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.