Poetry and music have practically both been around forever. They both go hand in hand. However, as of late, rap and hip hop music have lost their poetic sense. The award-winning platinum song “All the Above” featuring T-Pain from Maino’s 2009 album, If Tomorrow Comes, is one of the most poetic rap songs of the 21st Century. In the song, Maino talks about how he came up from the bottom and that his life was not always as easy as it is today. The artist expresses how after all that he has been through, he deserves to be at the top of the rap game. Maino uses multiple poetic techniques in this song. Even though most rap songs of today solely rely on slant rhyme to tell their story, Maino also uses feminine rhyme and masculine rhyme to portray…show more content… One reason for this is the ways he defied many rap norms by using many different types of rhyme. One of the most prominent types of rhyme in this song is masculine rhyme. Masculine rhyme is a rhyme of final stressed syllables. Maino uses this all throughout the song. The first example of this is right at the beginning of the song when he says, “Tell me what do you see/When you looking at me” (line 1-2). However, masculine rhyme does not only have to be in consecutive lines; it can also be in an ABA rhyme scheme. In the song, one of the most used masculine rhyme schemes is when the lyrics say “The struggle is nothing but love/I'm a soldier, a rider, a ghetto survivor/And all the above” (Lines 6-8). These lines are repeated multiple times throughout the song making it more well-rounded. Although this rhyme scheme may seem very simple, it gives the lyrics a better tone than conventional rap songs that use slant rhyme throughout the whole…show more content… Feminine rhyme is a rhyme between stressed syllables followed by one or more unstressed syllables. This technique is less prominent in today’s music because it is harder to find words that work in a feminine rhyme scheme. Nevertheless, in the song, Maino finds a way to use feminine rhyme in lines 34-35 by saying “All the way from out on the block/I hear gunshots and the homies flock.” These lines not only sound great, but they help Maino portray his story of how he grew up in a rough neighborhood. His use of feminine rhyme shows artistry that we don’t often see in today's rap
