If you can successfully rhyme, you definitely have learned that the foundation of freestyle rhyme lies in the fact that everything you do involves some sort of a rhyme. You are certainly a poet that learns how to flow. In this post we are going to look at 2 different kinds of rhyme and how they apply to your work as a freestyle rapper.

There's 2 kinds of rhyming. The first is called perfect rhyme and the second is known as the imperfect rhyme. The imperfect rhyme is also known as slant rhyme, off rhyme or almost perfect rhyme among other names.

In your words that rhymed perfectly, your words don't need to be exactly the same length and don't have to be spelled the same, but you'll find that last accented vowel and the consonants or syllables after the last vowel will be the same. All of the consonants before this are different. Here are some examples: can, ban, fan, Dan and ran.

Unfortunately, if you are rhyming, you are going to run across situations where using a form of perfect rhyme really restricts you. There is a form of freestyle rhyme that is not as restrictive and will give you greater freedom to share your imagination.

Using the imperfect or slant rhyme, you can use two words that sound very close, but do not rhyme perfectly. A couple of words that are like this are shine and mime.

Now that you know what are the 2 types of rhyme are, let's talk about when to use the imperfect or slant rhyme. In the English language, you'll find that there are a few words that don't perfectly rhyme with any other words. There are 3 color words that are good samples of words that do not match with any other words. These are the words orange, purple and silver.

If you were to try these words in your rhymes, you'd be unable to find any words that can match these perfectly, this means you would need to use slant rhymes or words that closely match your words.

Another time for you to use these slant rhymes is when you are really trying to be creative and you like to use some different rhymes. You could make use of this if you want to avoid some common rhymes and wanted to come up with something different.

As you continue to enhance your freestyle rhyme abilities, keep the difference between these two types of rhyming in mind and practice using each type in your freestyle rapping.

To Your Freestyle Rap Success,

Mike Min