Style
Lyrics Born's rhymes showcase a large vocabulary, and often complex rhythmic patterns, deployed via regular use of various rhyming techniques, such as alliteration, internal rhyme, and double entendres. His style also frequently blends such techniques with melody, for which he has coined the term "Em-singing". His style is influenced by groups and artists such as James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Syl Johnson, KRS-One, Jon Hendricks, Rakim, Kool G. Rap, The Sugarhill Gang and Ice Cube is often conversational, observant, and melodious. His signature, sandy baritone speaking/rapping voice and "Bay Area drawl" has drawn comparisons to Barry White, Tone-Loc, and Tom Waits. Songs such as "Before and After" explore the subtleties of day-to-day human relations while "The Last Trumpet" (with Lateef) features a very politically charged and globally conscious mindset.
His collaborations with Lateef on Latyrx records often see them trading lyrics back and forth in quick succession - Lyrics Born and Lateef's methodology for writing this type of lyric is described by Lateef in the book How to Rap: "With Latyrx stuff, when we have parts that we’re writing that we’re both going to be trading off, we write them together for the most part. I’ll sit there and write a rhyme, like I’ll write a line or two and then we’ll break up who’s gonna say what, and he’ll write a line or two and we’ll break up who’s gonna say what. It’s a very organic process."
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Famous quotes containing the word style:
“I concluded that I was skilled, however poorly, at only one thing: marriage. And so I set about the business of selling myself and two children to some unsuspecting man who might think me a desirable second-hand mate, a man of good means and disposition willing to support another man’s children in some semblance of the style to which they were accustomed. My heart was not in the chase, but I was tired and there was no alternative. I could not afford freedom.”
—Barbara Howar (b. 1934)
“A man is free to go up as high as he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can’t get a man my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother.”
—Anzia Yezierska (c. 1881–1970)
“New is a word for fools in towns who think
Style upon style in dress and thought at last
Must get somewhere.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)