Rap the News

Last Sunday at Writers Connect I came with a warmup idea. I showed everyone the MSN News app on my phone and we looked through the top stories of the day. I asked people to pick out a story and use this as inspiration for a rap verse.

I chose one about the escalating nuclear threats going back and forth between USA, Trump and Pence on the one hand, and North Korea and Jong-Il on the other.

Concerns grow over the Korean peninsula

A US president so unstable and insular

a chaotic situation, that's enough said

when neither leader we believe can be trusted.

How can we say we can't be harmed

by the guy in the East who's own father was embalmed

who's threats to the West no country will defend

and who ordered the murder of his own girlfriend?

How long will we tolerate Jong Il over there

when they haven't released Otto Warmbier?

It's hard to write at the same speed as you would if you were writing prose. It takes more time to think up how to match your vowels and still make your point. Warmbier, if you were wondering, is an American living in the DPRK who was recently given a fifteen-year hard labour sentence for drunkenly stealing a poster.

April is National Poetry Writing Month in the States. I've been checking the prompts but haven't been particularly inspired by them, but wanted to do something poetry-based at the writers' group. I should have been writing more rap verses, and plan to do this henceforth!