How I hacked learning new language through hip hop

A few months ago I decided to start learning German. I’m a huge rap fan and one of the reasons I decided to start learning German was to understand lyrics of German rap songs and get deep into their rap game.
I’ve always been fascinated by their rap scene.

• It’s not uncommon for top rappers in Germany to sell between 100k-200k. That’s often much more than US rappers
• It seems that their rap scene is hugely influenced by immigrants from southern/south-eastern European countries (I might be biased based on what songs/artists I discovered)
• The language sounds both very “tough” and melodiously at the same time which makes it interesting to listen to

My plan was easy

• Step 1: go on Youtube
• Step 2: write “Deutschrap” into the search bar
• Step 3: click on the first video at which I like the thumbnail/name of the artist
• Step 4: if I like the song, save it, find more songs by this artist
• Step 5: use Youtube’s almighty recommendation algorithm to find more German rap songs I might like
• Step 6: go to step (3) and repeat

By following this algorithm you’ll discover mainly mainstream artists. If you’re willing to go deeper though, you’ll start discovering new and upcoming artist. That’s when the fun starts.

Now I had bunch artists I was regularly listening to mainly because of the beats and melody. I was curious what’s the meaning behind the lyrics. Turns out most of the German rap songs can be found on Genius. So I’d open the song on Genius in one browser window and Google Translator in another and started comparing lyrics.
That was fun and gave me a general understanding of what the song is about. I wasn’t really learning new stuff though.

What I ended up doing was printing out lyrics and writing translated lyrics in between the lines of the original.
Every time I printed out new lyrics I

• Wrote the translated version in between the lines
• Picked words I didn’t know and save them into Anki
• Started singing parts of the song along with the original
• Unknowingly memorized new words by singing the song again and again (this was actually a byproduct at first - I didn’t realize I’m learning)

First 5 songs I translated

Few tips and observations

• Pick simple songs at the beginning. Ideally, you want a song where the artist is basically flexing about the car she owns or how much money he made (turns out simple lyrics are useful, ha!)
• If you follow this you’ll learn how to flex in that language pretty fast 😐
• Beware that you can learn accents pretty easily
• You’ll get an interesting look into the society & culture

Of course, you won’t master the language just by doing this. The point is you’re having fun while you’re learning. Instead of boring memorizing new vocabulary you can pick songs you like, get deep into lyrics and as a byproduct you’ll learn 10s or even 100s of new words.