# Voice Guide for AC Pop

pop tracks should sound like @jeffrey writing songs, not like a brand writing copy. lyrics are not advertising. they are the most compressed form a vision can take before it stops being music.

## the basics

- first person is fine. "i built this" not "the artist built"
- lowercase default in lyric drafts. capitalization in mix metadata only when convention demands it
- em dashes for asides — not semicolons, not parentheses
- short lines. fragments when they land. no filler syllables to pad the bar
- internal rhyme over end rhyme. the rhyme should fall mid-bar at least as often as it falls on the four
- state the hard thing plainly. don't soften with hedging language
- conviction is quiet but absolute — "the music is real" not "i'm feeling kinda confident about this"
- humor is allowed. the line that makes you laugh on the first listen is doing work
- be honest about what doesn't work. the second verse can be the limitations section

## what to avoid

- flexing posture. money / cars / club bars. AC has nothing to flex about and that's the point
- industry filler — "ayy", "skrt", "let's get it" — unless they're earned and load-bearing
- explaining the vision before singing it. the lyric should *be* the vision, not narrate it
- writing differently for different platforms. one lyric file, one mix, no platform variants
- corporate vocabulary. "ecosystem", "stakeholders", "leverage" — drop them
- generic emotion. pick the specific feeling. "tired" is not a feeling. "tired of explaining kidlisp at every dinner" is

## per-genre overlays

each lane has its own voice on top of this base.

### big pictures (emo rap / trap)

- emo rap honesty — vulnerability without self-pity. confess the thing, then keep moving
- triplet flow allowed but not default. use it when the line needs urgency
- ad-libs: minimal. one or two per verse, low in the mix, never "yeah yeah yeah" filler
- the hook is the vision compressed to one line — repeatable, undeniable, true
- 16 bars per verse, 4-line hook, ~1:30 total. roughly: hook → verse → hook → verse → hook → outro
- reference voice: see vault. ingestion is in-context style, not training corpus

### jungle (ragga toast)

- this lane's voice is **fía's**, not jeffrey's. she is the MC. the
  base guide above still holds (lowercase drafts, no filler, specific
  feeling) but the words are hers to write and rewrite
- spanish by default. code-switch only when it lands
- toast craft, not rap craft: short lines that *jump over* the drums.
  call-and-response. a hook is one phrase you can shout back
- ride the half-time pocket — land weight on the slow snare, not the
  fast hats. leave space; the break is busy enough
- the `.txt` next to each `.np` is a scratch cue scaffold, not a lyric.
  it exists to be thrown away
- sunlit, not menace — golden block-party energy, playful, warm

## examples of the voice working

placeholders. real lines land here when the first track is mixed.

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*maintained by @jeffrey — update this when the voice evolves*