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LESSON 3 · Genre Deep Cuts

Rhyming in hip-hop goes far beyond simple end rhymes:

  • End rhyme — the simplest: rhyming the last word of each bar. "I walk down the street / feeling the heat"
  • Internal rhyme — rhyming within the same bar: "I broke the code, wrote the road map"
  • Multisyllabic rhyme — rhyming several syllables at once: "Rap phenomenal / track astronomical"
  • Slant rhyme — near-rhymes that create subtle connections: "orange" with "door hinge"
  • Chain rhyme — linking rhymes across bars so densely that nearly every word connects

The complexity of a rapper's rhyme scheme is one measure of their technical skill.