I have always wondered who a rapper is that is featured in a song. For example, when the rap version of Bad Blood came out...I had no idea how to identify the rapper. I couldn't find anywhere that could help me identify him. What are some techniques I could use to identify rappers on the spot?
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1Purchase the recording on CD and read the credits and liner notes printed in the package.– user546Oct 30, 2015 at 20:21
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I want to do it by ear. Without "Cheating"– anonymousOct 30, 2015 at 23:13
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@WheatWilliams above comment to you– anonymousOct 30, 2015 at 23:14
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2 Answers
If all you have is the audio it's all about experience and recognizing. You have to know the rapper's voice and be able to differ it from other rappers. With videos it's a bit easier, because you may have seen the rapper in a movie or in the news before and recognize his/her face.
If you don't listen to a lot of rap you probably won't be able to recognize the voice. In this case you first want to find out the title of the song. Car radios usually support RDS and depending on the radio station, the song title will be displayed on the radio screen. Some radio stations also display features and artist names, so you could find out that way.
If you already know the song's title, thanks to the internet, it's easy! Try simply googling the artist's name and song. For most songs there's a Wikipedia article which will tell you exactly who wrote the lyrics, who produced the song and whose voices can be heard.
Another approach would be a site for lyrics. I can recommend Rap Genius for this. It shows you the producers and writers as well as who delivers what part of the song. It also gives you a lot of background info via annotations. However, it is all based on the community. So if you don't find a song on Genius it's either not that popular or no-one has put effort in providing the internet with lyrics.
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1A friendly amendment to the "googling" approach: if you don't know the song's title, then try SoundHound, which lets you search out the song in question by holding your phone near the music, so that it can catch some of the audio, or you can even just hum a bit of the song. A similar feature (probably still provided by SoundHound behind the scenes) is provided in a variety of other company's products (see the list on that Wikipedia page).– mlibbyNov 25, 2015 at 17:54
listening to unknown artists, i frequently search for exact string matches of particular lyrics. it can be tricky to spell the lyrics as they were transcribed by others, and the text has to be long enough to be unique, but this is a very viable search strategy for looking up a particular rap.
