Flow The Rhythmic Voice in Rap Music

Flow presents unique theoretical and analytical challenges. It is rhythmic in the same way other music is rhythmic, but also in the way speech and poetry are rhythmic. For the first time, Mitchell Ohriner's Flow: The Rhythmic Voice in Rap Music reconciles approaches to key concepts of rhythm, such as meter, periodicity, patterning, and accent, treated independently across other branches of scholarship. Ohriner theorizes flow by weaving between the methods of computational music analysis and humanistic close reading. Through the analysis of large collections of verses and individual tracks, the book addresses theories of rhythm, meter, and groove in the unique ecology of rap music. In a series of case studies in the second half, the work of Eminem clarifies how flow can relate to text, the work of Black Thought of The Roots clarifies how flow can relate to other instrumental streams, and the work of Talib Kweli clarifies how flow can relate to rap's persistent meter. While Ohriner focuses on rap music throughout the book, the methods he introduces will be useful for other musical genres that feature the voice freely interacting with a more rigid metric framework.