It was the Best of Rhymes, it was the Worst of Rhymes

There are some rhyme schemes that can only be pulled off if you know what you're doing, and even then only very sparingly. A notable example of this is the 'rhyming a word with itself' technique. Good rappers know that this can sound lazy and effortless, so they don't do it unless they're making some kind of clever play on words or using a different meaning each time.

Positive Examples of this:

"I'm not a businessman/
I'm a business, man"
-Jay-Z

"We don't throw our hands up like we don't care anymore/
We throw our hands up like we don't care anymore."
-POS

Here Jay-Z is using this technique to contrast between what he's not and what he is and he does it by using the same words to mean different things. POS does something slightly different, taking a traditional hip-hop stalwart (throw your hands in the air like you just don't care) and contrasting it with throwing your hands up in disgust and giving up. The important thing both of these lines have going is contrast. If you don't have some kind of contrast then you are simply rhyming a word with itself.

Mediocre Examples of this:

"I'm into distribution, I'm like Atlantic/
I got them motherfuckers flyin' cross the Atlantic."
-Rick Ross

"I wanna get up in her Bush like Dubya/
Tryin' get up in her bush like double ya."
-Rhymefest

Rick Ross kind of gets it, as does Rhymefest, but it's really not quite right. In the case of Rick Ross, it's really more of a problem with the way he says it. He delivers this line as if it was really clever, putting an accent in "Atlantic" in a different place the second time he said it even though it's the exact same word and pronounced the exact same way. In one case he is talking about an airline, in the next the ocean that that airline is named for. Not as impressive as you think Rick Ross. At least Rhymefest makes an honest effort, the word(s) he ends his line with are in fact different. But in this case it's so obvious that he just wanted to use the line "Up in her bush like Dubya" (referring to our former president, 9/11/, never forget) that he really just said "fuck it" about the second line and figured the refence was clever enough to distract us from the fact that he said "double ya" which means basically nothing on it's own.

Of course the worst examples of this are when a rapper just clearly does not give a shit and simply has completely unrhyming verses and throws the same word at the end of each line. This is a practice not worth dignifying with examples (especially cause i can't think of any off the top of my head right now). My point is, blap fans, don't put up with this lazy kind of writing. Demand better!

"Rappers, we are watching you/
we ain't gon' stop watching you"