Antifocal Anaphoras in Hip-Hop Vocals

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the pitch content of the delivery of anaphoric lyrics in hip-hop. Anaphoric lyrics consist of lines with a reiterated beginning and a novel ending. Because new information is presented at the ends of lines, the “linguistic focus” of the line is at the end. Therefore, from the standpoint of intonational phonetics, pitch height would tend to rise to highlight the new information. However, from the standpoint of hip-hop delivery, lines tend to descend toward the end. Using a corpus approach, I document a general tendency toward “focally consistent” delivery in which pitch height supports new information. Then, I explore the afforded meanings of “antifocal” delivery—delivery in which the repeated text is pitched higher—in examples from B-Real, the poet Najee Omar, and Kendrick Lamar. I hope that these examples will attract other scholars to view vocal performances simultaneously through lenses of intonational phonology and music analysis and, further, that correspondences between pitch contours and principles of phonology might prove useful as singing, reciting, and rapping increasingly coexist under the banner of “hip-hop.”