Let's talk about Flocabulary

Something that I never really talk about is my work with Flocabulary. They reached out to me sometime around 2011 or so and from then until now I’ve written and recorded countless songs for them. There is a team of rappers who work for them so I don’t handle all the songs but the ones that I do are usually lessons about a specific subject or news recaps called The Week In Rap.

The writing process for the Week In Rap is like running drills. I’ll get the headlines at around noon and by 2pm turn in a draft of the lyrics. We go through a round or two of revisions and by 4pm i’m cutting the vocals and sending it off to be mixed by no later than 6pm.

It can be difficult at times but I enjoy the process because it forces me to be creative and I walk away with a tangible result. This is very different from the meandering songwriting process that I usually have where lyrics take days and sometimes weeks to come. Lately I’ve been applying some of my Flocabulary writing methods to my personal work and it’s honestly helped me learn to not be so precious about the writing process which is something that has been a huge roadblock for me for a long time.

Flocabulary is a subscription based service for teachers who use the material as teaching tools so most the content I’ve made with them exists behind a paywall but I did manage to find one song I’d written for them living on their Youtube channel.