As part of XXLMag.com’s “10 Rappers Break Down The Most Difficult Verses They’ve Ever Written” list, Ice Cube, Raekwon, Scarface, and a handful of other artists offered a breakdown of the most difficult verses they’ve ever written.
Houston, Texas rapper Scarface provided a breakdown of the first verse on his The Diary record, “I Seen A Man Die.” Released in 1994, the Geto Boys lyricist says he was 23-years-old and “finding himself” when he penned the verse.
“You can go through life with your head up, but until you see somebody life took or go to a funeral or lose someone dear to you, that’s when you see a man break down,” Scarface said while speaking to XXLMag.com about his “I Seen A Man Die” verse. “I was writing shit that makes sense to me. I was a kid, man, if you look at it, writing that kind of shit. Find a kid now that’s writing that kind of shit. I don’t have a feeling writing a song. I just know that listening to it, after I hear it and everything is in order and in place, then you feel like you got something special. I know people weren’t feeling like that in the beginning. Nothing was narrated like that. You got great storytellers and songwriters but nothing of that magnitude.”
Raekwon’s verse on Wu-Tang Clan’s iconic “C.R.E.A.M.” record was the verse he dubbed the most difficult to write. He spoke on “C.R.E.A.M.” transitioning from a song about “people that was rich” to a song about their own personal struggles.
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“At first, ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ was a story about people that made money and people that was rich,” Raekwon said. “But then a good friend told me, ‘We need to talk about where we been at and what we’ve been through.’ I had to go back and rewrite it a couple of times…So I had to make sure that I wrote something that could reflect based on some true documents in my life, and that was pretty difficult for me to write at first. It’s easy for me to tell a story and use other players and other people to describe what I was going at. But it was different for me to talk about my life and my struggles.”
Former N.W.A rapper Ice Cube traveled back to his time in the Compton, California-based group to speak on the most difficult verse he’s ever written. Cube named his verse on N.W.A.’s, 1987 record “Dope Man” as the verse that was most difficult for him to write.
According to the rapper, the song was created before N.W.A had officially formed, and serves as “a cautious tale.”
“We were still trying to find out what we should be really rhyming about. It took a minute to really sum that up on what we tried to do,” Ice Cube said. “It was kind of before I found my niche, what kind of style that I was going to stick with. We hadn’t formed N.W.A, technically, when that song was recorded. It was just really making sure we were clear with what we wanted to say. We didn’t have any beats. Dre would make the beats after he heard the rhyme. It wasn’t anything really to rap to; it was kind of just beats in my head. He liked the first verse, but I didn’t have a second verse, so I had to go write it and complete the song.
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“It was a cautious tale,” he added. “Dope dealing wasn’t gloried like it is now. It was actually a warning song. I was about 16, 17 years old. Wrote it at my house in my bedroom and was super motivated. After the success of ‘Boyz-N-The Hood,’ I knew if I did this right, it was going to become a record. I was amped up. That’s probably why it took me a minute, because I was concentrating so hard to get every line right.”
