TIA: LA’s own Blueface has spent the last year getting plenty of attention with his
trademark slightly offbeat flow that’s pretty hard to miss.
TIA: But whether or not Blueface successfully rides the beat is still up for debate.
So of course, we decided to look into it from the technical side of things.
PROFESSOR NICOLE HOLLIDAY: We expect there to be a correspondence between the number
of beats and the number of syllables.
That’s why rap is kind of pleasing to us...we expect a particular scheme.
TIA: That’s Professor Nicole Holliday, she’s an Assistant Professor of Linguistics and
Cognitive Science at Pomona College in Southern California.
She told us that Blueface’s offbeat flow plays with syllable and stress timed
language, which determine the time in which certain words are pronounced.
PROFESSOR HOLLIDAY: There’s a continuum of how much languages are what we call syllable
timed versus stress timed.
And English is stress timed as a language in general what that means is some syllables
are a lot longer than others.
TIA: According to Professor Holliday, Blueface’s habit of elongating some words and shortening
others help him fit extra jokes into his bars, and is what seems to keep him offbeat.
PROFESSOR NICOLE HOLLIDAY: He will sort of elongate pieces of words and then make the
other part of the word really short and you get that play where it seems like he’s off
the beat because the beat is consistent but he’s not.
BLUEFACE: They say I add too many words into one bar but if I didn’t you wouldn’t understand
the bar.
For instance if I said, mop the floor just to catch him slippin’, that bar wouldn’t
have been as hard if I didn’t put the hide the wet sign in there.
TIA: Blueface originally started making noise back in early 2018, with tracks like
“Dead Locs” parts 1 and 2 blowing up locally before he dropped his EP ‘Famous Cryp’ in June.
After clips and memes of Blueface rapping emerged online, the standout hit “Thotiana,”
which eventually peaked at #8 on the Hot 100, really showcased his unique raps.
BLUEFACE: Everybody says I’m offbeat.
I wrote that muthafuckin’ song to the beat.
I wouldn’t have had a "Thotiana" if I didn’t hear the beat first.
TIA: And according to Professor Holliday, Blueface’s use of repetition and call and
response throughout “Thotiana” are part of what make it so catchy and attractive to listeners.
PROFESSOR HOLLIDAY: The thing that to me really sticks out about “Thotiana”
is the echo.
He responds to himself.
Sometimes he’s just echoing the thing that he’s saying earlier but sometimes he’s
sort of emphasizing it.
It makes it really catchy because it’s a way
to actually add more words to the song that emphasize the words that you have so it’s
more likely to get stuck in your head and you as the listener are like, 'Oh I’m gonna
respond to this the way that he responds to himself.'
BLUEFACE: I was waiting for a hit song, I knew that’s really all I needed.
Once I had a hit song I just had to manipulate everything else.
TIA: Blueface isn’t the first rapper to use the quote unquote offbeat flow.
West Coast legends like Suga Free, E-40, and even Southern rappers like Juvenile all come
to mind as rappers who have stood out for a similar sound.
PROFESSOR HOLLIDAY: He’s not the first rapper that’s like this I know other
people have made comparisons to E-40 and even Juvenile but it’s almost sort of nonchalant.
TIA: On more recent Blueface tracks like “Bussdown,” Professor Holliday told us the way he manipulates
the word bussdown to mean two different things by not pronouncing the “t” is a common
phenomenon in African American Vernacular English.
PROFESSOR HOLLIDAY: You see it in almost all rap, where if you have two consonants
in a row at the end of a syllable, the second one disappears, especially if it’s an s
and a t.
He relies on that linguistic feature to make the joke that is the title of the song.
TIA: But no matter the subject of his raps, Blueface always manages to throw in a joke or two,
something that Professor Holiday says actually sounds different from his signature flow.
PROFESSOR HOLLIDAY: When he makes those jokes he tends to be a little
bit more sounds more conventional, it’s in the verses where he tends to go off with the beat.
But when he’s doing these kind of punchy, corny things they tend to sound more like
what you’d expect from a traditional rap song.
BLUEFACE: That’s just another funny line.
You know I’m just a genius.
TIA: In June, Blueface landed a spot on the XXL Freshman cover and his cypher gave us
yet another taste of that signature Blueface style.
TIA: Whether or not you’re into his style, Prof. Holliday says Blueface has managed to
get attention by messing with the musical conventions of rap, which so far, seems to be working.
PROFESSOR HOLLIDAY: Because Blueface has all of these identity features that we
expect from rappers to begin with, he doesn’t actually have anything to prove which is why
he can go and do this kind of experimental stuff and still be popular.
BLUEFACE: I am the best lyricist in the muthafuckin’ game bro.
I don’t know what the fuck y’all be listening to when y'all be listening to all this other
bullshit but when it come to wordplay?
C'mon bro I’m at the Ritz Carlton Hotel blowing zips.
TIA: I’m Tia with Genius News bringing you the meaning and the knowledge behind the music.