rappers haven't written songs since the 90s

Rappers don’t write. They don’t sit down, pen and paper in hand, labouring over lyrics. They don’t enter the recording booth prepped with prose. They don’t come to the mic with fully formed songs, ready to record. At least, they don’t anymore.

In the early days of Hip-Hop when recording was done on tape and studio time was limited, written preparation was necessary. You had a finite amount of takes to land the track so you needed to know what you were going to say ahead of time. However, as the digital age emerged and pro tools were able to handle more, in terms of memory capacity and media manipulation, this need reduced.

A major turning point was in the mid-late 90s when word got around that one of the greats, Jay-Z, never wrote his rhymes down before entering the booth. People were quick to follow in his footsteps, chucking out their notepads in exchange for a new method of production.

When you see your hero can jump seven feet, it makes you want to jump eight – Killer Mike

What subsequently emerged was a new type of rap creation known as “punching in”. Similar to freestyle, artists create music on the spot, in front of a mic. However, while in freestyle, the music is a free flow of lyrics for minutes upon end, when you punch in, you construct the song line by line, perfecting one bar before moving onto the next. It is an organic way of creating rhymes.

However, when there is so much pressure to produce masses of material on the spot, does this come at the cost of the music’s quality? Does losing that connection of pen to paper cause a lack of intentionality behind word choice, stifling the storytelling? And ultimately, over time, does this lead to repetitious, uninspired media being produced?