How Twista broke the record for the world’s fastest rapper
The Chicago rapper Twista, at the start of his music career, went by a slightly different stage name: Tung Twista. That was a moniker that did not appear out of thin air.
Twista’s particular brand of rap relies on his extraordinary ability to spit his verses at exceptional speed. He is known as one of the fastest rappers to ever do it, and his knack for speed-rapping even saw him added to the record books.
Twista is one of the first and most prominent masters of the chopper style of rap, which sees practitioners cram in as many syllables into a bar as possible. A skilled chopper can be expected to achieve two to even three times as many syllables to a bar than a typical rapper might.
But it’s not only about speed. A chopper must also have an acute sense of rhyme, as syllables need to be inserted in complicated and unexpected places. As Twista himself once put it during a Red Bull behind-the-scenes documentary, “Sometimes I like to put words in weird pockets.”
The effect that this style produces is a rapid, hard-hitting sound, like that of an automatic firearm going off or of a helicopter’s blades in rotation. Both these ideas have been credited with giving the style its name, as “chopper” can both be used to mean a helicopter as well as, in street and hip-hop slang, automatic or semi-automatic guns.
Twista, who was among the chopper style’s first masters, made explicit the helicopter connection in his song ‘Worldwide Choppers’ with Tech N9ne. “Watch how radiant I’ma be,” he raps, “like a helicopter when the words fly.”
Twista’s reputation as one of the fastest rappers out there has been around for a long time, but it was even made official in 1992. That was the year he was added into the The Guinness Book of Records for his ferociously fast rapping.
Twista had just released his first single, ‘Mr Tung Twista,’ only months before he garnered the attention of the record keepers. This recognition served to reinforce his reputation as Mr Tung Twista, after he was acknowledged to have clocked up 598 syllables in just 55 seconds.
This made Twista the fastest rapper on record, which was no mean feat. Other rappers have since emerged to challenge for that title, including the Texan rapper Crucified. But, no matter what happens from here, there was once a time when Twista undeniably wore the crown of fastest MC.