How To Be Rapper
How To Be a Successful Rapper
For the past three or four decades, rap has been the coolest thing in the music industry and has gradually grown in popularity. Today, it has overtaken most genres of music to become one of the biggest genres in the world, in terms of listening, and it is not slowing down soon. Actually, every year rap giants release more music, break more records, and dominate the industry as the rap music takes a huge share of the market.
With rap becoming increasingly more vital to the music world and culture, there are thousands, potentially even 10’s of thousands, of people who dream of being rappers.But is it easy and how does it work? There must be a huge number of men and women wondering “how to be a rapper,” and many more hoping to solve this mystery. This comprehensive post on how to be a rapper is actually dived into various sections, so as to provide an answer that will hopefully help you and thousands of other potential rappers.
Be Committed to Rap Music and Music Career
Are you ready to leave all other things and commit yourself to become a professional rapper? Are you willing to go all out? If so, then do the following things:
- Get into the right mindset – Success in rap music begins in your head or with your mindset. Defective assumptions and beliefs are powerful headwinds that will halt your music career progress and take you off the course. To go all out and make the right progress, make a decision when starting to not hold anything back.
- Refine your goals – It’s impossible to commit to something if you don’t know what you want to achieve within a specific time. Hence, before you start your rap career, know precisely where you want to be in the next 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, or 10 years.
- Focus on your rap career – While the ideal mindset will provide you with the inspiration you require to be your best if you focus on other things you will go nowhere. Live and work on your rap career.
- Hold yourself accountable – Sadly, the personal drive isn’t all that you need. It is enough to get you started, but sooner the “new year resolution syndrome” will kick-in and your initial whoop will begin to fade. So, ensure that you hold yourself accountable by tracking your progress every week, informing others what you want to achieve, and try to form a group of people that hold you accountable.
Don’t Wait – Start Now
Why is it very easy for a person to post pone until tomorrow what can easily be done today? The world is full of great stories about great ideas that didn’t see the sun because the innovator did not properly strategize. And for every failure-in-strategy story, there are three or four stories of failure-in-implementation stories. The shared theme in failure-in-implementation stories is that there was little attention paid to the idea. If you ask any musician in any part of the world, he or she will tell you that strategy and implementation must be present and coexist. The strategy is your rap career vision for the next 2 or 3 years while implementation is your 100% effort to make it a reality. So, consider the following three things to ensure that you implement your dream:
- Don’t procrastinate – Taking it one step at a time and wanting to be 100% error-free is one thing, but using that as mean to delay your music career is another thing. So, don’t think so much since you are worried about failing or what other people are doing. Stop talking how great you are and start rapping and recording today and get your career up and running. Do not dwell on why-you-can’t, dwell on why-you-can.
- Prepare a budget – You won’t implement your strategy if you don’t have a budget for it. Don’t fear to invest in your music career. It is the right way to make your rap career a reality, but it often feels like an obstacle.
- Say you don’t have a choice – If your mind keeps on telling you what-ifs and doubtful thoughts, you won’t go anywhere. But if you convince yourself that you only have one choice (becoming a rapper), you will be a rapper in the shortest period possible.
How to be a rapper? Be in the Mix
One of the keys to a successful music career is being in the mix. That means networking and having a list of influential rappers that can keep your career on track. With the networking tips we have provided below, you can start your rapping career with the right help from professionals. Note that being in the mix in the music industry is all about meeting music industry influencers like musicians, producers, managers, agents, and more at the right time.
- Network on social media – Different social media such as Instagram, Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter provide an easy way to interact with music industry influencers. You can ensure that they know your name by just following and interacting with them, whether that is by starting a conversation or liking their posts.
- Attend music events – As a beginner in this industry, you should start small. You will find a lot of music industry networking events taking place in different part of the country and world, from massive conferences to small-time gigs.
- Have your info on-hand – When a music industry influencer asks you something, you want to have all the facts at your fingertips. Also, always carry your business cards when attending any event, to show your commitment and what rap means to you.
- Prepare and have a plan – It makes a lot of sense if you know what you want to gain from any networking gig or event. So, do your research before you attend an event. Know whether there is a rapper you want to meet and what you want to tell him or her.
- Give before you receive – This is critical. Remember that not many people like to give without receiving first. Hence, show your worth to your role model rapper and demonstrate what you can bring on the table.
- Follow up – There is no need of having contacts that you won’t follow and keep the conversation going. You can easily do this with a polite phone call or email to remind them of who you are.
Plan and Execute
How are you planning to start your rap career? Procrastinating isn’t an option. To be successful, you need to prepare for anything and everything that will come your way throughout your music journey. Here are a few tips that you should keep in mind when preparing your plan:
- Choose the right goal and define it – Your goal is to become a rapper, but how are you going to achieve it? Specify your time frame and the resources you want to spend to be a musician.
- Use a team to develop your plan – Brainstorming with other people will help you to create a better plan. And when creating your plan, you might realize that you need the support of other people.
- Choose actions that are attainable, concrete, and measurable – For instance, you can state that you want to release your first mixtape in 6months. Clearly define what you intend to achieve.
- Identify the part you will play and those of other people – You are the rapper, one day you’ll need a music manager, you now need a music producer, graphic designer, videographer and other people to support you. Define the work of every person who is walking with you on this journey.
- Have a clear schedule – For instance, you can commit to having a written song after 1 week, you record it in the next 3 weeks, and so on. With your plan ready, execution is now an easy process. It will involve three main steps: .
Step 1: Sharpen your focus – This will ensure that you make decisions that support your rap career. It will answer the question of, “what?” You will need to keep it simple, identify your key thing, and know when to say no. .
Step 2: Build your competence – This involves building all your skills, processes, tools, and systems that will help you to become a rapper. It will answer the question of, “how?” You need to treasure your talent, get systematic, and balance your view.
Step 3: Ignite your passion – This will develop a sense of connection. A connection between rap and your needs for a meaningful career. It will answer the question of, “why?” You need to connect your rap to a broader purpose and create connections.
Be Hard and Honest to Yourself
You are learning how to be a rapper because you want to be a musician. But why do you want to be a musician? There is a reason for this, so do something to accomplish it and respect that wish. This is only possible if you are hard and honest with yourself. To achieve this do the following:
- Create an image and look at it – A visible goal is more powerful than a written one on your to do list. Work toward achieving your music career by committing all your effort toward this objective.
- Tell people –There is no better way to ensure that you accomplish your target than informing other people about what you want to achieve.
- Break it up – Be honest to yourself; you cannot become a rapper overnight. So, break up your music career into small parts that you can accomplish and set time for every task.
- Set a date – The best way to accomplish something is to set a date when that thing should be complete. For instance, say you want to earn your first $10,000 on Date(set a specific date). Then you reverse engineer and plan the steps you have to take in order to reach that goal. Push yourself hard to ensure that you realize it.
- Be realistic – You cannot start your rap career today and expect to earn $100,000 in the next 2 months. So, be realistic with your target.
- Commit yourself – Every come back to commitment (the less said the better). And of important, always keep it 100% real. Be hard because this will result in success. And when you do a shoddy work, don’t sugarcoat the outcome.
Stay Motivated
Achieving your rap goal won’t be easy. Therefore, it is important to know how to stay motivated in order to achieve this long-term goal. How exactly can you manage to remain motivated for long?
- Find all the good reasons – Rap has hundreds of good reason. For instance, being rich, personal development, a feeling of fulfillment, and helping your family and community.
- Make it fun – Attitude is everything. Having a positive feeling about rap music will ensure that you follow your goal until you achieve it. A simple way to make rap fun is to ask yourself how you can enjoy it, how you can make it enjoyable for others, and how it can be the best part of your day.
- Change your approach – When you feel like rap isn’t working for you, take a moment and review the process you have been following. You might be doing the right thing, but that doesn’t mean it will motivate you. Most probably, you can find a few things that you can change to your approach and make it fun.
- Measure the progress – You can easily split your rap journey into small stages or parts. Note where you started with your music career, how far you have progressed, and what you want to reach. Maybe the remaining part is the easiest and the most fun.
- Reward yourself – This is the easiest and the best way to stay motivated for long. For every step, you take, reward yourself with something that will make you remain committed in your music career. Now you can try to mix and match the above tricks of staying motivated. Find out the one that works for you and the one that doesn’t.
Conclusion
You now know how to be a rapper. Take your time and ensure that you follow the things we have listed above and you will surely be a professional within a short time. And one more thing, rapping involves flowing with the beat, so freestyle whenever possible and always write! Write! Write!