YNW Melly showcases the power of POV

Something I have always raised an eyebrow at is how quickly some people discredit rap and hip-hop as forms of storytelling. Critics have dismissed rap as little more than “rhythmic speaking” or argued that the genre has become meaningless because it supposedly failed to evolve. I find that strange because those criticisms ignore something built directly into the name: rhythm and poetry. There is also a much larger conversation about racial bias and the history of people dismissing Black music, and I do think that conversation matters. However, that is not what I want to focus on here. Instead, I want to look at the writing itself. Rap can use many of the same techniques we study in novels, short stories, poems, and plays: point of view, imagery, repetition, characterization, irony, symbolism, pacing, and emotional appeal. Explicit subject matter does not automatically remove those techniques. If anything, sometimes difficult subject matter gives writers more opportunities to use them.

A good example can be found in two connected songs by YNW Melly: Murder on My Mind and Mind on My Murder. The first presents a violent event largely from the perspective of the person responsible for the killing, while the second reverses the situation and presents the victim's experience. That simple change creates an interesting lesson in how perspective can completely reshape a story. Before going further, one clarification is important. Murder on My Mind was written and released before the October 2018 killings involved in Melly's later criminal case. Therefore, analyzing the song as if it were definitely describing that specific event would be misleading. The songs are more useful here as examples of narrative storytelling.

Point of View Can Change an Entire Story

One of the most important techniques connecting these songs is point of view. Point of view refers to the position from which a story is told. A first-person narrator tells events using ideas such as “I,” “me,” and “my,” meaning readers experience the situation through that person's thoughts and perceptions. Murder on My Mind places listeners close to the person committing the violence. Instead of describing a killing like a newspaper report might, the song focuses on the narrator's thoughts, surroundings, actions, and emotional reactions.

Then Mind on My Murder changes sides.

The basic event remains violent, but now the listener is placed closer to the victim. Details about fear, physical weakness, approaching death, and thoughts of family make the experience feel completely different. That is a useful writing lesson: changing the narrator changes what the audience notices. Imagine a scene where two characters get into a fight. Told from one character's perspective, the scene might focus on anger and self-defense. Told from the other person's perspective, the exact same punches might feel frightening and unprovoked. Neither writer has to change the physical event. They only have to change whose mind we are allowed to enter. For writers, perspective is therefore not just a grammatical decision. It controls sympathy, information, and emotional connection.

Mirrored Structure and Repetition

Even the titles demonstrate a writing technique. Murder on My Mind becomes Mind on My Murder. The words are nearly identical, but their arrangement changes the meaning. In the first title, murder occupies the narrator's thoughts. In the second, the narrator is thinking about their own murder. This is an example of parallel structure, where similar language or patterns are deliberately repeated with an important variation. The reversal connects the songs before the listener even hears them. It basically announces, “You have heard one side. Now look at the same idea differently.”

Repetition performs a similar function within rap more generally. Hooks and repeated phrases obviously help make music memorable, but repetition can also reinforce theme and characterization. When a particular thought repeatedly returns, the audience begins to understand that the narrator cannot escape it. Poetry does this all the time. A poet might repeat a word associated with grief throughout a poem. A novelist might repeatedly return to an object connected to a traumatic event. A rapper can use a repeated hook in exactly the same way. Repetition becomes more than something catchy. It becomes emphasis.

Imagery Makes an Event Feel Immediate

Another major technique in both songs is imagery. Imagery is a descriptive language tool that appeals to the senses. Writers use it to help audiences picture, hear, feel, or otherwise experience what is happening. Instead of simply saying that somebody has been shot, the songs focus on physical consequences and the environment surrounding the violence. The victim's body grows colder. Blood is being lost. Crime-scene imagery appears around the body. The surroundings become connected with approaching death. Those details make the event more immediate.

Compare that with the sentence:

A person was killed.

It communicates information, but it does not necessarily create an emotional response. Now imagine a writer describing someone's weakening vision, cold skin, frightened thoughts, and awareness that they may never see their family again. Suddenly the reader is not simply being told that death occurred. They are being asked to imagine what dying might feel like. That distinction is one reason imagery is so powerful. Writers often use sensory description when they want an abstract idea, fear, violence, grief, regret, to become something the audience can visualize.

Diction Controls Tone

Rap also provides a great example of diction, which simply means a writer's choice of words. YNW Melly does not tell these stories using formal language. The vocabulary reflects the speaker, environment, musical genre, and subject matter. Slang and explicit language are part of that voice. Some readers may dislike those choices, but disliking diction is different from saying that no writing technique exists. Imagine rewriting a character's dialogue from:

“Get away from me.”

to:

“I respectfully request that you increase the distance between us.”

The basic meaning is similar, but the character suddenly sounds completely different. Word choice helps establish personality. In rap, diction can communicate where a speaker comes from, how they view other people, their emotional state, and the environment they inhabit. Removing slang simply because it is informal can sometimes remove part of the characterization along with it. Writers should therefore ask not only, “Is this word technically correct?” but also, “Would this character actually say it?”

Characterization Through Contradiction

The songs also demonstrate characterization, or the methods writers use to reveal what a character is like. Interesting characters are often contradictory. A narrator connected to violence might also express fear, affection, regret, loneliness, or vulnerability. Those emotions complicate the easy label of “killer.” At the same time, hearing the victim's perspective prevents the violence from becoming only a story about the person committing it. This creates an uncomfortable but useful narrative tension. Stories frequently become more interesting when characters cannot be summarized with one adjective. Someone can be cruel and frightened. Someone can love another person while hurting them. Someone can regret an action without being free from responsibility for it. Good characterization does not necessarily mean making a character likable. It means making them understandable enough that audiences can recognize their motivations and contradictions.

Narrative Tension Comes From Knowing the Outcome

Another interesting technique is narrative tension. Usually we think suspense comes from not knowing what will happen. These songs demonstrate that suspense can also come from knowing exactly what is going to happen. Once the audience understands that the story ends in death, the question is no longer simply, “Will someone die?”

Instead, the tension becomes:

How will it happen?

What is the victim thinking?

How does the other person react?

Can anything stop it?

What does the event mean afterward?

This is similar to dramatic irony, where an audience possesses information that a character may not. If readers know a tragedy is approaching while a character continues normally, every ordinary moment becomes uncomfortable because we understand something the character does not. That is why spoilers do not automatically destroy good storytelling. Sometimes knowing the ending makes the journey toward it even more tense.

Explicit Subject Matter Does Not Cancel Literary Technique

None of this means someone has to enjoy these songs. People can dislike the violence, language, themes, production, artist, or rap as a genre entirely. Personal taste is personal taste. What becomes harder to defend is the argument that rap cannot contain meaningful storytelling or poetic technique simply because it is explicit, rhythmic, or performed over a beat.

A disturbing story can still use imagery.

An explicit song can still demonstrate characterization.

A violent narrative can still manipulate point of view.

Slang can still be deliberate diction.

A repeated chorus can still function like repetition in poetry.

In fact, examining music this way can help demonstrate something important about literary analysis: writing techniques do not belong exclusively to novels written hundreds of years ago. They appear anywhere people deliberately arrange language to create meaning. Rap just happens to combine those words with rhythm.

What Writers Can Learn From Rap

Murder on My Mind and Mind on My Murder provide an interesting lesson because their storytelling is built around more than the violent subject matter that immediately attracts attention. Their mirrored perspectives demonstrate how dramatically point of view can reshape an event. Their sensory details show how imagery makes abstract violence feel physical. Their word choices establish voice, while repetition reinforces the central thoughts haunting the narrators. For aspiring writers, that is the more useful takeaway. Do not judge a writing technique by the medium carrying it. A novel, poem, movie, video game, or rap song can all teach us something about storytelling. What matters is how the creator uses language, perspective, structure, and emotion to make an audience experience a story rather than simply hear what happened.