Slant rhyme involves words that don’t exactly rhyme but contain the same sound, and is used in modern poetry and music. It was not accepted until the late 1800s, but offers flexibility and subtlety. Oblique rhymes are used in rap music and can be created by changing one syllable of a word. They have their own beats and enhance the cadence of rap music.
Slant rhyme, also called imperfect or oblique rhyme, involves words that aren’t an exact rhyme, such as “dime” and “time.” Instead, use words that contain the same sound. The sound can be a vowel, as with the “ī” sound in “light” and “eyes.” Rhyming can also be done with the last consonant in a word, as in the “l” sound in “soul” and “all”. Imperfect rhyme is often used in modern poetry and music lyrics, especially rap.
This form of rhyme was not generally accepted as a legitimate poetic device until the late 1800s. Prior to that time, critics did not consider poems using sound rhymes to be “genuine” poetry. It was primarily through the writings of English poet WB Yeats and American poet Emily Dickinson that this form of rhyme scheme came to be understood and accepted.
Some Western poets still view slant rhyme with disapproval, believing it to be a bad art compared to perfect rhyme. Many, however, find that it offers a flexibility and subtlety of language that perfect rhyme does not offer. For example, there is a different texture to make the words “star” and “stone” rhyme obliquely, than the perfect rhyme of “bone” and “stone”. The imperfect rhyme has a softer sound and the combination of words is also more striking.
When matching identical word sounds for a slant rhyme, the poet has a much greater variety of words to choose from. A poet who uses perfect rhyme has a limited vocabulary to work with. Many of the rhyming words that exist may not fit the intent or tone of the poem.
Perfect rhyming words start with a different consonant sound but have the same stressed vowel sound, as in “trunk” and “bunk.” There are some words, however, that cannot be perfectly rhymed with any other word. Words for imperfect rhyme, however, can in a sense be created. The poet has only to change one syllable of a word and match it to the new word. For example, “somehow/somehow” results in an oblique rhyme and also creates rhythm in the line.
Rap music lyrics often use oblique rhymes. A rap audience doesn’t necessarily expect to hear perfect rhymes the way some poetry readers do. The use of oblique rhyming in rap may not always come from a conscious decision to do so. A rap artist is more interested in the sounds of words as they are spoken or sung. Oblique rhymes tend to have their own beats, which are enhanced when set to the cadence of rap music.
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