Prepping to Punch
Familiarize yourself with the structure of a punchline. Generally, a punchline is considered to be either a single line or a couplet. A couplet is a set of two lines that work together to convey your message. These two lines often rhyme. Punchlines give weight and impact to your rap. Good punchlines can be difficult to think up on the fly, which is why many rappers base entire songs around a killer, pre-thought punchline. Buildup punchlines reveal a connection or add meaning to a previous statement in your rap to create surprise, anger, or amusement in your audience. Eminem gives a great example of this in “Nail in the Coffin,” where he says, “But then again you’ll finally get your wish, / Cuz you’ll be all over the street like 50 cent.” One-liners are usually clever and to the point. Like: High class like a senior in secondary. You couldn't make fans cheer if you were the leading genius in the wild rap frontier.
Listen to and imitate rappers you admire. The more rap you’re exposed to, the easier it will be for your mind to pick up on patterns and techniques in it. Practice this by using the same structure as rappers you admire and swapping in your own words. For example, Chino XL in “Creep,” says: “As far as that album you dropped, I ain’t feelin’ it / I wouldn’t buy your record if it had a hundred-dollar bill in it.” You might imitate Chino by saying something like, “As far as your skills, I’ll admit, they’re polished / But rhymes don’t have to sparkle to leave fools demolished.” Some prominent punchline rappers you might want to study include Biggie, Big L, Lloyd Banks, Nas, Eminem, Jay-Z, and more.
Pre-write punchlines. Spend time building up a stockpile of punchlines. Choose topics that are timeless, like falling in love and hard times, or ones useful in many different situations, like those that mock popular figures in society or depict common experiences. You might poke fun at a specific person, bring up a topical point in news, or utilize a well-known proverb in your punchline. Some examples follow: To create a punchline from a proverb, you might say, “Two wrongs may not make a right / But it ain't always wrong to fight.” A punchline that uses a timeless theme like love might look something like, “It’s true that only fools fall in love, / But for what it’s cost me, it’s an emotion I’d get rid of.” Using common experiences in punchlines might look like, “Elevator muzak is a practical symphony, / Compared to your rappin’, this audio villainy.”
Practice using your environment in punchlines. When rapping freestyle especially, use your surroundings, like the weather, in your punchlines. Include regional changes that effect the world at large, like droughts, pollution, disasters, and so on, in your punchline content. The serious nature of these topics will add weight to your punchlines. A punchline that uses a natural disaster might say, “My words rush at ya like a Japanese tsunami / Your rhymes sound more like you're callin’ for mommy.” Punchline about the local climate, like in the example, “Though I spit rhymes on stage cool, precise, and clear, / Is the AC here broke? It's hot up in here.” If you noticed someone tapping their fingers to a beat, it might inspire the line, “I seen you dancin' your fingers on the edge of the table / Could just be nerves, but I think you're unstable.”
Train your flow and delivery. Your ability to speak clearly and without getting tongue tied is critical to the delivery of your punchline. Warm up your voice before rapping so you don’t become hoarse or strain your voice. Practice diction. Gently massage the muscles of your face to release tension. Nervousness very frequently makes artists rush when performing. This can result in your rap being too fast to be clear. Massage your face and neck lightly by rubbing them with your hands in small circles to help release tension. Tongue twisters can be a valuable resource for warming up your mouth before rapping. Do a few of these before you go on stage. Try to speak clearly while you have several ice cubes in your mouth. This is an old technique for training greater precision in speaking. Change up the delivery of set lines you plan on using to prevent your speaking from becoming robotic or wooden. Try varying speed, volume, and stress.
Executing the Line
Build up to the punchline. You can increase the sense of anticipation in your audience by inserting lines between the setup of your punchline and the payoff line. The setup is a line that may be unclear or differently interpreted, but changes when the payoff line drops. To expand on a previous example, Eminem displays this technique in “Nail in the Coffin”: “I would never claim to be no Ray Benzino / An 83-year-old fake Pachino / So how can he hold me over some balcony / Without throwin’ out his lower back out as soon as he goes to lift me / Please don’t, you’ll probably fall with me / And our [butts] will both be history / But then again you’ll finally get your wish / Cause you’ll be all over the street like 50 Cent.”
Surprise your audience with a one-liner punchline. One-liners work well when their parts have multiple meanings. A good example of this can be found in Childish Gambino’s EP, “Be Alone,” where he says, “Set the game ablaze, I’m an arcade fire.” Not only does this paint a visual image of an artist on a hot streak, it also pokes fun at how critics have pigeonholed him as a white-audience-friendly independent artist. Lil Wayne had a particularly impressive one-liner in the song “6 Foot 7 Foot,” where he said, “Real G’s move in silence like lasagna.” In “Just a Memory,” Notorious B.I.G. utters the memorable one-liner, “Climb the ladder to success escalator style. Big Daddy Kane throws down the gauntlet in “’Cause I Can Do it Right” with, “I won’t say I’m the baddest, or portray that role, but I’m in the Top Two, and my father’s gettin’ old.”
Form a punchline couplet. Choose a phrase that embodies the topic of your couplet. For example, “I’m going to embarrass you.” Adjust that phrase to fit your personal style, tone, delivery, and the beat you’re rapping to (if any). Something like, “Foo’, in front of y’all here I’ll thoroughly embarrass.” Then create a complementary second line that rhymes, as in: Foo’, in front of y’all here I’ll thoroughly embarrass / Yo’ [butt] like a whoppin’ by your ma on the terrace.”
Deliver the punchline. Delivery isn’t only about the words that you speak. In many cases, a small pause can add tension or create a more dramatic effect. Pauses can punch up comedic aspects of your rap. Depending on style, some rappers utilize pauses more than others. Add pauses between revealing moments in your rap, like where the setup begins to transition to the payoff. The shift in meaning created by the payoff will be highlighted by the pause preceding it. Stressing certain words can create interesting sound patterns in language. This can result in ordinary things sounding weightier and deeper than they might otherwise.
Using Literary Techniques
Use puns for punchlines. A pun is a line that suggests two or more meanings to humorous effect. Puns can also create humor by confusing similar sounding words that have different meanings. You might even take a common pun and use it to create one more faithful to your own style. Lil Wayne puns the line, “Don’t [mess] up with Wayne / ’Cause when it Waynes it pours.” Childish Gambino evokes the suave image of the actor and his role in the movie The Fly with his Goldblum pun: “More green than my Whole Foods and I’m too fly, Jeff Goldblum.”
Employ metaphors and similes. A metaphor compares two things that are unalike except for certain common characteristic(s). These uncommon comparisons can make situations dramatic, comedic, or absurd. Some examples of metaphor include: ”She was the nastiest hornet to sting my heart / Lucky me, when I met ya’, I bought an EpiPen dart.” ”His momma wasn’t cucumber cool, she was iceberg lettuce cold.” “My words are leopards / They quick, they real, and on stage, they got spots on ’em.”
Draw on irony. Irony is where the actual meaning of words is something other than what was intended. A good way to simplify this in your mind is by thinking of irony as things going the opposite of what you’d expect. For example, it would be ironic if it were true that the biggest dog in the world was named Tiny. Irony in your rap could might look something like, “I roll real big / Every time I ride a Ferris wheel.” The following is an example of irony with a little buildup: ”You might feel like a million dollar [smash] / But you are what you eat, / And Imma make you eat [trash].”
Increase surprise with slant rhyme. Slant rhyme is also sometimes called an imperfect rhyme, a near rhyme, or an oblique rhyme. This is where words sound close enough that the rhyme scheme is uninterrupted, even though the words don't rhyme perfectly. In some cases these rhymes are formed with multiple words (referred to as "multis"). Some words don’t rhyme as easily as others, like orange. However, with a slant multi, you can rhyme “orange” with “door hinge.”
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