General Chat / I neeeeed your help NE <3

Hey guys,

long time since I last posted and this new post is about something unrelated to RCT as well.

As many of you will know, I've been a long time member of this community. It's been 12 years since I first registered on an rct-forum and it's been an amazing time for the most part. Recently due to my personal life/job/ambitions I've not been able to find much time for rct though...or for video games in general.

A lot of that has to do with the fact that about 5 years ago I was contemplating what I'm doing with my life. I thought to myself "I'm going to college, the route to my career is set if I finish my education, but is that really all?"

I have always been a fan of trying out something new. I have always been a fan of starting something myself and pushing myself hard until I finally reach a good level and I have always been a fan of being outspoken. Add to that, that just like everyone on this website, I have an urge to do something creative. Therefore I decided years ago that I want to write songs, and make music and would work hard until I get good at it. I had zero musical background at the time and I've basically been working on this project by myself for years now.
 

Well, yesterday with my 7th release I managed to reach the milestone of 100,000 plays on SoundCloud. (currently at 115,000 now in total)

That's obviously huge for me, having started with 0 connections and building up such numbers within such a short amount of time. It's only been 3 months since I released my first song.

The thing is, SoundCloud isn't all, and I feel like to come over as "professional" to new listeners, numbers really make a huge difference. I have a YouTube and a Facebook page as well, and it's been very difficult to grow a following through those 2.

That's why I want to ask you, fellow friends of NE, to help me reach the next milestone. I want to get to 1000 followers on Facebook as soon as I can. It's a long way, so any help makes a HUGE difference for me! It's really a matter of heart, and I'd be extremely thankful for your support.

This is my latest song, so you can check out what this is all about:

https://youtu.be/GtTwDpVRc48

this is my Facebook page:

https://facebook.com/darefmusic

and this is my SoundCloud:

https://soundcloud.com/darefmusic

Any feedback on here would be extremely welcome and as I said, the greatest thing for me right now would be to attract more followers on Facebook. If you know any people who might also like my music and can convince them to follow my page, you'd put the biggest smile on my face!!

Thanks for taking the time and a happy new year to all of you! <3

That beat from the youtube link you posted is sick man! You got some dope stuff over there. I'm not an expert, but try to put more variation/intonation in your flow. You already have sick beats, dope lyrics... If you get your flow as sick as that, wow!

I was already a fan on facebook

The times of me listening to Hip-Hop are long gone (4-5 years ago), but I think for a fellow NE member I can make an exception

So first of all: Are you really German? I don't know about the Americans on here, but I would have guessed that you are American from how you sound. Your voice fits the music really well and your flow is also pretty good. The music is very listenable if one likes Rap.

My biggest gripe are the lyrics. This comes from someone who loves metal, so maybe I have the wrong perspective, but here I go: Why are all the lyrics of all the rappers always self-centered? It is really tiring and for me personally it takes away any effect they may have. That's really not a specific criticism to you. When I go back and listen to some of my faves (like Eminem or Blumentopf) I just notice how no song really affects me personally. In Metal, there are some more personal songs, but also songs about history, fantasy, literature, etc. I have no idea if you are interested in some of these sings and I know, that your choice for lyrical themes is really accepted in the rap-community, but that's just something I would enjoy listening to.

I love rap. 

Listened to the newest song and it is very good. Lyrically it is very good, flow is good, everything is decent. I do have a couple of tips though:

1) Pronounce your words a bit better, some of the lyrics lose definition, things like t's being missed, I get that this is just dialect, but I think if you try and make every word clear and pronounced it will improve the quality and the actual sound, its almost as if the rap is lazy at the minute as the words are slurred through the quickness (just a nitpick though, and what you have is amazing considering you are german rapping english)

2) Make the chorus/hook totally different to the verses. At the minute it kind of just feels like another verse, there's no differential apart from shorter lines, the flow and rhythm and speed is the same. break it up a little bit, make it different and diverse, make it stand out a bit more.

3) Again, similar to the previous point, I feel like it needs something more than just 2 verses and then 2 hooks that repeat. Add a bridge or a verse that is only a few lines long, change it up a bit, make it less formally structured, it feels very 'old school' rap with a pre-built formula, verse, hook, verse, hook. whereas modern rap is more disjointed which is what makes it so great. 

Anyhoo, fantastic work, I'll be watching and listening closely, I hope you don't take my comments out of line, just trying to give you some constructive feedback into how, in my opinion, you could go from great to fantastic.

keep it up!

I recommend experimenting more with the production. Piano beats are fine and all but it can be hard to stand out when hundreds of other people are doing the same. My recommendation would be to try and take some more influence off of golden age hip hop, a sound which has pretty much gone extinct, and trying to draw on that to really give yourself a unique sound