Once a cherished part of a rapper’s arsenal, the rhyme book has been gradually sliding toward irrelevance. In part, the diminishing importance of the notepad is due to technology—a fate mirrored by that of vinyl, books and other “hard-copy” artistic mediums—but also because of changing attitudes, rhyme techniques and production values within hip-hop itself. As more and more rappers compose rhymes in their heads or on smart phones and computers, we—rap fans, journalists, documentarians—are steadily losing our ability to investigate the process that goes into lyric writing. Just as there’s inherent value in viewing Picasso’s sketches or Kerouac’s original manuscript for his 1957 novel, On the Road, typed on a 120-foot scroll of paper, it’s fascinating to look at Eminem’s handwritten rhymes—made so famous in his semiautobiographical 2002 movie, 8 Mile, and the March 2004 XXL photo shoot that displayed them—and see how Eminem intertwines couplets into dense, witty verses. But beyond such scholarly pursuits, it must be asked: Is rap’s abandonment of the rhyme book affecting the music?

Hip-hop may have evolved as the displaced descendant of African oral tradition, but the written word got involved early. In 1979, when Sugarhill Gang released the nascent genre’s breakout hit, “Rapper’s Delight,” the track included verses Big Bank Hank plucked from Grandmaster Caz’s collection of written rhymes. “When Hank said he needed something to say, I whipped out a book,” says Caz, who never received royalties for writing the lyrics. “The rest is history.” The single became one of the most famous rap songs ever made, and the importance of the notebook was stitched right into its lore.

For many rappers who came of age during the 1980s, having a well-stocked rhyme book was an indication of an artist who took his or her craft seriously. Just as graffiti writers used their “piece books” to plan out designs before they sprayed them on subway cars, rappers used their notebooks to catch the inspiration when it came and to perfect their creations for performance. Like Nas said on his 1994 track “The World Is Yours,” “I sip the Dom P/Watchin’ Ghandi ’til I’m charged/Then writin’ in my book of rhymes/All the words pass the margin.” Some became so attached to their books that they’d carry them with them wherever they’d go. “When I was young, I used to run with a notepad,” Sadat X rapped on Brand Nubian’s 1992 single “Punks Jump Up to Get Beat Down.”

Early in his career, Rakim, the artist credited with modernizing rap via the complexity of his lyrics, misplaced a full rhyme book and spent months worrying that it had fallen into the wrong hands. As a safety precaution, he began writing rhymes in wild-style graffiti lettering—a fact he later alluded to on the 1990 single “Let the Rhythm Hit ’Em.”

“I figured if I lost it, no one would be able to [decode] it,” he says. Rakim believes the use of a notebook is intrinsically tied to thoughtfulness and a deeper commitment to the writing process. “It stands for consciousness in hip-hop,” he says. “If you sit down, it means you’re going to put in time. It’s really important for the culture, and it definitely shows substance.”

Some younger rappers experience a visceral response to the rhyme book in much the same way the tangible quality of vinyl holds appeal to a generation of DJs whose parents didn’t have a turntable in the living room. “When I see a pen and a pad, a feeling gets over me that I can’t explain,” says Lil B, a rapper known for prodigious output and omnipresent hashtag slang on Twitter. “It’s the most epic for me when I’m going stupid nuts.” He doesn’t write lyrics down for his free-associative-based “freestyle” work, but he says he needs paper to properly “get [his] emotions across” for his more meaningful songs.

B claims to have saved every rhyme he’s ever penned. “Seeing the paper wrinkled up and seeing the history, it’s humbling and almost brings tears to my eyes.”

From a historical perspective, the preservation of rhyme books allows outsiders to examine how classic verses were constructed and to gather insight into the artist’s creative process. The Rose That Grew From Concrete, released in 2000, is a collection of Tupac’s poetry from before his rap career blossomed. But as it reproduced the actual pages of his notebooks, in his handwriting, the reader is granted access to early literary quirks—he notates “into” as “in2” and occasionally draws an eyeball, instead of writing “I”—as well as the emerging sociological awareness that threaded through much of his adult work. Similarly, Eminem’s notes show the handiwork of a compulsive writer; his lyrics are often written on napkins and crammed into the corners of pages at off-kilter angles. “He’ll kill you if you look in his book,” says Denaun Porter, a producer and vocalist who has worked with Eminem since his formative years in Detroit. “I don’t know nobody that writes more than him. I’ve been around everybody who’s everybody in the studio, and I’ve never seen a process like that.” Porter says that Eminem is the reason he “stacks lines”—or amasses a reserve of couplets and one-liners that can later be fused into verses.

For all of the pride rappers take in filling notebooks with baroque lyrics, there has always been a special appreciation for rappers who were cool enough to spit bars without breaking a sweat. In the mid-1990s, a few notable rappers began constructing dense, vivid rhymes within the soft circuitry of their brains, instead of on paper (as opposed to freestyling, the verses were premeditated). It started with Jay-Z, as so many trends have. While recording tracks with Brooklyn producer DJ Clark Kent in the early stages of his career, Jay-Z would listen to beats, order lunch, and then lay down vocals without any writing. “It was insane to see, because it was so fast,” says Kent. Jay-Z explained that he tailored rhyme patterns around drum rolls and then used the flow and rhythm to remember the lyrics.

According to Kent, The Notorious B.I.G., who would also become known for composing rhymes in his head, learned the technique from Jay-Z during the making of “Brooklyn’s Finest,” their duet on Jay-Z’s 1996 album, Reasonable Doubt. When Kent brought B.I.G. by Manhattan’s D&D Studios to get on the track, Jay-Z jumped into the booth and redid the song with lyrics that left space for B.I.G.’s verses. Jay then looked at his Brooklyn counterpart. “You ready?” he asked, pushing a pad toward B.I.G. “Your turn.” B.I.G., who had been in the practice of writing out his lyrics up to that point, declined the notebook and opted to record his parts at a later time. “The face on Big was like, ‘What? Are you serious?’” says Kent. “It was a really serious revelation moment.”

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Jay-Z’s influence extended to collaborators beyond B.I.G. A number of artists in his Roc-A-Fella Records camp learned the technique, too: Beanie Sigel, Young Chris and Freeway began composing verses in their heads after working with Jay-Z. While they were mimicking their boss, there were some fringe benefits to the method. “My handwriting was so sloppy that it was easier to just come up with stuff in my head,” says Freeway. “I’ll write it down and can’t hardly read it.”

Due to the towering success of Jay-Z and B.I.G., the idea emerged that putting pen to pad was a task reserved for proletariat rappers. So when Jay-Z took shots at Nas, on the 2001 track “The Takeover,” with barbs that included, “You ain’t live it/You witnessed it from your folks’ pad/You scribbled in your notepad/And created your life,” there was a hint of scorn for the written word. Rappers including Lil Wayne, T.I., Lil Fame, Ja Rule and Kanye West revealed that they don't construct rhymes with pen and pad either. Whether such declarations were truthful or self-mythologizing showmanship, the notebook was falling out of favor quickly.

A simple fact of technological advancement: Anything that can be digitized eventually will be. We can gripe about the soullessness of listening to music on MP3 players or the lack of heft when reading books on an iPad, but the relentless march toward convenience and affordability continues. It’s no surprise that the arrival of cell phones with qwerty keypads made rhyme books seem archaic. Devices such as the BlackBerry, iPhone, Sidekick and Droid are omnipresent, portable and more comfortable for a demographic that sends text messages, instead of leaving notes on the fridge. “I abandoned the books in about 2008,” says Reek Da Villian. “The BlackBerrys are so much more convenient, because you can type it real quick. If you have a correction, you can just delete it. You can copy and paste and move things around. It’s just way more convenient… You don’t have to carry no big notebook, and you’re gonna have your phone with you at all times.”

Indeed, the handiness of handheld devices has rendered memorization unnecessary—as evidenced by the way no one remembers phone numbers anymore. Still, old mores die hard. The rising star Drake caused a small furor when he was caught on videotape reciting rhymes off a BlackBerry during a 2009 appearance on Funkmaster Flex’s Hot 97 radio show. To some, this looked like cheating. (Like it does when a politician’s transparent teleprompter gets caught sidelong during a televised speech.) “I’m more impressed with his reading skills than his freestyle,” scoffed a commenter about Drake on Miss Info’s website.

Such stigmas are likely to be short-lived. Out of the 11 members of XXL’s 2011 Freshman Class, six write on a computer or a smart phone. Yelawolf uses an iPad. And recently, Atlanta rapper Waka Flocka Flame was even seen reciting lyrics off a digital tablet in a YouTube video titled “Yung Gwapa Feat. Waka Flocka 'White Boy Wasted.'”

It’s just a generational thing. “Rap notebooks are the new baggy jeans,” says Heems of Brooklyn rap group Das Racist. He and his rap partner, Kool A.D., often write lyrics on Gmail, then save them as drafts. “I don’t think anyone starts rapping on their BlackBerry,” Heems says. “You start in class, on a scrap of paper. It’s not that much different.”

Computers are far from infallible—as anyone who has had a hard drive wiped out knows well—and rappers who rely heavily on technology run the risk of losing data. Heems admits that organizing lyrics can present a problem when they’re floating around as e-mails. Lloyd Banks lost over a dozen verses on his phone and subsequently began transcribing hard copies of his newly typed bars.

“Losing phones is way more common than losing notebooks,” says Reek. “I’ve lost so many raps from the last five or six years by having them in my BlackBerry it’s ridiculous. You get to back up something, but then you may go two or three months without backing your phone up, and you lose it.”

Still, the advantages of technology are obvious. And for some, the major drawbacks come not in terms of functionality, but in format. A typed verse on a text document lacks a certain personal touch. Mickey Factz, a rapper from the Bronx, transitioned from paper to a cell phone, but he misses the intimacy of working with a pen and a pad. “When I got a Sidekick 2, that was it,” he says. “It was so much easier. But writing in notepads [is] nostalgic art for me. Sometimes I can go back and reminisce about the scribbles and keynotes and specific memories of when I wrote them. The sentimental value is the only thing missing.”

For all of the rhyme book’s charms, has its disappearance affected the quality of contemporary rap music? Purists argue that modern artists are less dedicated to writing and, in turn, have lowered the threshold of lyricism. But there’s no reason a hastily scribbled verse on loose-leaf would be of a higher caliber than intricate lyrics typed into an iPhone. It’s about the craftsmanship of the carpenter, not his tools.

Here’s a tangential theory: When the hip-hop production of the late 1990s popularized tempos outside of the East Coast’s narrow 95-bpm boom-bap tradition, an artist could no longer make any verse from his notebook fit into any song.

Writing to a specific beat replaced using an internal metronome, and while this led to a flurry of creative new deliveries, it demanded more immediacy from the process of penning rhymes. Rappers had to write on the spot, a practice that devalued owning a notebook packed with prewritten material. But even with that analysis considered, one immutable fact remains: Artists with talent and effort will be dope whether they etch on cave walls, punch keys on an iPad 2 or suture their rhymes together in their head.

Even Caz, who treasures his collection of notepads and regards the art of writing as sacred, says we shouldn’t miss the big picture. “Once you make your record,” he says, “that’s your rhyme book.” — Ben Detrick

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