My passion for rap lyricism has paradoxically ruined my ability to sit back and simply enjoy listening to rap in general. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the diverse skills and abilities of my favourite MCs; it just means I can’t seem to vibe to some ill shit without wanting to be a part of it. I can no longer take a passive position when I hear a beat; my mind is immediately flooded with potential rhythms and rhymes, and the voice of the rapper in the radio is no longer a welcomed sound but an interruption, a voice talking persistently over the voice in my own head—it’s a frustrating phenomenon, and I find myself switching from rap stations over to edge 102.1 or 97.7 to silence the rapper in my cranium—he’d be at it all day otherwise.
Like a course in film critique can spoil the enjoyment of taking in any subsequent film from a purely entertainment standpoint, so too can the complete immersion in a particular art form rob an artist of the ability to view his art without compartmentalizing it—without working on it in his mind. I do not hear a song as whole; I hear the bass, the drum, the snare, all individually, focusing less on the complete product than how each of its parts ought to sound. I mean ought because my mind is permanently set in test-mode—I am forever evaluating my work as it plays, line by line, formulating expectations of myself in my mind and determining whether I, the voice speaking back to me, is meeting these expectations. I am robbed of the ability to enjoy the end result of my efforts and toil, because I can’t seem to listen to it from a distance with enough detachment.
My enjoyment springs entirely from the process of writing and recording, from composing and performing. I cannot enjoy my music, my genre, from a purely passive point. I cannot simply be a face in the crowd; I am compelled to be involved, and I have yet to develop the ability to be both spectator and participant at the same time.
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