Speed is an important part of an MC’s arsenal; While you don’t need to rap as fast as Twista, who currently holds the world record for the fastest rap, you do need to learn to rap fast to improve your versatility. Here are several exercises you can do to improve your rap speed:
Take advice from LL Cool J. One of the greatest rappers of all time, LL once recorded a song where he rapped the alphabet while saying “the” between each letter.
So it came out like “The A-The B-The C-The D, etc.”
This is harder than it sounds and is a great exercise to help you rap fast. Try going through the alphabet, saying each letter as clearly as possible, and increasing the speed at which you hit it. After a week or so, you will start to see results.
You can take this one step further and do several different raps based on the alphabet. For example, in one exercise you could say “ABCDE (PAUSE) FGHIJKLMNOP (PAUSE)…” and the next time, put the pause after D, G and P.
Why? Easy. If you want to learn to rap fast, you’ll also need to learn to stop fast. It’s like driving a car: NASCAR drivers are just as good at stopping a car as they are at accelerating it. By adding pauses to your flow, you are also giving the listener time to process what you said before moving on to the next letter.
Twista has some great lines, but few people listen closely enough to catch what she’s saying. Don’t let this happen to you!
You can learn to rap fast using these exercises, but remember that speed is only one aspect of what makes a great MC.