#ThrowBackKiLa: Review Of Kvng KiLa's Dark Clouds

Add caption

"Flow of Self-worth and Self-narrative: A Stylo-linguistic Appraisal of KvngKiLa's " Dark Clouds".

By Nsikak Ekikor.

Previous reviews on KiLa's musical oeuvre have largely neglected the concept of style and flow while striving to unravel their semantic import. For this critic, the restriction of musical analysis to its subject matter at the expense of style is not recommendable in that it is the effective manipulation of stylistic devices that lift an ordinary verse to its poetic level. Thus, it is unarguably that there is no true Hip-Hop without style and flow.

Ipso facto, a thorough assessment of a rapper's song should embrace its propensity to good style and flow. To emphasis the preponderance of good style, an American Hip-Hop critic, Edwards P. in his publication entitled: "How to Rap": Chicago Review Press, opines that:

          " It's all about styles, just the way you're getting

          your subject across. If people can't feel how you're

          saying it, it doesn't matter what you're saying ".

                  (Edwards, 2009, P. 65).

Edwards' postulation does not suggest an outright rejection of content analysis for the sole prioritisation of flow; rather, he would seek to stir up the consciousness for critical attention on style which without it, rap will remain only but a collection of humdrum and stultifying lines.

Style/flow as acknowledged by Edwards is used in Hip-Hop to refer to a rapper's rap, but can be based on a number of factors like speed, rhythmic structure, rhyme patterns, cadence, breath control, enunciation, syncopation and the use of pitch and tone.

However, of all its gratifying features, I have found found KiLa's " Dark Cloud " delightful for its propensity to aforementioned stylistic devices. From its thematic standpoint, the song is an embodiment of one's worth and autobiography expressed in grandeur and artistic splendour. The entire discourse evolves around the rapper's outstanding penmanship and family history.

Structurally, "Dark Cloud" is a rap song of 36 lines divided into three verses of nine lines structured in three quatrains which are demarcated by two different intermissions. The bars are structured in such a way that the rapper's ideas are presented in nine quatrains while the foregrounded outro gives the conclusion of the whole subject matter in a very powerful manner.

RHYME PATTERNS:

There is a rhyme correspondence in the entire song. Words are carefully selected that all at the end of each quatrain rhyme. In the first quatrain of the first verse, we have the following words at the end of each line:

         insane (line 1)

         brain (line 2)

         game (line 3)

         frame (line 4).

The same rhyme pattern is repleted in the other quatrains thereby influencing the meaning of the song under review. Symbolically, this steady rhyme correspondence depicts the even and consistent nature of the rapper's proficiency and relevance in an industry where avalanche of rappers hardly 'rhyme' for half a decade. One would not need to be told that the Nigerian Hip-Hop scene is so demanding that even some of the most gifted lyricists are found in a fashion of becoming less active in the game they had once dominated. As aptly captured in his address to his label representae, KiLa opines:

    "Ahhh Ghost, Abrh Yo!

     See, this pressure could make a nigga go insane".

 (Line one, verse one.)

The above assertion corroborates the later submission of Blaqbonez in his verse on " Purification" (Martel Cypher 2) which reads:

"Headline, mainstream rappers [are] now underground".

            (Blaqbonez, 2019).

The uneven nature of mainstream rappers as referred to KiLa as " niggas" going insane/underground could be as a result of misplaced priority in that some of them only pick up the challenge of rapping as a means of survival when it's glaring that they lack the skills. KiLa acknowledges his creative intuition and dexterity and criticises self-acclaimed rappers as he muses:

 "Hip-Hop is my life, guess, to you it's a game" (line 3, verse 1).

 "I feel like I'm the realest and y'all just faking it". (Line 1, verse 2).

RHYTHMIC STRUCTURE: The song is devoid of regular metrical flow. There is a deviation from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak beats in a metre. However, accented and unaccented syllables are randomly placed in no particular order thus depicting the rapper's non-pedantic  idiosyncrasy. KiLa's contempt for established norms and love for artistic radicalism is highlighted in the first two lines of the second verse which reads:

   "You're making rules, I'm thinking different ways of breaking it".

Instead of picking up from the established standard of his predecessors, KiLa insists on detaching himself from the shackles of OGs and invent a style peculiar to him. As repleted in the last two lines of the last quatrain in verse one, KiLa opines thus:

   " I came to make a change in the game

     Now it's funny, cuz I'm taking change out of the game ".

KiLa uses pun in the above lines to depicts how his novel but brilliant flow/style has earned him financial reward in the industry, he is "taking 'change' (money) out of the game. With this, one can make bold to argue that had deliberately refused to adhere to particular rhythmic structure in order to either lunch his peculiar style, foreground his propensity to invention or to reach out to a wider audience who often detest the stultifying and rigid traditional rhythm.

CONCLUSION: The review have identified and exhaustively discussed style/flow as the major properties of Hip-Hop in general and KvngKiLa's "Dark Cloud" in particular. Without neglecting the relevance of subject matter, we have assessed the manner in which the rapper have skillfully manipulated verse structure, rhythmic structure, rhyme patterns and syncopation to produce a song exploring his predilection and artistic radicalism.

Writer: Nsikak Ekikor

For: BrainBox

Facebook: Ekikor Jnr

Instagram: @Ekikor Jnr

Twitter: @NEkikor

Mobile contact: 08138288824