stikman

If either the music or lyrics are great they will carry the other irrespective of the quality. If I had to plonk for just one however I would say the music. Reason being, as I run some of my favorite songs through my head without lyrics I still like them. Take away the music and yeah good but not as good.

Pure voice - Barbra Streisand and Michael McDonald Voice/Lyrics - David Bowie and Stevie Nicks Honourable mentions - Bono (U2) Gregg Alexander (New Radicals) Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) Just so much more great music goes unmentioned.

Very generic suggestion. Read poetry, pull apart the rhyme schemes. Listen to rap and learn the rhythms. Understand "freestyle" is almost always a very practiced thing. Comedians dealing with hecklers aren't freestyling they are hitting them with practiced lines. Freestyling rappers are mostly using practiced lines, they just adapt them to the situation. Learn to write vs learn to rap. I can't see why they couldn't be done together. Pick any object and just work on saying and writing good line about it as quick as you can. Then the next one till you dry up. Move on rinse repeat. Its like any kind of training, in this case brain to mouth,

I'm new so maybe a little too enthusiastic in wanting to help. I have been critiquing a few songs and am wondering whether if I haven't gone too far already, if I almost did.I'm not one for stroking peoples ego nor will I say anything just to hurt them. The only time I comment is when I think it could make something better. That said I have kept things pretty basic in my suggestions. However I was going to suggest a title change, which would have required a reasonable rewrite. Is this going too far? It's just in my mind at least the changes could have taken the song from an also ran to something much more. I never actually made the post because mid way through writing the poster added new information in another post. I don't think my suggestion would have been seen as overly helpful or welcomed after that so deleted it. Where do you draw the line on critiquing?