This video is sponsored by Skillshare. The first 500 people to go to skl.sh slash polyphonic 11 will get two months of Skillshare for free. There are a few rappers that can compare to Asal Brock. While he's never broken through the mainstream, his intricate flow and strange verbose bars have made him an underground hip hop legend. He's always in the discussion of smartest rappers of all time, and when Matt Daniels analyzed hip hop's vocabulary, he left all other rappers in the dust. Daniels found that Asal Brock used more than 7,000 different words in his songs, nearly 1,000 more than the next rapper. So how does Asal Brock do it? Let's take a closer look. Each one of Asal Brock's songs contains so much density that it will be nearly impossible to look over his entire catalog. So to better understand how he makes such unique music, I'm gonna look at what maybe his most popular song, Nunchel Pass. Released in 2007, Nunchel Pass is the title track of Asal's best-selling record. It provides a great entry point for the artist because it shows off everything that he does so well. In four minutes of music, Asal Brock manages to squeeze in an impressive 258 different words. If you don't count the hundred most common words in the English language, you still have 221 different words. For some context, Bob Dylan is one of the most verbose songwriters in rock history. When we look at his masterpiece like a Rolling Stone, a dense song by any measure, he uses 188 unique words, 137 if you take away the common ones. And that's a six-minute song. Asal Brock manages to fit nearly twice that in four minutes. When you take out the instrumental passages, samples, and chorus repetitions, you get around 105 seconds of actual rapping. That means in each second of rapping, Asal Brock fits in more than two individual words. And that's not including the most common words, either it, things like that. Now this is impressive, but being able to fit a lot of different words in a song doesn't necessarily mean the words make sense. In fact, both Bob Dylan and Asal Brock have been criticized for how difficult it can be to parse their language. With some people claiming there's no meaning, just jumbled words. In an interview with Gernicot, Asal Brock denied this though. He said, these songs are not nonsensical, that's pretty preposterous. I'd have to be a genius to pull this many nonsensical records over people's eyes. He elaborated in Rolling Stone saying that if people aren't pulling meaning from his songs, then that's on them. He said, I feel like if people aren't pulling anything from the songs, then they're not really trying to, or didn't have an interest in the first place. And the fact that you need to try to pull meaning from Asal Brock is part of what makes him so amazing in my book. It's an active listening process, trying to decipher what he's saying and how it can affect your life. And there's a lot to decipher when you look closely. The first few couplets of Nunchapas give direction for the song. It's a contemplation on the state of culture and modern society at the time of its release. But the way that Ace goes about this is with dense metaphor. Buttery Gold is a way of talking about wealth and it's dripping with visual imagery. But he pairs this image of flaunting wealth with a jittery zeitgeist. The zeitgeist is a term often associated with the German philosopher Hegel. It means the spirit of an age. So what's Asal Brock saying when he says the spirit of our age is jittery? It's a nervous time insecure and distracted, paired with the images of Buttery Gold creates a juxtaposition. People are flaunting their wealth but the national spirit is insecure and nervous. And that's just two lines. You can see why unpacking Ace is such an intense process. He speaks almost entirely in metaphor. The end of Nunchapas's first verse is one of my favorite sections of the song where he discusses the way that society is played against itself. Asal Brock has an incredible way of using common euphemisms and turning them on their head. Most people know what a cash cow is and know what beef is in hip hop. Both of these metaphors relate to cows and Asal Brock notices this and ties them together to make a powerful statement. Those in power are making money off of people fighting each other. This flows effortlessly into the next line condemning police violence and tying neatly back into the metaphor of beef painting a dark picture of authority feasting on the struggles of the downtrodden. The dense verbose verses of Nunchapas are paired with a simple pre-chorus and a hook built mostly around instrumentals and samples. Asal Brock said that he came up with that idea upon hearing blockheads beat to the song. He wanted the chorus to be simple built around a catchy phrase. That phrase Nunchapas holds many meanings within itself though. On one level it seems to suggest hip hop revato but at the same time it could be a reference to a Monty Python clip and this goes hand in hand with the rest of the chorus or Ace paints judgment by a fun house cast. The song is lush with religious imagery and this chorus about judgment seems to lampoon the idea of people claiming moral authority over each other. This condemnation of people in power and authority bleeds into the next verse. What Asal Brock says here is actually a common thought especially in hip hop. The privileged can't relate to those who have had to struggle to get where they are but the way he paints this picture is so clever and unique. The privileged are referred to as people who have never had a day a snow cone couldn't fix. It's a simple image but a powerful one. And from there Asal Brock sings of an underground rapper compares him to a broken motor barely running because he refuses to submit to the standards demanded by mainstream society. It's clearly a personal story for Asal Brock who has spent his entire career proudly in the underground and while his music may not have the same mainstream appeal it's still easy enough to listen to Asal Brock without delving into the lyrics and that in and of itself is a feat. Asal told the Rolling Stone that he learned how to fill songs with a broad vocabulary but still make them easy to listen to and perform. He said, I think I've learned over time to keep the denseness and the lexicon in there while making it something that's easier to perform and maybe isn't working against the listeners ear as much. A lot of praise is put on how difficult songs are to rap but Nunchel Pass has a simple steady flow laid back and right on top of the beat. Part of the reason Asal Brock's music is so listenable is the way that internal rhyme guides his flow. This is something he learned from his influences. Look at Eric Sermon's opening verse on The Seahawirang's back with attack and sharp with barb nestling these little rhymes within a couplet. It's no coincidence that Asal Brock told Passionvice that this verse always stuck in his head but Asa takes this to the next level on Nunchel Pass. In the middle of the second verse he stacks internal rhymes and pairs them with the literation. Check out how this couplet strings together lines of S sounds followed by lines of C sounds all while the rhymes provide a consistent rhythm. And these intricately crafted rhymes contain just as much meaning as the rest of the song. There are condemnation of conformity. In an interview with Thrasher Asal Brock talked about how he writes his rhymes. I'll hear things throughout my day that I'd like to work into a song and write it down. Whether I get to it tomorrow or two years from now, I know it'll be on that list. This comes through clearly in the third verse to Nunchel Pass where he runs common phrases and images together with pop culture and raw human experience. He even breaks up his flow into clear thoughts playing with space in the bar so that you can hear each thought both on its own and as part of a wider message. The way Asal Brock crafts his bars around the beat is impressive too. He's able to nestle short punchy lines in with long intricate descriptive passage. Asal Brock is the full package. Not only does he have a vocabulary that many authors would die for, he has a command over it. He can wrangle it into a flow that can connect with listeners. And Nunchel Pass is really just the entrance point. Asal Brock has an entire career of songs to prove why he's one of the greatest rappers ever to live. But if you decide to give it a listen, you might want to bring up the Soros. When making this video, I really wanted to visualize Asal Brock's lyrics so I turned to kinetic typography. And while kinetic typography is a ton of fun, it's also a ton of work and really challenging to learn. If you want to try to figure it out, I recommend Skillshare where you can find Jake Bartlett's ultimate guide to kinetic type. Skillshare is an online learning community with over 20,000 classes in design, music, business, and lots more. Premium membership gives you unlimited access to high-quality courses on a myriad of skills. But maybe you're not looking to take on something new. Maybe you're just looking to improve your day-to-day life. If that's the case, why not check out Thomas Frank's Productivity Masterclass, which can help you get your life in order and maximize your time. And really that's just the beginning. There's countless courses you can use to create your best self. So why not give it a try? The first 500 people to sign up using the link in the description will be able to try out Skillshare for two months at no cost. That means unlimited access to more than 20,000 classes for free. So act now and start learning today.