The Sound of Writing
As my fall 2024 was wrapping up and I started mentally preparing for my spring 2025 sabbatical, for some reason, I got the urge to create a YouTube playlist of my favorite hip-hop instrumentals from my late teen and early adult years. Including my “go-to” tracks from my freestyling days (a pastime I have been missing lately). In some form or fashion, rhyming, either through myself or via my favorite lyricists, has been a part of the more formative years of my development. At least as far as young adulthood is concerned, so has academic writing. And while when I was younger I gravitated toward freestyling tracks for what I would now probably consider more superficial reasons, during my sabbatical, I find myself paying more attention to the art and science behind the track (e.g., why certain choices were made, sounds combined, etc., and others were not). Similarly, I have spent some of my sabbatical time thinking through certain aspects of scholarly writing, and what seems to be the core themes or throughline throughout much of it.
One of the tracks I added to my playlist was not a past favorite, but one I came across through YouTube’s suggestions algorithm. But as soon as I heard it, I immediately knew it would have been a “go-to” track to freestyle to. Early on in my sabbatical, I came across a “Deconstructed” episode featuring the song’s producer explaining his process creating the track, and how, if it wasn’t for the discovery of one seemingly minor addition to the rest of the sounds that ultimately made everything come together, he was likely going to throw away the track.
When I learned this, it helped crystallize something I had been thinking about. Something that may partially explain why I was so intrigued by a comment made on a television show some years back by a music producer, and I geeked out this week when I had the pleasure of visiting a hip-hop artist’s studio recording session. In the episode, the producer used the characteristics of music to explain why his relationship with his significant other is not in the best place. And while at the recording session, I learned a lot about the multifaceted nature of creating music and the different creative perspectives regarding doing so.
During my sabbatical, as I have reflected more on the influence of hip-hop music on my development and the progression of my scholarship since 2018, I have, in typical Justin fashion, been exploring potential connections across these two influential areas or domains of my life. Namely, that there are parallels between how different music elements are modified and combined and how different ideas and analytical frameworks or perspectives are brought to bear in (my) academic writing. And by “music” I am referring to the elements related to the (1) track itself, (2) lyrics and rhyming style (e.g., the use and combinations of words, ideas, etc.), and (3) synchronization of (1) and (2).
I am not sure what to make of this relationship, but my sabbatical has convinced me that there is one.