Here is a piece from an interview with Bun B. In it he talks about rapping against competition.
Sometimes you gotta zig sometimes you zag, and sometimes u just gotta out do the opponent. There's a lesson in there somewhere....
to read the whole thing go here
BLVR: So a lot of the work you’ve done in recent years—before your solo album dropped—has been guest appearances on other people’s records. I’d like to know a little bit about the practice of writing those rhymes.
BB: Well, the first thing I do is I try to listen to whatever rapping is already on the track. I listen for cadence and melody to see how the track’s already been written, and to make sure that whatever flow or flows I decide to run with, or patterns or melodies that I decide to put into the song, that they’re not already in there. Then I try to see if there’s a different part of the subject matter that I can talk about. If there isn’t, I try to see if I can analogize it, break it down, flip it another way. If that can’t be done, the best thing I can do is pretty much out-rap the guy. And when I say out-rap the guy—say, if he uses ten syllables in a line, I’m going to use fifteen. If he uses fifteen, I’m going to use twenty, twenty-five. If he’s rhyming two or three words within two bars, I’m going to rhyme four or five words in two bars. I’m going to out-skill you.
BLVR: Treat it as a technical exercise.
BB: And just put more into it. Basically, I’m going to take what you did, the bare-bones structure of what you were trying to do, how you were attacking the song, and attack it in pretty much the same way, just with more intensity to show you that you could’ve come harder. Like, I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to tell a cat how to rhyme his rhyme.
BLVR: He didn’t know how to spit it.
BB: Saying it all wrong. You know, like, that’s not how that bends. Which is pretty funny to me, because it means that subconsciously, you can rap, but your conscious mind won’t let you go hard. It might be that they get intimidated. I’ve been intimidated before, you know, but I stepped up to the plate.
Sometimes you gotta zig sometimes you zag, and sometimes u just gotta out do the opponent. There's a lesson in there somewhere....
to read the whole thing go here
BLVR: So a lot of the work you’ve done in recent years—before your solo album dropped—has been guest appearances on other people’s records. I’d like to know a little bit about the practice of writing those rhymes.
BB: Well, the first thing I do is I try to listen to whatever rapping is already on the track. I listen for cadence and melody to see how the track’s already been written, and to make sure that whatever flow or flows I decide to run with, or patterns or melodies that I decide to put into the song, that they’re not already in there. Then I try to see if there’s a different part of the subject matter that I can talk about. If there isn’t, I try to see if I can analogize it, break it down, flip it another way. If that can’t be done, the best thing I can do is pretty much out-rap the guy. And when I say out-rap the guy—say, if he uses ten syllables in a line, I’m going to use fifteen. If he uses fifteen, I’m going to use twenty, twenty-five. If he’s rhyming two or three words within two bars, I’m going to rhyme four or five words in two bars. I’m going to out-skill you.
BLVR: Treat it as a technical exercise.
BB: And just put more into it. Basically, I’m going to take what you did, the bare-bones structure of what you were trying to do, how you were attacking the song, and attack it in pretty much the same way, just with more intensity to show you that you could’ve come harder. Like, I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to tell a cat how to rhyme his rhyme.
BLVR: He didn’t know how to spit it.
BB: Saying it all wrong. You know, like, that’s not how that bends. Which is pretty funny to me, because it means that subconsciously, you can rap, but your conscious mind won’t let you go hard. It might be that they get intimidated. I’ve been intimidated before, you know, but I stepped up to the plate.
