BUILDING BLUEPRINT
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Lyrical Analysis of...
Zy pt1
- The first thing I thought reading this?
- “This guy has absolutely no talent.”
- There are some genuinely good ideas buried in here, but you keep refusing to let a concept end. You'll make a connection, then immediately make another connection, then explain the first one, then add a reference, then shout the punchline.
- It makes the whole thing exhausting.
- The opening is a mess
- >“Dead em when id Grip Sumn,
- Examined when the hip dump,
- Choppas Sang, Had The ‘A’
- all over his ‘friend shirt,’
- ‘Alvin and the chipmunks!’”
- This is trying so aggressively to manufacture wordplay that the actual meaning gets buried.
- “Choppas sang” →“A” →“friend shirt” →Alvin and the Chipmunks.
- I can see what you're attempting, but the reader shouldn't have to decode a whooe assed fucking crossword puzzle before the bar lands.
- And “Alvin and the Chipmunks” is such a goofy reference that it completely changes the emotional tone. If that's intentional dark humor, fine, but right now it seems accidental.
- Then you immediately go generic
- >“This nigga ain't gangster, He Play pretend…”
- >“I'll disrespect u…”
- >“why u tuff on socials?”
- This is standard internet rap confrontation material.
- None of it sounds like an actual person, just a fake and whack persona but heybthays literally what you are.. It sounds like the default vocabulary of somebody arguing in a comment section.
- And you've got a huge problem throughout this verse:
- You keep telling readers the opponent is a pussy instead of giving them a reason to believe it.
- “Lame.”
- “Play pretend.”
- “Dog on a leash.”
- “Run from me.”
- “Run and hide.”
- You're repeating the same characterization over and over.
- Once you've established the opponent as cowardly, move on.
- The “dinner time” section is especially bad
- Ignoring the slur itself, the actual construction is:
- >“dinner time” →“dog in them”
- That's a terrible distance between setup and payoff.
- It feels like you searched for words associated with food, dogs, and toughness and forced them together.
- And the use of an ethnic slur here doesn't make the punchline more vicious. It mostly makes the bar feel lazy and shock dependent.
- If your punchline needs an offensive word to create the impact, the underlying joke probably isn't doing enough work.
- “Stick up for Kid” is one of the better concepts
- >“I'll get the ‘stick’ ‘up for Kid’ LIKE PICK ON SOMEBODY ON YOUR OWN SIZE!!!”
- There is actually a decent idea underneath this.
- But then you scream the explanation at us.
- That's becoming a recurring disease in your writing.
- You don't trust the punchline.
- You need to let the audience catch it.
- A punchline shouldn't come with subtitles.
- “steel /gyro” is awful
- >“It’s not just death from the ‘steel’ like ‘gyro…’
- ITS GONNA BE WHEN THIS CHROME RISE!!!”
- This feels like you had the words steel /gyro /chrome and tried to build a bar around them afterward.
- “Steel” →gyro →chrome isn't a satisfying progression.
- It's just metal vocabulary being shuffled around.
- The geometry section is cluttered as hell
- >“I might Try angles on his head or dead em Square in his face…”
- You have:
- sharp
- angles
- square
- disobeying
- Pink Guards
- That's not a punchline.
- That's a thesaurus having a nervous breakdown.
- And “Pink Guards” feels especially shoehorned in. You're clearly trying to reference Squid Game, but the reference isn't contributing enough to justify the detour.
- “Archeology” is actually a decent idea
- >“think Archeology,
- Nigga dug his own hole and brought a Grave to light..
- If we ever Had a bone to Pick!”
- This is one of the few sections where I can actually see a coherent chain:
- dig →grave →bone
- That's a legitimate motif.
- But again, you're overfeeding it.
- “Dug his own hole” is already enough. Then “grave,” then “bone to pick.”
- It starts feeling like you're terrified of ending a good idea.
- The Asia server section is BAD
- >“we finna see a Chink on Game, like thee Asia server”
- Apart from the slur, this is just a painfully weak gaming reference.
- “Asia server” is not some devastating punchline. You're taking an ordinary gaming term and pretending you've uncovered a spectacular double meaning.
- It reads like:
- “I need a word that rhymes with my previous thought... SERVER!”
- Then:
- >“Like insomnia: ‘THEY AIN’T CATCHING Z[zzz’s]’”
- This is actually pretty obvious.
- Insomnia =can't sleep =no Z's.
- That's not inherently bad, but your presentation makes it feel like you've discovered fire.
- “20/20” is probably one of the cleanest lines
- >“There’s a ‘huge gap between us’ think ‘20/20’ Vision: ITS CLEAR TO ‘SEE!’”
- The basic idea works.
- But again:
- “CLEAR TO SEE”
- You've just explained your own punchline.
- Let the reader make the final connection.
- Then the meth head line is just ugly writing
- >“They don’t look the same after the ‘medicine’
- Like a meth head.”
- This isn't clever enough to justify the setup.
- “Medicine” →meth →altered appearance.
- Okay.
- So what?
- There's no real punchline.
- The sister section is where the writing completely loses its composure
- >“I’m glad your sisters died… bitch if they were still alive I would wish them back dead.”
- This isn't clever.
- It's just trying to be as cruel as possible.
- And there's an important difference between a genuinely vicious battle rap bar and a line that's merely tryong and failing to be offensive.
- A good disrespect bar makes the reader react because of the construction.
- This one essentially says:
- “I hope your family is dead.”
- That's not sophisticated. It's just escalation for escalation's sake.
- The mother/face section is much better conceptually
- >“a face only a mother could love?”
- >“NOT EVEN HIS MOTHER WOULD LOVE!!!!”
- That is an actual understandable insult with a reversal.
- But once again, you scream the conclusion.
- The idea itself is stronger than the writing around it.
- “steel in /stealing” is painfully basic
- >“steel in [stealing] the nigga.
- it’s a robbery.”
- That's a homophone.
- Not every homophone is a punchline.
- You seem to have a habit of finding a word that sounds like another word and immediately treating that as a bar.
- Sometimes it is.
- This isn't.
- The mahogany line is genuinely funny for the wrong reason
- >“die from the ‘cleanest wood’ ‘MAHOGANY!!!!’”
- What does “cleanest wood” have to do with mahogany?
- This feels like you're reverse engineering a joke from a dictionary entry.
- And screaming MAHOGANY!!!! doesn't make it hit harder.
- It makes it sound like you're announcing the answer on a game show.
- “EPOCHALITY” is where I completely lose you
- >“it’s ‘rare’ for me to ‘write’ [ride] with something ‘light…’ ‘EPOCHALITY’”
- This is exactly what I mean when I say you're overcomplicating your own writing.
- I genuinely don't think most listeners will know what you're trying to accomplish here.
- If a bar requires the audience to pause the song, Google a word, reconstruct the pronunciation, then work backwards through three different meanings...
- the bar has failed.
- Rap can be dense.
- It cannot be incomprehensible and expect credit for being dense.
- The casket section has potential
- >“How you want your casket made? Opened…”
- That's a solid setup.
- Then:
- >“Or hidden—
- Like what you're known to do.”
- That is much closer to the kind of writing you should be doing.
- It's concise.
- It attacks the opponent's established characteristic.
- It doesn't require six references.
- And the listener gets it immediately.
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