Sondheim For Hip-Hop Heads
Currently, at the Delacorte Theater in the birthplace of hip-hop, New York City, there’s a musical playing that is a must-see for all rap lyric heads. Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1987 musical Into the Woods is there (for free, provided you get up at the crack of dawn to get on line) until September 1st
While the overlap between a show about a bunch of fairy tale characters and the rhymes of a Freeway, Fabolous, or Tupac may not be obvious, there is an astounding amount of overlap. Sondheim, who wrote the words and tunes for the musical, is a lyrical master whose use of rhyme and literary devices is on a par with our best rappers — with the added handicap of having to, in the musical theater fashion, use only exact rhymes. Here are five lyrical devices used in Into the Woods that also frequently find their way into hip-hop
1 Internal rhyme
“Agony (Reprise)” is one of the comic highlights of the show. The song is sung by two brothers, both princes, known in the show is “Rapunzel’s Prince” and “Cinderella’s Prince”, after the women they pursued and eventually married in the show’s first act. Now, after being married for a while, both men are bored and restless, and meet again out in the woods. After some small talk, they find out when each other are really up to — chasing after another batch of fairy princesses, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White
The tune uses internal rhyme — where additional rhymes occur in between the normal end-of-line matches — more than any other device. See, for example, Rapunzel’s Prince talking about Sleeping Beauty:
I found a casket
Entirely of glass
No, it’s unbreakableInside, don’t ask it
A maiden, alas,
Just as unwakable
Here, the “casket”/“ask it” and “glass”/“alas” rhymes go in between the line-ending “unbreakable”/“unwakable” pairing, and just about every verse in the tune uses a similar structure
When it comes to hip-hop, the master of the crazy internal rhyme is Freeway. On his song “Niggas in Africa,” he lets off this beauty, where “screwing” and “doing” serve to offset the end-line rhymes of “ho” and “lingo”:
Still in the motherland with a motherland ho
When it comes to screwing
She know what she doing
I don’t know what she saying, but I love her lingo
2 Epanados
Epanados is a device where you repeat words in reverse order. Hip-hop’s meme example, per author Adam Bradley, is this, from Run-DMC:
Well, I’m DMC in the place to be
And the place to be is with DMC
Sondheim’s Little Red Riding Hood has a great one as well, while she’s steeling herself to not be afraid during her trek into the ominous woods:
The woods are just trees
The trees are just wood
3 Homophones
We at RG love homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently and/or have a different meaning) A LOT. One of our most popular blog posts enumerates our top ten favorites in hip-hop. But Sondheim has a thing for them as well. In the show’s Prologue, Jack’s mother (that’s Jack of “Jack and the Beanstalk” fame) has our favorite non-rap use of the device, when she tries to get her son to sell his beloved cow, Milky White:
We’ve no time to sit and dither
While her withers wither with her
The first “wither” here is a body part, the second has the traditional meaning, and the third is the words “with her” placed one after the other. Whew!
Rap’s best-known homophone is Hova’s famed one from the “Diamonds From Sierra Leone” remix
4 Alliteration
Alliteration is, per Wikipedia, “the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of a series of words or phrases.” In hip-hop, Tupac loved this more than just about any other device. The opening bars of his song “If I Die 2Nite” provide a great example. Look at all the “p” words:
They say pussy and paper is poetry, power, and pistols
Plotting on murdering motherfuckers ‘fore they get you
Picturing pitiful punk niggas copping pleas
Puffing weed as I position myself to clock G’s
Sondheim is no slouch in this department, either. Cinderella’s song “On the Steps of the Palace” contains this gem of “st” sounds — five in just twelve words! The re-use of the sound mirrors her character’s situation — she’s literally stuck, with her slippers glued to some steps as she attempts to run away from the Prince:
This is more than just malice
Better stop and take stock
While you’re standing here stuck
On the steps of the palace
5 Puns
When it comes to rap jokes, Fabolous is the go-to dude. He has a seemingly endless supply of puns and dual-meanings, such as this example from “Death Comes in 3’s”:
Car service, black ‘lacs
Couple racks in my black slacks
Dime bitch, Ace of Spades
I should be yelling out, “Blackjack!”
The pun on the card game is a winner (see the explanation here), and one of approximately three zillion that Fab has in his catalog. But Sondheim’s got plenty of jokes, too. There is his famous song-ending pun in West Side Story’s “Gee, Officer Krupke”. Into the Woods has a great one, as well. In “Maybe They’re Magic,” an argument between The Baker and his wife over whether to con the aforementioned Jack out of his beloved cow by offering him what they think are worthless beans, the Baker’s Wife ends the song with this summary:
If the end is right
It justifies…the beans
All of this goes to show two things. First, that Sondheim’s work should be a delight to any fan of lyrics and their construction. Second, that the main people keeping these noted songwriting devices alive today are rappers. In a time when musical theater is mired in movie adaptations and, er, more movie adaptations, it is hip-hop that is keeping alive the traditions of clever, sophisticated lyrics along the lines of W.S. Gilbert, Sondheim, and Cole Porter. And lest you question Stevie S’s hip-hop credentials, remember that the man could write a mean sixteen himself when he needed to:
