As an avid freestyler, and one who is fairly verbally fluent from having read a lot as well as naturally (at least as indicated by my near perfect verbal SAT and GRE scores), I'd like to comment to corroborate and add a caveat
One can, through practice, obtain unconscious competence with respect to rhythmic cadences ("flow") and rhyme schemes, and just freestyle with minimal conscious awareness. Most cyphers you see, that is performances of random freestylers, is that. Often, it can still exhibit vague poetic symbolism, but typically does not make much coherent sense.
However, when I perform my solo act, I do make an effort to make sense and entertain. I generally take questions from the audience and then try to answer in freestyle rap form and tell an entertaining story. If I am on my game that evening, I do create an off-the-fly sensible story and get a fairly high laughs per minute.
In this case flowing while keeping in mind narrative and opportunities for funny punchlines is an extremely cerebral exercise and I am usually mentally fried after 20 minutes.
Harry Mack with his Guerilla Bars series also freestyles based on what he sees around him, which is similar.
How many people even really did freestyle rap? I always thought it was a 90s/00s Hollywood cliche to pretend black people in the hood settle their problems with words and art
* "Rap battle content dominates YouTube, with individual battles accumulating tens of millions of views. The Urban Roosters YouTube channel has nearly 1.6 billion views, while Red Bull Batalla’s channel surpasses 1.8 billion."
* "FMS regularly sells out 5,000+ seat venues, with top battles drawing hundreds of thousands of concurrent online viewers. Its biggest events have packed stadiums of 15,000+ spectators."
* "Companies like Pepsi, Red Bull and JD Sports have already backed rap battles, betting on its rising commercial appeal."
As an avid freestyler, and one who is fairly verbally fluent from having read a lot as well as naturally (at least as indicated by my near perfect verbal SAT and GRE scores), I'd like to comment to corroborate and add a caveat
One can, through practice, obtain unconscious competence with respect to rhythmic cadences ("flow") and rhyme schemes, and just freestyle with minimal conscious awareness. Most cyphers you see, that is performances of random freestylers, is that. Often, it can still exhibit vague poetic symbolism, but typically does not make much coherent sense.
However, when I perform my solo act, I do make an effort to make sense and entertain. I generally take questions from the audience and then try to answer in freestyle rap form and tell an entertaining story. If I am on my game that evening, I do create an off-the-fly sensible story and get a fairly high laughs per minute.
In this case flowing while keeping in mind narrative and opportunities for funny punchlines is an extremely cerebral exercise and I am usually mentally fried after 20 minutes.
Harry Mack with his Guerilla Bars series also freestyles based on what he sees around him, which is similar.
I’m gonna make a diss track on you 😡
How many people even really did freestyle rap? I always thought it was a 90s/00s Hollywood cliche to pretend black people in the hood settle their problems with words and art
Good question. I found a recent article about the commercialization of freestyle rap battles https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2025/02/13/rap-battles-are-now-big-business-billions-of-views-millions-in-profits-and-cannabis-wants-in/
* "Rap battle content dominates YouTube, with individual battles accumulating tens of millions of views. The Urban Roosters YouTube channel has nearly 1.6 billion views, while Red Bull Batalla’s channel surpasses 1.8 billion."
* "FMS regularly sells out 5,000+ seat venues, with top battles drawing hundreds of thousands of concurrent online viewers. Its biggest events have packed stadiums of 15,000+ spectators."
* "Companies like Pepsi, Red Bull and JD Sports have already backed rap battles, betting on its rising commercial appeal."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccvB00h6EnI
Interesting article, but would have read better with less ChatGPT-generated content.
For example?