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:
“A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it’s a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself—or at least, you show yourself as someone who could not afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind.... You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)
“The authoritarian child-rearing style so often found in working-class families stems in part from the fact that parents see around them so many young people whose lives are touched by the pain and delinquency that so often accompanies a life of poverty. Therefore, these parents live in fear for their children’s future—fear that they’ll lose control, that the children will wind up on the streets or, worse yet, in jail.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)