Dearest Schockthusiasts (ok I need a better name for y'all. Who's got one?), 

Yesterday I accomplished in one sitting what I always assumed would take me months or years, if I ever managed to do it at all: I wrote a rap. Now if you've taken my 7th grade music class in which most of the students write their own raps, that may not be so impressive; but I was not lucky enough to take my own music class in middle school, so this is a big deal. 

Rap has held an interesting place with me for a while. In grade school I didn't even know about it; in middle school I hated it (I was one of the snobs who said it wasn't music cuz there weren't notes... oof); in high school I thought it just wasn't for me. An ethnomusicology class in college helped me first respect it, but it wasn't until I saw THIS MINISERIES on Netflix that I truly appreciated it. And it wasn't even until I started teaching rap lyric writing to my middle schoolers that I started admiring the fierce skill behind it. 

The thing is, I still pretty much never listen to rap. And as much as I thought I understood what it was all about, I still didn't feel like it was MY music. 

My writing style has evolved a lot the past few years, and lately I've been writing music that I thought could REEEALLY use some rapping. But I certainly wasn't gonna write it. Despite my sort of academic knowledge of rap, I still felt like trying to write it would be like cultural appropriation. And even if I did write it, NOOOOOOOO way would I ever be able to perform it. I canNOT rap. Not even close. It's pretty much like watching that rooster dude from Animaniacs pretending to be a human. 

But apparently all of that was bullshit, because yesterday I wrote a rap, and recorded myself rapping it, and I'm performing it this Sunday. DAMN was that a sudden change. A few things came together... 

1. I needed to write a song before Sunday, and the one I had in mind NEEDED a rap. 

2. I felt confident for some reason. Probably my dashing good looks and that mint tea I had in the morning. 

3. I was emotional AF. Funny how a recent break up, a huge concert coming up, and the inability to eat a full meal due to terrible heartburn make you feel feels. 

4. I had a vision. I knew what I needed to write about. Not the specific topic, but the feeling it needed to evoke. 

So I was really 90% of the way there. I just needed one last thing. 

5. I stopped trying to write a good rap. 

I just tried to write good writing. Unlike that sentence. 

And that's when it hit me - what separates the true art from the cultural appropriation is that true art isn't trying to be itself. It just is. Rappers didn't call themselves rappers and then start trying to write raps; they started sharing stories, making announcements, and introducing themselves at parties on the microphone, and they just got better and better at delivering their message until they were so good it needed a name. 

So... I think I'm gonna write a lot more raps. For now, come check out my first one TOMORROW (cuz it turned midnight while I was writing this). 

P.S. Now that I'm a rapper, I should probably listen to some rap... What's your favorite rap song? 

~A Schock To Remember