Hashtag Rap

Describe Hashtag Rap Here... TV Tropes!

Also called punchline rap, this is a trend in the late 2000's and 2010's in rap, pop, and R&B lyrics where the lyric is followed by a pause, then an unconnected phrase (often a noun phrase) intended to be compared to the preceding lyric, like a hashtag on Twitter. For example, from Bruno Mars' "Gorilla":

You'll be banging on my chest, bang bang — gorilla!

Not "like a gorilla", or "as hard as a gorilla", or even "I'm a gorilla", just... "gorilla."

Since it comes at the end of a line, this trope is handy for creating rhymes, and their unconnected nature allows them to be squeezed into just a few syllables without ruining the rhythm. They are also a common vehicle for a Shout-Out, since (just as with a simile) you can use anything at all that can be compared to the preceding line. In many cases ("Gorilla", "Holy Grail", "Barry Bonds", "Jackie Chan"), they're also used as a Title Drop.

Various punctuation is used to represent the pause before the "punchline," including commas, colons, and semicolons. On this page, we use dashes.

The term "hashtag rap" was coined by Kanye West on FunkMaster Flex's HOT97 radio show in 2010. Despite the name, the trope is not strictly limited to rap.

The inventorship of the technique is disputed but goes back to the early '90s, at least — debate over who created it spawned a mild beef between Kanye West, Big Sean, Lil Wayne, Drake and Ludacris in The New '10s, all of whom claimed it was theirs. Kanye, undisputedly the Trope Namer, claimed to have invented the technique in 2007 in his song "Barry Bonds" ("And here’s another hit — Barry Bonds"), and Big Sean claimed he was the first to do it in his 2009 song "Supa Dupa", though he did at least credit Drake, Lil Wayne (who claimed he invented the style in 2005) and Ye for popularising the technique via their posse cut "Forever"^note which also featured Eminem, who did not use hashtag rap in his verse. In 2011, Drake accused Ludacris of stealing his style, and Luda responded with the mixtape skit "History Lesson" in which he played examples of hashtag raps used by Kanye in 2007, Cam'ron in 2003, Method Man in 1998, The Notorious B.I.G. in 1997, Q-Tip in 1991... and finally Ludacris, also in 1991, acidly concluding "I must have stole that shit from myself".

Discussed in these articles: "5 Things You Didn't Know About Hashtag Rap", "A Brief History of Hashtag Rap", "Hashtag rap: a summary"

Hashtag rap started to fall out of fashion around 2014 or so, because its overuse in the first half of the decade started to lead to songs sounding like empty word salad, and a move away towards heavier, more danceable, simpler styles with more emphasis on emotion than on lyricism. It continues to appear in The New '20s on occasion, such as Megan Thee Stallion in her guest verse on "Beautiful Mistakes".

Examples

• Kanye West claims to have invented the technique in 2007 in his song "Barry Bonds" with this line:
  And here’s another hit — Barry Bonds

Of course, being Kanye, it is far older than this.

• The style was popularised in Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne and Eminem's "Forever", which has several examples:
  Swimmin' in the money, come and find me — Nemo
  If I was at the club you know I ball — chemo
  He ain't even go to class — Bueller
  • Also showed up in Drake's "Over":
    Two thumbs up — Ebert and Roper
    I could teach you how to speak my language — Rosetta Stone
• Ludacris, "My Chick Bad":
  Comin’ down the street like a parade — Macy's
• One of the most notorious and bizarre examples comes from Gudda Gudda's verse on Lil Wayne's "Bedrock", which compares picking up a woman to buying groceries:
  She don't even wonder 'cause she know she bad
  And I got her, nigga — grocery bag
  • Also from "Bedrock":
    And I keep her runnin' back and forth — soccer team!
• Pitbull, "Back in Time":
  And fought blind against the world — Ray Charles
  • Remarkably enough, this isn't the first hashtag rap involving Ray Charles. Lil Wayne already did it in J.R. Writer's "Bird Call" in 2009:
    But ya'll can't see me — Ray Charles
• Bruno Mars, "Gorilla", as mentioned above.
• Justin Timberlake does this in Jay-Z's "Holy Grail":
  Sippin' from the cup till it runneth over — HOLY GRAIL
  • And it's not the first time Justin has done hashtag rap in a guest verse. As noted in this article, he did it in FreeSol's "Role Model" in 2011, including a reference to his controversial 2004 Super Bowl Halftime Show:
    This shit got me amped up — Ritalin
    Oops, did I take it too far? — Super Bowl
• Big Sean's "Supa Dupa" is littered with these, one of the most memorable being:
  Till I am the king of my castle — Koopa
• Todd in the Shadows criticized this tactic in his review of Pitbull's "Back In Time". Being a frequent Twitter user, he pointed out that few tweets ever use hashtags in such a manner. He then invented his own mocking example:
  Finding out I had herpes was quite a shock — Pikachu!
• Mocked in The Lonely Island's song "Semicolon", where they represent the pause after the lyric with a semicolon, and list no fewer than 31 examples of this trope. The first verse is already entirely absurd:
  Get ready for a whale of a time; SHAMU
  My whole team coming clean; SHAMPOO
  These dudes is comic relief; WHOOPI
  And I'm the motherfucking monster; COOKIE
  • And then it turns out they're all examples of colons, for which Solange — playing an English teacher — fails them.
• Childish Gambino does this a lot, especially on Camp. "Bonfire" alone has at least three examples:
  'Cause I'm a beast, bitch, grr — Invader Zim
  You can fuckin' kiss my ass — Human Centipede
  Made the beat then murdered it — Casey Anthony
• From the Epic Rap Battles of History episode "Darth Vader vs Adolf Hitler 2":
  Vader: Brain-toss your ass in the air — Yahtzee!
  • "Deadpool vs. Boba Fett" has this:
    Boba Fett: I'll beat your ass with one eye closed — Boba Fetty Wap!
  • "Blackbeard vs Al Capone":
    Al Capone: I'm the MC assassin, slash like Edward Kenway. Raps so hard, call me Al — dente.
  • "Rick Grimes vs Walter White":
    Walter White: Run you over with my Aztek — GTA!
  • In "Gordon Ramsay vs. Julia Child":
    Child: Concede, I've got this in the bag — sous-vide!^FYI Sous-vide is a cooking method in which food is put in an airtight bag and then cooked in boiling water
  • James Bond in "James Bond vs. Austin Powers":
    I only need one round *gunshot* Golden Gun
  • "Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg" gives Zuckerberg a whole verse of this.
    Watch me
    Oculus, Instagram, WhatsApp (post!)
    I'm cleaning up like a wet nap (boast!)
    I drive around in a hatchback (beep beep)
    I'll end your story like Snapchat (ghost!)
• Macklemore does this in his song "Downtown:"
  There's layers to this shit, player — tiramisu, tiramisu
• "Shooter" from clipping..'s Wriggle EP goes above and beyond. With 45 uses, nearly every line barring the chorus is an example. Knowing clipping., this is almost certainly a parody of the practice.
  Clerk's shittin' in his drawers — Skid row
  Thought shit was just a hood game — Skip rope
  Shooter read the face real quick — CliffsNotes
  Kissed the shoe with the .45 — Mistletoe
• Big Sean's part on Calvin Harris's "Feels":
  When I say I want you say it back — parakeet
  Fly in first-class through the air — Airbnb
• Though not quite on the level of the clipping. example above, Nicki Minaj does this at least 13 times in her 2010 track "Roman's Revenge" alone.
• Prominent in "Jackie Chan" by Tiësto & Dzeko, where every chorus ends with:
  Now your bitch wanna kick it — Jackie Chan
• Andrew Huang manages to Hashtag Rap across languages with "Vass Tunga", ^note "Sharp Tongue" in Swedish which hops back and forth between English, French, Spanish, Swedish and Mandarin.
  ¿De quién^note Whose (spanish) est le meilleur^note is the greatest (french) habilidad?^note skill (spanish) Wǒ de^note Mine (mandarin)
  I've been training to make hot moves - huǒchē^note Fire car (i.e. "train") (mandarin)
• Eminem is an interesting example, as he used the style a few times a decade before it became fashionable, then liked to parody it on occasion while it was a fad.
  • Used in this hyperoffensive joke in "Who Knew" (2000):
    My life's like kind of what my wife's like (What?)
    Fucked up after I beat her fuckin' ass every night — Ike!
  • In "Berzerk" (2013, well in the middle of the trend), he uses a groaner pun which he then cheers for, like a lame comedian laughing at his own jokes.
    And girl, I ain't got no money to borrow
    But I am tryin' to find a way to get you alone — CAR NOTE! Ohh!
  • Used repeatedly in "Fall", without irony.
    Dre said, “Hold your head up!” (Huh?)—Kathy Griffin ^note Kathy Griffin posed holding up a fake severed head resembling Donald Trump and got fired for it
    Stackin’ ammunition, slap the clip in, cock it back on competition
    This is how I shot ahead (Pew)—Gabby Gifford^note a politician who was shot in the head and became an advocate for gun control
  • In "Marsh":
    Gettin' head — guillotine.
• Freshy Kanal's Rap Battle!: At the end of his last verse against Wes Anderson, Edgar Wright uses this to lampshade how his last diss has already been set up back at the beginning of the battle.
  When Disney realise your films are filled with grandma fetish gunk
  you'll get fired eventually — Chekhov's Gun

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