So this is the blog post where I get to introduce my first rap.

Oh c’mon, don’t look at me like that. I’ve tried drawing, photography, short stories, and spoken word. Not to mention writing articles on NF and doing interviews with musicians like Rachel Bloem; You really should have seen this coming.

Backstory

I’ve been wanting to do a rap piece for a while simply because I’m a fan of poetry and trap beats. However, I wanted to create something legitimate and original, but true to my belief that knowing the character and heart of God is profoundly important. Job 38 has always been one of my favorite chapters in the Bible because it’s one of God’s longest unbroken recordings. That’s cool to me. Something I should definitely do more of is taking Scripture and refactoring it as a spoken word piece. The process forces me to look at it in depth, work with it, and dig up the history and context in an attempt to create art that captures the feel of it.

This is what makes me an artist: I’m a creator attempting to create something that evokes emotion and perspective. I want others to see my world and so I create art. I want to see the worlds of others and so I experience theirs.

Job 38

Download the song here!

Lyrics

Voice from the whirlwind…and into Job’s heart
Words of God raging…to stop his false start
“I have some questions,…let’s see how you answer Me?”
“Who darkens counsel,…so student I get to be!
Where were you… when I worked with the plumbline
Leveling ground… what you stand on is all mine
Where were you…. when I cut the terrain,
forged all the foliage, and created the rain?
Tell me the measurement, give me your testament
Go on, I’m waiting, now give me a statement
Who stretched the lines on your planet’s foundation?
Who laid the cornerstone? Who threw the party?
Remember the Stars, I named one of ‘em Archie!
Color coordinated chemicals set aflame
No core convection or chromosphere are the same
The less that you know then the braver you’ll be,
but that is not true with the less you know Me,
Tell me now who shut the sea up with doors?
Gave birth to the oceans, I’ll drop metaphors
Dressed ‘em in clouds and clothed ‘em in darkness
Put boundaries on ’em like a kiddie harness:
I tell them what they can and cannot touch
“You can go a bit farther, but not too much – stop there.”
have you ever commanded the morning and put back the dawn right back in its place
Empower the sweet light take hold of the space,
shake out the wicked from all human race?
Let’s take a walk to recesses deep,
Make an appointment you better not sleep

But, hey, you pick the place, bro
There ain’t ever been a place you been I ain’t though
There’s sushi shops in Mariana,
Great barbeque in Gehenna,
and an observatory turned coffee shop
in San Pedro de Atacama
Added your commas, and you question Me?
If Creator turns out less than thee:
let it be, let me see, lesson Me: disagree
Where does the light and the darkness dwell?
Where do I keep all the snow and hail?
Storehouses, have you seen ‘em? It’s just
Inventory for guts and the glory, for battles are comin, and things will get gory
But
Where is the way where light is divided?
Who pours out the wind when the Earth should be chided?
Who routes all the floods and the thunderbolts,
Makes it rain, grows grass, dust revolts.
But who fathered who?
What’s the lineage of the precipitations, – I thought you knew?
Or maybe let’s talk about constellations,
I can see you could use a few consolations,
Don’t worry, I’ll give you considerations
Shout out to your gold stars and commendations:
Oh Binder of Pleiades, Master of Orion, leader of the leash for Bear and her satellites,
only one of us can be the Lion.
So you’re a cloud whisperer?
They do what you want them to?
You prismatically send the lightning
shatter darkness, do the frightening?
No tricks, just physics kept kinematic
Problematic, but you have wisdom so for you it’s obviously un-enigmatic,
now be pragmatic
and tell Me how you tip the jars of heaven for a sip? You hunt? Me too, young lions gotta eat Lionesses need the help like baby ravens
– it’s a busy morning is all I’m sayin…

Where’s The Technical Stuff?

I was tempted to write out what I learned in the creation of this piece: how to use FL Studio, parallel compression, EQing vocals (still not great at it), mixing, effects chains, adding reverb, etc. etc.

All that said, if you guys really really really WANT a post about all that – I’ll do it. I just know that since I have people from loads of different mediums reading this it might not be super useful. Huh…now there’s another idea for a post: The Value of Learning the Details of Other Mediums.

Yeah, no idea if I’ll write that one (feel free to vote for it in the comments). Hope you enjoyed my attempt at rap 🙂