On the Making of a Rap Song

The song Primal Candor, written by Christopher Burns, a popular MC from the Manhattan club scene, boasts what is arguably the most unusual opening line in the history of rap:

Back when the dinosaurs ruled the strip, T-Rex's giant Porsche was the coolest whip.

As Burns explains it, the theme was inevitable. The logic works as follows: The backing beat had a playful quality; playful like a nursery rhyme. Kids listen to nursery rhymes. Kids like dinosaurs.

The Porsche line just sort of shook loose from this reasoning. A spontaneous ejection. A jumble of sound and rhythm.

It felt right.

Primal Candor

"Primal Candor" was the result of an experiment. I asked Burns, who has performed for the past three years under the stage name Sickabod Sane, to document his song writing process. He agreed, and a few nights later, "Primal Candor" was completed. The full story, however, spans back to 2006, and covers hundreds of hours of work.

It starts, as such stories often do, with a beer.

The transformation from Christopher Burns to Sickabod Sane happens at night. Usually starting around midnight, Burns takes a beer down to his basement studio. Just one. It's the ritual that's important. Not the alcohol itself.

On the first night of the song writing experiment, Burns began, as he does almost every night, with listening. A ziploc bag in his studio contains close to 30 flash memory cards custom fit to his high-end sequencer. Combined, these cards encode somewhere around one hundred different beats, each recorded by Burns at some point over the preceding three or four years. Most of these beats have been listened to extensively. Some have endured dozens, if not hundreds of hours of looped play. Many have made their way onto an MP3 player stashed in Burns car — the infamous 1989, two-door Pontiac Sunbird, which features prominently in several Sickabod classics.

The car allows him uninterrupted sessions to freestyle, repeatedly, over the same bars. Trying them on for size. Waiting for that electric thrill when the words and music click into tight synchrony.

On this night, like so many other nights, Burns sits, sipping his beer, and listening. He is feeling for that click.

He continues for six hours before calling it quits.

There are four types of nights for Burns. The first, like the first night of the experiment, is the most common. He listens. Often in his basement. Sometimes in his car. He reviews between 20 to 40 different beats: letting them saturate his brain.

The second type of night is technical. Burns arrives in the basement planning on constructing a new beat. The process is surprisingly intricate. To master the sequencer — the computerized device that rearranges sounds into music — is to perform a feat of substantial concentration. The sequencer operates like a Ferris wheel. Each seat can be piled with an arbitrary selection of sounds — drums, synthesized instruments, chopped bits of a recorded sample. The device rotates at a constant speed, playing the piled sounds on each seat as it passes. To transform these rotating piles to a catchy backing track is a demanding task. It requires an abundance of two things: time and experience.

Amateur DJs often resort to software programs, like Garage Band or Fruity Loops, which can automate much of this process with a drag-and-drop interface and a library of starter beats and pre-recorded sounds. Professionals, however, view the results of these program as generic and lacking pop. Truly original, mind-hijacking beats are built from scratch. Not surprisingly, Burns rarely describes the process without using the word "suffer."

Eagle Scout

The third type of night is the best. Excitement over a new beat fuels lyrical creativity, and an entire song is completed, start to finish, by morning. These are the magic moments. Just a few weeks prior, this magic hit, resulting in the shock-anthem "Eagle Scout" which became an instant favorite at the Manhattan club where Sickabod is best known. But such creative fluidity occurs too rarely to count on.

The final type of night, by comparison, can be difficult. A decision is made, usually under the rational glare of daylight, that a certain set of lyrics will be combined with a certain beat, and a song will be recorded. (In addition to his extensive beat library, Burns maintains, on average, close to 20 complete, unrecorded sets of words captured in a growing collection of song-writing notebooks). There is no flash of inspiration to accelerate time during these sessions. The work just gets done. These arranged marriages can evoke a hint of resignation from Burns, but they are crucial. Shows demand new material. Talent grows with production. Progress must be made.

The second night of the experiment was of this final type. The bulk of the lyrics to "Primal Candor" were originally written in August, 2006, at the Burns family beach house, located in a tourist town tucked near the Cape May coast. The words were inspired by the same beat over which they were eventually recorded. But the rush to completion didn't occur that summer night. Instead, the lyrics languished for the next 17 months. During this time the beat was reviewed repeatedly. Week after week, Burns, usually along with one his many collaborators, would freestyle lyrics. Looking for the right fit.

Burns describes these experiments as a GI flirting at a dance. He knew the beat was, ultimately, married to the dinosaur lyrics. But the process wasn't ready for the connection to be finalized. The time was not right to close down other options.

By the second night of the experiment, however, the time had come. Burns felt ready to combine the pieces into a full song. He can't articulate exactly how he makes these decisions. But their truth is never doubted.

The late hours of this night proceed with Burns searching for the hook — the chorus that provides the energetic heart to the song. His process is simple. He drops out all but the basic drums from the beat, and then places them in a loop. Sitting at a piano, he begins to play over the rhythm, while singing along random lyrics. This night, about an hour passes before Burns realizes he has been singing the same lyrics, repeatedly, for the last few dozen cycles:

T-rex you're the best, they'll never be another. T-rex you're the best, I love you like a brother, (better than the others). The world you knew was lost, things do change. The world never forget, how you reigned.

It feels good. As Burns explains it, you can experience the elusive property of "catchiness" as a vibration that resonates throughout your body. A state in which every note and every word seems to fall, to your great satisfaction, exactly where you expect it to. A hook has been found.

During night three, the full song is recorded. As is typical, the initial recording will follow a proto-structure: one long verse followed by one long chorus. Before performing for the first time, Burns will likely remix this structure; chopping up the verses and adding more interstitial choruses. This night's recording, however, remains pure. It captures the core identity of "Primal Candor." The basic building blocks that will later suffer endless shuffling, but never lose the integrity of the original.

With these decisions made, the sequencer is manipulated to output the beat timed to the required number of bars. The resulting file is fed into a multi-track digital recorder.

Next, the lyrics are recorded. The main vocals occupy one track. But this is just a fraction of the vocals that will populate the final song. Most casual listeners fail to realize the amount of overdubbing that powers the typical rap recording. In Burn's productions, tracks three through six, and sometimes up to track twelve, are used to double or triple up on key lines. They also serve to layer harmonies on the chorus and add sound effects. An upbeat song will often have a track reserved for Burns to play the role of the on-stage hype-man — calling out certain lines and yelling out agreement to key phrases.

The recording completed, the tracks are then fed through digital effect panels. The vocals are compressed and reverb is added to the drums to blunt the sound (Often, Burns will sample a live drum kit to add a more effective edge to the rhythm.) The full composition is then mixed down to a high-speed CD burner. The resulting disc is the master from which future versions will be ripped.

After being recorded, the song is made into a MP3 file. As is his habit, Burns will likely break-in the new track through repeated listens inside his Pontiac. It's not an uncommon sight for an early morning jogger, passing by the Burn's household, to find the artist, bleary-eyed, reclined in his car seat, in his driveway, sometimes for hours, letting the same song play over and over.

If the effect is promising, the song will make it onto the playlist of Burn's MySpace profile. If the feedback remains positive, it may earn a coveted spot in one of his regular Manhattan performances. If the reception is strong, the song has a shot of making it into a regular performance rotation. If it fails at any of these steps, it will slip back into the ever-expanding Sickabod Sane back catalog. Once there, it will probably never again be heard.

This song writing process is time-consuming and it's brutally selective. Take for example, Top 8, an ode to Burn's self-proclaimed mental instability, built around a MySpace-themed, chest pounding hook: "Hold on. Stop. Wait. You're not in my Top 8. You're not in my Top 8. Who the fuck is you!?"

Earlier this year, Burns performed "Top 8" to win a major rap showcase — instigating his recent move from well-known amateur to an in-demand, professionally-managed talent. This song, however, languished for over a year before being promoted into his regular rotation. Once there, multiple performances were required before Burns felt the material strong enough to make the cut for an A-list venue like the showcase. For every "Top 8," there are dozens of songs that will simply fall quietly out of the Sickabod Sane orbit. It's unclear yet how "Primal Candor" will weather these challenges. But as Burns sees it, the process is what it is. No sense trying to the fight it.

The night after completing "Primal Candor," Burns is back in the basement, beer in hand, listening. Searching for that jolt. Hoping for that next frenzied burst. But above all, doing what he does most every night. Putting in the hours. Trying to make progress.