Is it the Hip Hop beat, or is it the rapper? This is a question that comes up again and again. A lot of music sells or gets a following based on the hip hop beat that it has. People like the beat, bob their heads, and might also remember the hook. And because of this a lot of would be rappers think that if they only had a beat like what they hear on the radio that they could also be famous. And while this is true, and to some extent rappers may make a name by taking other rappers hot beats and remixing them, the truth is that the hip hop beat itself only makes up a part of what makes a song hot or not.

The strongest feature of any hip hop song is the rapper, and more importantly, how the rapper makes a song by interacting with the hip hop bit itself. The interaction of artist with beat is the creation of music and this is no easy task. More to the point, making good music is more than just a one shot deal, but a good song is generally the accumulation of a lifetime of study and practice boiled into a moment of music in time.

In other words, you have to become the music in order to make great songs. It doesn't just start with choosing a hot hip hop beat, but it starts with the person picking the beat, and what they see in the beat before they even spit a word to it. There is an art to picking hip hop beats, that has more to do with how the rapper can interact with the beat than it does necessarily with how the beat sounds on first listen. You can have two beats side by side, but the beat that you work best with is the hip hop beat that you can really bring to life. It doesn't matter so much what seems hot at the moment, but what you can make hot when the lyrics are laid and the final production is complete.

Don't be afraid to rap to as many beats as you can. There is a tendency for rappers to make one of two mistakes. The first is recognizing what type of hip hop beat you work well with and only working with that type. At first this strategy may work, but you have to be careful not to get trapped in the rut you made of the groove you were in. The second mistake is when rappers don't have a very good idea of what beats they can work best with and so choose beats that they like or that they think other people will find hot regardless of whether or not they can work with the beat.

The remedy is to know where your talents lie and what type of hip hop beats you can really rap to. But don't become so predictable or set in your ways that you can only rap to that specific style of hip hop beat.