Inspiration hit me today while I was riding in the subway, and I decided to get into a little rap battle. I improvised two passes. When I got to a computer, I tried to remember exactly what I said and wrote it down, and so some of the stuff I said doesn't even make sense. But I couldn't help but do a little editing, 'cause I couldn't remember all the exact words I used.

Yo, that was a weak attack, and your rhymes was wack.
Even your girl says I get a betta flow coming out my left nutsack.
Ey yo, I gotta squeeze all these syllables, rhythms incredible, in one verse, make it versatile, you see,
To be able to get all the words in that explain what makes you incorrigible, unoriginal and such a shitty wack MC.
But Imma go [emeasy on you, easy peasy on you, wanna see the fight that be in you, so I'll make it last.
I'm dishing out this kiddy shit, its justa light spit, I won't kill you too fast.
So hit me back, with your best attack, and try to make it doper than this shit I pull outta my ass.

(...)

Ey, this kid's in deep shit, he ain't no MC:
You think you can battle after watching a "How to rap" DVD?
Use this for next battle: I'll give you a little tip, and a fact,
you're supposed to write your own rhymes dummy, not bite some shit from an eminem track.
Oh that's right, you thought nobody aint heard that shit before, 'cause they said it be underground.
Well guess what, that shit be found, now that we got YouTube around.
'n fact, you'll probably be on their tonight, transcribing this fight, and trying to copy my sound.
It's the last pass, your last crash, your last chance to blast, but face it: I beat you ass to the floor.
Then the judges decide, just how wide my margin was: "It's hardcore".
If you wanna save your feelings, 'cause I know you reeling, I suggest you head out that door.

It's rap, which means it has a meter (in the sense that poetry has a meter), but it's freestyle, which means the meter is highly irregular. Bold indicates where the emphasis, or the beat, lies. Usually, I'll show the emphasis by saying those syllables louder, or pausing immediately after. After doing this analysis, it's interesting to me that the emphasis doesn't always land on the rhyme, but often lies on the syllable immediately before the rhyme (e.g. syllables, incredible, incorrigible, unoriginal, etc.) I didn't consciously did this: it happened because it sounded natural that way to me.

There are also sections (especially during the second verse) where there's almost no emphasis, because the meter becomes that of normal speech instead of rapping (i.e. normal prose instead of poetry), or more accurately, there is no meter anymore. Again, not something I did consciously, but just seemed natural at the time. It seems like this mainly occurs when I'm making references to entities external to the rap battle (e.g. YouTube, the door), and is also regions where I gesticulate more (e.g. play-acting the judges, pointing at the door, looking up innocently and waggling my head for "'How to rap' DVD").

Has there been much study of rap using the tools available to analysis of poetry in English literature academia?