it never turns off! It lives in the forefront and in the background. Which means that the poet is constantly adding to and building up his vocabulary. In this way, the poet uses his intellect differently than the average person. And I should note, as philosopher Thomas Sowell has observed, “Intellect is not wisdom.” Moreover, the central problem with the modern concept of intellect is that it is nothing more than the memorization of information.
Poets don’t simply memorize information. Poets apply information. Poets execute the ideas that they secure from their information gathering. Poets use awareness, deduction, logic, and the wisdom gained from personal experience to apply lessons to the information that they gather. This invariably leads to the development of a strong vocabulary, which is essential to a top-level rapper (lyricist).
And let’s be clear about something here. A strong vocabulary isn’t about “big words”. A strong vocabulary is, above all, about the command, the mastery, of the common words and language that you already know. Someone who knows 1% of the Oxford dictionary can be 100 times more expressive and convincing than someone who knows 50% of it. You think it’s an accident that practically all of the GOATS of hip hop/rap music have some strong connection to or are at least familiar with the streets? Again, most of the GOATS of hip hop/rap music didn’t cut their teeth inside libraries — Doesn’t mean they never stepped foot inside a library, and it certainly doesn’t mean they didn’t read or gather information in other equally useful ways. In any case, having an “expanded vocabulary” doesn’t ensure that a rapper will be a GOAT. It can help, but it’s not necessary.
Thing is, you don’t read just to pick up new words, although that is sometimes a byproduct of reading. You read to gather information; you read to learn something. For the poet, this means learning more about the words he already knows. It means learning new arrangements of words that he already knows. And this leads directly to finding synonyms for words that he already knows. Which leads to developing a better understanding for how to construct metaphors, punchlines, analogies, and detailed accounts of stories and events. Notice how all of the GOATS can do these things exceptionally well?
What about listening and talking to gather information? There’s parallel. When you listen and talk, you may sometimes pick up new words — especially depending on who you’re listening to or with whom you’re talking to — but more importantly, you learn more about how words (mostly the ones you already know) sound. This leads directly to a deeper understanding of the rhythm of words and how they can go together in song. You think it’s an accident that all of the GOATS of hip hop/rap music are masters of rhythm?
Poetry and Lyricism Learned and the Idea of Being A Poet
So there’s our compass. In the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, the decades wherein all the GOATS of hip hop/rap music were born, poetry was taught as something powerful. And by “taught,” I do not merely mean taught in schools. Poetry was taught every day in the streets! Poetry was taught (and learned) every time a young man tried to “rap” to a girl. If you had strong rap — if a girl liked your rap — that was really another way of saying that you were…a poet. Back in the day (forgive me for sounding like my father), you couldn’t pull girls with weak rap; you couldn’t say the same thing that every guy said if you expected to win over a girl (at least not with words alone).
The GOATS were young because the idea of being a poet — the idea of distinguishing yourself through the written and oral word — was fostered in them at a young age. And as hip hop/rap music made the leap from park jam cassette tapes to recording studios to a bonafide commercial music genre, the GOATS who emerged between the mid-‘80s and mid-‘90s brought with them their poetic sense. Coupled with hip hop beats — by and large sampled-based beats — this poetic sense evolved into the specific lyrical sense that continues to distinguish hip hop/rap music today.
What We Find Today
Why is the age, poetry, and lyricism parallel less prevalent with today’s youngest rappers? Today, image is popular. Looking the part is popular. Fitting in is popular. Sounding alike is popular. None of these things have any need for poetry. Put another way, many of today’s rappers can still be successful without being particularly poetic.
Still, despite a huge wave of mediocrity, top-level lyricism does exist today; and it’s not hard to find. But even though top-level lyricism lives on in today’s hip hop/rap music, there is, overall, less of a premium on lyricism — less premium on being a poet — among most of today’s rappers. And I wouldn’t chalk all of this up to a mere disinterest in poetry. Again, for all intents and purposes, for the last 10 years or so, it hasn’t been necessary to be poetic if you want to be successful in hip hop/rap music. That’s not a critique, that’s a fact, a sign of the times. There has been a sameness to lyricism today. I offer no opinion on whether this lack of premium on lyricism or this overall sameness is a good or bad thing because there has always been degrees of talent that separated rappers (poets), and there has always been degrees of sameness to some extent. Listen to King Tee’s “Let’s Dance” (1988) and tell me where he sounded like he was from. Here’s a clue: King Tee is from Compton, not New York.
Sameness notwithstanding, over the past several years, I have increasingly noticed a return to poetry, what some are describing as “rapping rapping”. If this trend holds, and I believe it will especially in the light of the impact of the 2024 (2025?) Drake/Kendrick Lamar rap beef, there will be a number of new editions to the young GOATS list.
For a more in-depth discussion of hip hop/rap music and the art of sampling, read my book The Art of Sampling: The Sampling Tradition of Hip Hop/Rap Music and Copyright Law, 3rd Edition.
