Non‐Prevocalic /r/ in New Zealand Hip Hop1
Andrew M. Gibson
University of Canterbury
This paper investigates pronunciation in New Zealand hiphop, specifically the occurrence and distribution of non‐prevocalic /r/. It shows that three popular hip hop artists
realise /r/ after, and only after, the NURSE vowel. The study
aims to stimulate interest in the variety of English that is usedby rap artists in New Zealand, and suggests that New Zealand
hip hop may exhibit a unique distribution of features
combining local speech variants with features ofpronunciation borrowed from international rap artists.

1. Pronunciation in Pop/Rock Music
Trudgill (1997 [1983]) pioneered the study of phonological variation in
singing with his article ‘Acts of Conflicting Identity’, which tracked certain
features in the singing accents of British pop bands over the course of the1960s and 1970s. He found that in the earlier records, British singing accents
had a high frequency of American features. As time went on, however, theuse of these features decreased; a change which coincided with“developments within the world of pop music itself … a change in the patternof cultural domination” (p.261), whereby British pop music had developed its
own identity.
Simpson’s (1999) follow‐up to Trudgill’s study notes that while the set ofAmerican features documented by Trudgill are still used, there are now
several models of pop pronunciation to aspire to. Mixtures of bothstereotypical American features and stereotypical British features can beheard in nineties Britpop bands such as Oasis. Simpson builds on Trudgill’stheoretical position by proposing a three‐way motivation of linguistic factors.
A singer’s pronunciation will be influenced by the speech of the ‘model’ towhich the artist aspires, their own speech, and the speech of their intended
audience. Carlsson’s (2001) study of 1990s Britpop provides a quantitative
analysis of how the movement away from American features continues
towards a British singing accent with its own internal variation.

1

Many thanks to my supervisor Jen Hay. Thanks also to all the other members of the 412
class and ONZE project for discussion and helpful comments.

6

Very few studies of pronunciation in singing have been carried out in New
Zealand. Brooks (1994) analysed forty New Zealand rock songs from the1960s through to 1993 and found that the history of New Zealand rock echoedthat of British pop. The average incidence of non‐prevocalic /r/, for instance,
dropped off from 60% in the 1960s to 8% in the early 1990s. The decrease ofthis and other American features corresponds to the burgeoning
independence of New Zealand rock music which included a distinctive NewZealand ‘sound’, both musically and, evidently, linguistically.
Where Brooks considered change in pronunciation over time, Coddington(2003) investigated variability within one singer across various settings andregisters. In a study of New Zealand singer‐songwriter Anika Moa,Coddington analysed several features, including non‐prevocalic /r/, forpassages of both singing and speech. She found that /r/ was realised in Moa’s
singing but not in her speech. Furthermore, for the two albums analysed,
there was a dramatic shift in pronunciation from 11% r‐ful in the first album
to less than 1% in the second album. This shift was explained by several
factors, including a conscious shift by the artist to display her identity as aM~ori New Zealander more overtly as well as a shunning of American
influence. The other major factor was that the first album was recorded inAmerica with local session musicians whereas the second album wasrecorded in New Zealand with fellow New Zealanders. Coddington’s
research provides further evidence that the accent with which a person singscorresponds to the identity they wish to project.
Coddington (2004) investigated various phonological features across several
genres of New Zealand music, excluding hip hop. She found that the singer‐
songwriter genre had the highest levels non‐prevocalic /r/ production. For
none of the music styles studied in Coddington’s analyses was there any
effect of preceding vowel on levels of /r/ realisation.

2. Hip Hop in Aotearoa“Hey presto, hip‐hop is the new pop”2Over the past few years, hip hop in New Zealand has made a sudden leap
into the popular mainstream, while the underground scene has remained
vibrant and strong. Fresh talent is emerging in droves and being
rapturously embraced by the music‐consuming public. One only has to2Barry, Rebecca (2003, 27 December). The Best Pop Songs of 2003. Retrieved fromhttp://www.nzherald.co.nz

7

look at the results of the 2004 New Zealand Music Awards, where Scribe
collected eight awards, to see that hip hop is, in Scribe’s own words, ‘takingover’. As this strong local hip hop identity develops, we would expect tosee an upsurge of local linguistic features in the music and potentially inthe speech of those affiliated with the genre.
The research presented in this paper follows on from a small pilot study
conducted for an undergraduate paper (Gibson 2002, cited in Bauer andWarren 2004). In that paper, 200 potential non‐prevocalic /r/ environments
were analysed from five NZ hip hop CDs (none of which were included inthis study) and found that non‐prevocalic /r/ occurred systematically after
the NURSE vowel3 but nowhere else. This finding is interesting whencompared to Coddington’s (2004) results for other genres of New Zealandmusic where /r/ occurred in many environments.
Bauer (1986), in his examination of NZE stated that there was no occurrenceof non‐prevocalic /r/ in NZE apart from a small area in the south of theSouth Island. The /r/ accent there is generally attributed to high levels of
Scottish settlement in that area. It should be noted that there is very little
contact between Southland and the hip hop scene, and it can be safely
assumed that the rhoticity in hip hop pronunciation is not related to thatfound in Southland.
The purpose of the present study is to conduct a more thoroughquantitative analysis of non‐prevocalic /r/ in New Zealand hip hop
pronunciation, the hypothesis being that non‐prevocalic /r/ will occur after
NURSE but nowhere else.

3. Methodology
3.1 Materials
Three New Zealand hip hop albums were chosen for analysis, based on thefact that they were the three nominees for the Best Urban/Hip Hop Album at
the New Zealand Music Awards for 2004. Two other factors coincided
fortuitously to reinforce this choice: firstly, all three artists are New Zealandborn Samoan males; secondly, the nominees are all individual rap artists,
which avoids the issue of having to decipher which artist is which whenanalysing a group. The three albums analysed were:
1. King Kapisi – 2nd Round Testament
3The vowel names used throughout this paper are based on Wells (1982).

8

2. Mareko – White Sunday
3. Scribe – The Crusader
The recordings were obtained on compact disc and were converted to .wav
files. These files were then analysed using Praat, a speech analysis tool freely
available on the internet4. The main advantage of using Praat was theability to select and repeatedly listen to small sections of audio in order toisolate any given syllable, making analysis quicker and more accurate.
3.2 Procedure
In order to provide a quantitative analysis of the prevalence of non‐prevocalic/r/ in NZ hip hop pronunciation, a stringent search for all relevant
environments was performed. There is the potential for a non‐prevocalic /r/5
to be realised in any environment where an orthographic r follows a vowel
and precedes a consonant or pause. King Kapisi’s album contained atranscript of the lyrics, so the search for possible non‐prevocalic /r/
environments was made both aurally and visually. For Mareko andScribe’s albums, however, no such transcript could be found. For thisreason, Mareko and Scribe’s albums were analysed by ear. This meant firstunderstanding each line of the rap, and then searching through it forpotential /r/s. There were several lines where I could not decipher the rap(roughly one phrase per song) and these were left out of the analysis.
Several songs included guest rap artists. All sections of rap which were not
performed by the three artists under consideration were excluded from theanalysis.
Repeated sections (e.g. choruses, intro/outro sections) were only coded on
their first occurrence as it was found that such sections are generally
repeated with exactly the same pronunciation.
For each potential non‐prevocalic /r/ environment, an auditory judgement
was made6 as to whether the /r/ was realised. The distinction was binary,with the /r/ category including both r‐coloured vowels and any degree of4

http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat
A non‐prevocalic /r/ is an /r/ which is pronounced before a consonant or a pause (forexample, the standard American pronunciation of start /start/ or car /kar/).
6
Depending on the background music for a given song, it was sometimes possible to see thevowel formants, but acoustic analysis is generally difficult when dealing with the medium ofrecorded music.
59
consonantal approximant. The analysis also recorded the vowel preceding
the /r/.

104. Results
A total of 1453 environments were analysed where a non‐prevocalic /r/ could
potentially have occurred. Of these, 589 tokens were from King Kapisi’salbum (twelve songs), 543 were from Mareko’s album (sixteen songs) and 321
tokens came from Scribe’s album (ten songs).
The potential /r/ was realised in 231 (16%) of the 1453 tokens analysed.
Almost all of the /r/s that were realised were preceded by the NURSE vowel.
There were 237 tokens where NURSE was the preceding vowel; /r/ waspronounced in 223 (94%) of these. Only 8 /r/s (5 of which were after schwa)
were realised after other vowels, out of a possible 1216 (less than 0.01%). This
result is shown below in Figure 1. A chi‐square test was performed andfound thisresult tobehighlysignificant(p <.0001).

Figure 1. Percentage of /r/s realised in relation to preceding vowel.

5. Discussion
The results support the hypothesis that non‐prevocalic /r/ occurs after NURSE
vowel and nowhere else in the rap pronunciation of the three New Zealand‐born Samoan rap‐artists that were analysed. The results were very robust andwere in line with the results of the 2002 pilot study which used several
different artists. Now that this feature has been established, it raises manyquestions for further research.

11
One issue of particular interest is whether these artists use this feature in theirspeech, and if so, when and where do they use it? Also, is there an effect ofethnic identification, or is this a linguistic grouping based solely on amusical/popular culture affiliation?
Another important follow‐up study would be to find out whether the ‘model’American hip hop accent has a preference for non‐prevocalic /r/ after NURSE.
As far as I am aware, there are no quantitative studies on non‐prevocalic /r/for American hip hop pronunciation. If this pattern of partial rhoticity is
unique to New Zealand hip hop it is particularly interesting, and may suggestthat the accent is adopting attributes of both global and local pronunciation.
Perhaps the adoption of a systematic partial rhoticity in New Zealand rap is akind of half‐way point between NZE non‐rhoticity and American rhoticity.
As Wells (1982: 221) notes, it is not infrequent for varieties to use /r/ after
NURSE and nowhere else. This may be explained by the articulatory
similarity between the two sounds.
Aside from the quantitative study of non‐prevocalic /r/, several other features
became noticeable in the course of this research. These are listed below:•••••••A low rate of linking /r/ (e.g. no /r/ in your own).
The frequent occurrence of intrusive /w/ in place of /l/ (style is as/sta+wwz/).
The realisation of  as  and as  ‐
fronting tended to occur in word‐final position birth as f+ whereas was more often realised as /d/ inword‐initial or word‐medial positions (the as /dc/).
All three artists sometimes reduced /pr/ to /p/ and /kr/ to /k/(e.g. crew as /ku+/).
BATH words were often pronounced with /æ/, with greatvariation between the artists. /æ/ was used most by Scribe andleast by Mareko.
PRICE vowel was often realised as /a:/ not /ai/ (style is as/sta+wwz/).
/j/ was often dropped in words like “news” (/nu+z/).

Some of the above features are clearly influenced by American pronunciation(e.g. BATH as /æ/). Others features may suggest that M~ori English7 is7

At present, very little work has been done on the English of NZ born Pacific Islanders or thedifferences between NZ Pacific Island English and M~ori English, but it is likely that the twovarieties share several features.

12
having an effect, such as the reduced use of linking /r/, which has beenrecognised as a feature of M~ori English (Hardman, 1997: 78). Additionally,it should be noted that singing and rapping are activities very different
from speech and that certain pronunciations may be more indicative of theactual nature of the physical activity than of a typical sociolinguistic
variable. For example, the loss of linking /r/ may be a result of the rhythmic
nature of rap, rather than a sociolinguistic marker of identity. Finally, there
are certain variables which could be genuine innovations within the local
genre, such as the reduction of some initial consonant clusters.
Hip hop in Aotearoa has blossomed in recent years, and with this has
blossomed a strength of local identity. Previous studies on pronunciationin singing have shown that stronger local identity encourages the use of
more features from the local accent. If there is a desire to be part of both
the global (American driven) hip hop community and a drive to project a
unique local identity, there may be an observable mixing of linguistic
elements from both of these influences. This appears to be happening withthe adoption of partial rhoticity in New Zealand hip hop. With a detailed
description of hip hop pronunciation in New Zealand along with similar
descriptions for other varieties of hip hop, we will have a powerful tool for
analysing the linguistic representation of cultural identity in the subgroupsof a global community.

References
Bauer, Laurie 1986. Notes on New Zealand English Phonetics and Phonology. English World‐Wide 7: 225‐258.
Bauer, Laurie and Paul Warren 2004. New Zealand English: phonology. In Bernd
Kortman & Edgar W. Schneider (eds), A Handbook of Varieties of English, Vol 1.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 580‐602.
Brooks, Amanda 1994. American and British influences on phonetic variables in New
Zealand rock music. New Zealand English Newsletter 8: 22‐30.
Carlsson, Carl J. 2001. The way they sing it: Englishness and pronunciation in English popand rock. Moderna Sprak 95(2): 161‐168.
Coddington, Anna 2003. Stylistic Variation in Music and Speech: A Case Study. Unpublished
Honours paper: University of Auckland.
Coddington, Anna 2004. Singing as we Speak? Pronunciation in New Zealand Popular Music.
M.A. thesis: University of Auckland.
Gibson, Andrew M. 2002. Redefining Standards: a Study of the Standard Accent for NZ Hip
Hop Culture. Unpublished undergraduate paper: Victoria University of Wellington.
Hardman, Anne 1997. A Study of M~ori English with Special Reference to Syllable Timing.
M.A. thesis: University of Canterbury.
Simpson, Paul 1999. Language, culture and identity: With (another) look at accents in pop
and rock singing. Multilingua 18(4): 343‐367.
Trudgill, Peter 1983. On Dialect; Social and Geographical Perspectives. Oxford: Blackwell.
Trudgill, Peter 1997. Acts of Conflicting Identity: the Sociolinguistics of British pop‐Song
Pronunciation. In Nikolas Coupland & Adam Jaworski (eds), Sociolinguistics: AReader, New York: St Martin’s Press, 251‐265.

13Wells, John C. 1982. Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

14Discography
King Kapisi 2003. 2nd Round Testament, Festival Mushroom Records.
Mareko 2003. White Sunday, Universal Records.
Scribe 2003. The Crusader, Festival Mushroom Records.