This article is about rap song ideas and is for the beginners’ section, but some of your intermediate rappers may still learn a thing or two by checking this out.
Content in a hip hop song is also referred to as subject matter or rap song ideas.
Subject matter is massively important. If you don’t want to be a bland rapper… you need some form of subject matter or rap song ideas to help you stand out.
Something to talk about that is actually intriguing and keeps the listener engaged.
When you combine the right subject matter with the right melodies, delivery, flow and lyrics… you have a great song on your hands.
Controversial Content
I am starting with this one for rap song ideas because this type of content is going to actually spark something in the listeners mind that makes them want to listen more and state their opinion on the topic.
Controversial things have always helped artist builds their careers over the years.
Whether artists are dissing each other or talking shit about a celebrity or something in the media, it is controversial and intriguing to listeners.
Eminem’s entire career was built primarily upon controversial content that stirred up people’s emotions and made them talk about him more and more.
If you can come up with a rap song idea that will get people protesting against you…. you’re probably pretty well known.
Real Life Content
The rap song ideas list had to have real life hip hop content included.
This is when you are rapping about actual life experiences.
A great example of a real life content song would be this song here.
Every person on the planet can relate to it in some way.
Things that you have went through that made you who you are today.
Any situations you may have encountered on your path to this moment right now.
Your grandma dying, your mother leaving when you were young, your brother getting shot… you getting shot… getting bad grades in school because they called you stupid but look at you now!
Anything that you have been thru is REAL LIFE content in rap / hip hop music.
The best thing about real life content in hip hop is that it has already written itself… you just have to figure out how to make it rhyme.
Fictional Content
This is another obvious of the rap song ideas.
In rap, fictional content (fake/not real content) is all from the imagination.
Some people don’t have real life experiences to actually talk about and they have to rely on all the other forms of subject matter to create music.
Fictional content is definitely one of the most used in hip hop today.
You are only limited to what you can think of with fictional content… so it’s like you are writing a book about anything that you can possibly imagine… how could you not write something crazy and great if you sat down long enough?
Conscious Content
Conscious content is usually positive or calls for some type of change in political or social issues.
That or it explores subjects in ways that are insightful.
It talks about things that truly matter and causes and struggles that the artist wants to bring to the masses thru their music.
Artists that I’d consider conscious: Kendrick Lamar, J Cole at times
Party Music And Club Content
If the artist is talking about the club, partying or having fun in general, the subject matter is party/club.
If your life is all about partying… then it makes sense for you to make party records.
Or if you want to have a song that boosts peoples spirits and gets people out of their seats at clubs or parties than this is what you should be making.
I’d like to warn you that it is not always seen as the best idea for a hip hop artist to just randomly make PARTY SONGS without it having some form of creativity behind it.
You can’t just deliver a song about partying in between all of your real talk songs and expect it not to peterb your listener.
In my personal opinion doing these types of songs is very sell out ish unless it is approached with your personal touch that makes it truly you.
Example
For instance, I made a party song because someone told me to make a party song… so I made the party song about how the guy told me to make a party song when I refused to make a party song forever. That made it funny and extremely lovable.
Now if I had just randomly made a song about partying without it being in that context, my fans probably would have seen the song as sell out ish.
The song was created, but it was still ME because of the way I created it. My fans got that.
Artists I’d consider Party / Club: Lil Jon – Pitbull – Flo Rida
Notice the names sell more records than normal hip hop artists, but don’t have nearly the same amount of respect inside of the hip hop community because party records aren’t so much “HIP HOP” as they are “RECORDS THAT SELL”. Hence why people would call you a sell-out if this was all you made.
It’s hard to get someone to understand YOU and YOUR struggles if the only songs you make are about partying. I feel like artists that only make this kind of music will die off as soon as they stop releasing music because there was nothing for their fans to actually grab onto while they listened to this person’s music.
Battle Rap / Bragging Content
This type of content is where the artist is bragging, using insults, disses and put downs against either a person in front them, an adversary or person they don’t like that exists or even just mentioning these things as if a real person existed.
You will often hear rappers mention how they are the best or how great they are.
This has been a part of emceeing since the beginning.
Conceptual Content
With this form of hip hop subject matter you create an idea and then write a song AROUND the idea.
An example from me would be my song ‘God Fearing‘.
The entire song is written around the reasons on why we fear the people at the upper echelons in success who consider themselves Gods.
The entire song is focused on that subject. It doesn’t jump around lyrically or content wise like most hip hop songs.
Another example would be TI ‘Dope Man’ where he tells you exactly how to sell dope and which order of moves that you’d make in order to get bigger in the drug game.
He never changes the subject or goes off subject the entire song.
Rule of thumb here is that if your lyrics don’t fit the theme of the song, toss them or save them for another song.
Story Content
I hope you realize by now that you can combine numerous forms of hip hop content to create a song.
Story content is obviously content where a story is told in the lyrics.
One of the best examples of a story song that everyone is familiar with is Stan by Eminem.
He tells the story of a die hard fan creatively through letters that the fan had been sending him.
You follow along for the ride and then there is a twist ending.
Another rap story example is I got a story to tell by Notorious BIG.
Or I used to love HER by Common
Rewind by Nas is super dope too. He tells the story in reverse.
Humorous Content
Funny content is always a great way to entertain people.
This type of music / rap content is when you are making fun of situations or life experiences. That or you are being funny to make the listener laugh and keep their attention.
I rely heavily on this type of content since it is really my thing to be funny and entertaining.
I was always a class clown and getting in trouble for that when I wasn’t getting in trouble for fighting other students or breaking my teachers legs or punching teachers assistants in the jaw in school.
My remixes of songs or even punchline driven songs like ‘Dragon Sneeze‘ are fueled by humorous witty punchlines.
Things like
“Apple a day keeps the Dr. Away/ But no one told that to Steve Jobs, HEY!/”
If you don’t get that, my punchlines are typically quadruple layered with word witty wordplay… I’m not going to bother explaining it.
Other ones such as
I go in on the beat… like someone who is pigeon toed has their feet ‘go in’. And I have lots of witty 1 liners… like Taco bell sauce has on their packets…
These are just a few examples of witty humorous lines.
(W)rapping Up
You don’t have to stick to ONE type of content when you write a song.
Be creative and combine a bunch of types of content and create something NEW that makes you stand out.
A random example of combined content would be… idk.. something like Wiz Khalifa.
All he does is talk about drugs, bitches and money. So technically he is combining bragging content with party content. Before he blew up and he was talking about these things he was also combining fictional content because he didn’t actually have the bitches and cars yet lol.
You get what I’m saying.
As you can see there are MANY MANY different forms of content.
I know it doesn’t seem like there is that much to write about but there truly is.
After reading this article I know your mind has probably been opened up a lot more to seeing all of the random things you could be writing about.
I wanted to put this into the beginners section because it is a staple to have a firm understanding of all of the content you can be writing about as an artist.
Artists are supposed to be creative creatures and I want to help you expand your mind as far I can to help you grow your style.
I hope this list of rap song ideas helped you out!
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– Level 3
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