This is what rhyme does. In a couplet, the first rhyme is like a question to which the second rhyme is an answer. The first rhyme leaves something in the air, some unanswered business. In most quatrains, space is created between the rhyme that poses the question and the rhyme that gives the answer - it is like a pleasure deferred.
I came from a private school, and public high school was the first time I ever went to a public school. So I went into it very preppy; I was wearing a lot of Abercrombie and Hollister. Then, my sophomore year, I started listening to rock bands. I had a boyfriend that took me to my first rock show, and I was just addicted to that.
When I began rapping, I only had one form at my disposal. All I had, all I needed was a rhyme verse; sixteen bar, thirty-two bar, whatever it was. If I had an idea it came out as a rhyme. When I challenged myself to think beyond that, my first thing other than a rhyme that I wrote was a play.
I recorded my first song at 15. But I started rhyming a few years before that. At first it was trading lyrics at school. We'd get in a circle in the playground with a beat-boxer and spit rhymes. Then it would turn into a big gathering after school.
I went to public school, and I didn't do well in school. And it wasn't until, actually, I got into school at Juilliard - it was the first time in my life that I thought, 'Oh, maybe I'm not stupid,' because I was so inspired and passionate about what I was learning, and it was the first time in my life I had felt that.
Well, first of all, I grew up in New York City, going to first a public school, then a private school, and when I got to the private school in Manhattan, I learned of what we called 'The Promised Land,' which are the Hamptons. I've always had an affinity for the Hamptons.
But, once again, when I said I'm so grateful for my mom just being adamant about me staying in public school - that is what allowed me to be exposed to so many different types of people. I went to a high school that was by the beach. I elected to do bussing my junior high school years. And my first year of high school, I would take the bus from my neighborhood to the beach schools. And at those schools, you had such a mix of so many types of kids.
Rhyme to kill, rhyme to murder, rhyme to stomp,
Rhyme to ill, rhyme to romp,
Rhyme to smack, rhyme to shock, rhyme to roll,
Rhyme to destroy anything, toy boy.
On the microphone:
I'm Poppa Large, big shot on the East Coast.
I try to shield my children as far as possible from the public glare. I want them to have a normal childhood like we had. We went to school by the school bus, had school food... There was no special treatment given to us. The same applies to my children as well.
When I ran for mayor of New York City, the first time, some people voted eight and ten times. And second time I had firefighters and police officers outside checking on the buses so we take down the number of the bus, the bus had voted ten times, and wouldn't let the bus vote again.
My first artist bus was Jason Aldean's old bus, with deer antlers over the lights and cowhide on the back of the couches. It was such an absolute dude bus.
At first I was laboring under the impression that Chinese lyrics didn't rhyme. That turned out to be untrue - they don't rhyme in translation.
School was pretty good about letting me take up music and that's where I had my first musical ideas and first said, 'Yeah, I'm going to be a musician.' I just had to do a quick stop gap in the army first.
There are going to be times when we can't wait for somebody. Now, you're either on the bus or off the bus. If you're on the bus, and you get left behind, then you'll find it again. If you're off the bus in the first place — then it won't make a damn.
When I'm shooting, really the audience I'm thinking the hardest about is that first test screening audience who I want to like the film and that first opening weekend audience.
Generally speaking, rhyme is the marker for the end of a line. The first rhyme-word is like a challenge thrown down, which the poem itself has to respond to.