Creativity Thinkpiece

Jayden Simmons

As we’ve began this semester, I entered with a pretty open-mind in my opinion, but I feellike some of my writing was an antithesis of my own thoughts. My first reflection piece on“What is Creativity” was very surface-level. The commentary from Professor Habib truly stuckwith me once I made the claim that creativity cannot be taught, since it is so broad and hasendless possibilities. Once she responded with “challenge accepted” it really got me thinking intothe steps of the creative process that we’ve been taught so far, and how it could help me in myday-to-day life. One think that I participate in on a daily basis is listening to music. I’ve been afan of music since a very early age, and have been listening to music daily since about middleschool. One thing that it inspired me to do was make music of my own. The creative process iscertainly prevalent when it comes to songwriting and performance and that can range from anamateur level to the professionals.Several rappers have discussed their own writing techniques ranging back from 90slegends such as Nas to modern day hitmakers like Logic. As the illustration displayed in the“The Creative Process” lecture displayed, the most difficult part of songwriting in my ownpersonal experience was tripping over myself and my own ideas. Music is all about melody andrhyming, and I can’t even begin to count all the times I’ve written and rewritten verses because Iwasn’t a fan of the rhyme scheme. If you make music of a certain genre, it can be human natureto want to box yourself into a certain general subject matter or sound, just because that’s what
Simmons 2provides the most mainstream appeal. Once an artist make the decision to box themselves in, itcan hinder their creativity.Some artists have their own way to write their music, Nas and J. Cole have both said thatthey had a writing book to physically write down their music compared to Logic who types hisout on his phone. J. Cole further delved into his creative process with a process similar to theidea-throwing stage. Cole said in an interview with Fuse that his technique to write his 2013studio album Born Sinner consisted of him waking up and freehand writing three pages of openthought, ranging from something as small as what he did that day, to just random thoughts in hishead. The point was to get as much content on paper as possible, since it is proven that writingsomething down helps your memory more, and base his work off of making rhymes, edits, andchanges to his writing book. I could definitely relate to Cole when it comes to how I plan forprojects and discussions. Once I get locked in, I just write down whatever comes to mind,ensuring that I don’t leave out a single thought, and the rest of the tasks flows in effortlessly. Ihaven’t yet tried that method in terms of songwriting, simply because my plate is so full of othertasks such as school to dedicate hours a day freewriting.Another world renowned rapper who has discussed his writing matter is Eminem.Eminem is notorious for spending hours a day studying a dictionary to add more words to hisvocabulary and add to his ridiculously unique rhyme patterns and schemes. It’s absolutelymesmerizing and incredible seeing some of the lyrics that Eminem has been capable of creatingover his tenure within music, making rhymes out of obscure words like orange. Using adictionary to expand your vocabulary has been viewed as unorthodox amongst the musicindustry, but it can definitely trigger that creative process of repetition. Once you see certain
Simmons 3words or ideas repeatedly, and figure out the correct context and verbiage needed to use them properly, you can expand your own writing horizons.Grammy-nominated artist Logic takes a more Gen-Z approach to his songwriting process, opting to write in his Notes app on his phone. This is the process I mostly identify with as I write on my laptop. In an article posted by rapgamenow.com, they went in-depth on Logic’s creative process in the studio and what he does to create his music. The process to write on a mobile device presents the opportunity to change words, verbiage, and make edits on the fly, which can be difficult for many artists. It also presents the opportunity to write anytime, anywhere since your book is always with you. However, it can hinder your creative process and sharpness a bit.Logic touched on that on a YouTube livestream in which he said “there is something that is so different about writing on paper.”For me, ranging from music to creative writing, to journalistic writing, I turn to the musicI listen to as an inspiration on ideas that I can use to expand my own process. Those tips and tricks seem simple coming from the horse’s mouth, but once I’ve seen the process behind those ideas spelled out to me in this class it is very intriguing. It makes me wonder how many other recording artists, best-selling authors, or screen writers use the creative process in their drafts.