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Rant & Rave

By Aaron Esteban

Tuesday, August 10, 1999

Sophisticated word play
given a bum rap

HAVE you ever been to a concert with hip-hop emcees performing? I did and the scene was hype to the fullest. I've been to the Roots, Wu-Tang and Yellowman concerts. These concerts were filled with people who kept it real for hip-hop. Each of these concerts were so live they made me and my friends flow.

The type of emcees that are in these groups I named are definitionist, my type of style of emceeing. Emcees are the people who put poetry into their words. I started calling myself an emcee when I was a freshman, but on the reals I wasn't all that. My friend just got turntables and mics and I went to check it out. Right then and there I tried to flow.

Getting started was the hardest part of becoming an emcee. I started flowing simple, as in using regular words. It took me a while to improve my vocabulary and understand definitions. Writing helped me out big time because I saw improvement each time I wrote a page.

An example of my lyrics: "I spin the world on its axis peeps are frustrated from taxes but I brake backs like quarterback sacks."

There are all sorts of emcees such as pimps, hustlas, gangstas, definitionist. A rappers with the pimp style delivers poetry about himself and how many girls he's been with. An example of a pimp rapper is Too Short.

Hustlas are emcees that have nothing but money on their minds. Next is a gangsta rapper. This style uses explicit vocabulary in violent poetry.

Last but not least is the definitionist. A definitionist type of emcee is like a book of vocabulary, metaphors, antonyms, synonyms. This type of grammar is what you'll find in their lyrics. The difference between this style and the others I mentioned is that the definitionist vocabulary is more sophisticated than that of pimps, hustlas or gangstas. Being a pimp, hustla, or gangsta in society will get emcees some notoriety, but they won't be able to keep it or increase their fame.

People think this is emcee stuff is nonsense and that it makes younger generations do violent acts. But being a true definitionist emcee is all about knowledge. An emcee keeps it real.

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Aaron Esteban is a 1999 graduate of Kaiser High School.

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Rant & Rave is a Tuesday Star-Bulletin feature
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