🎸 Bob Dylan – Prophet on the Road

Here’s my honest take: if someone said “Subterranean Homesick Blues is the first rap song,” I wouldn’t argue. It isn’t hip-hop by genre, but the feel is there—breathless bars, street warnings, rhyme as news bulletin. Dylan spits out couplets like headline tickers, phrases you can shout back at the world. It’s fast truth with a grin.

From the first line—“Johnny’s in the basement…”—you’re off and running. The camera won’t stop moving. Cops, bosses, scams, advice, paranoia—everything flashes past like road signs. The trick is the rhythm: tight syllables riding the snare, punchlines landing right on the beat. That’s why those little fragments stick. “You don’t need a weatherman…” / “Don’t follow leaders…” / “Watch the parking meters.” They work like hooks and warnings at the same time.

That’s exactly where I hear a kinship with Ren. In Money Game, Pt. 2 he uses a sing-song cadence—almost a nursery rhyme—to break down power and greed. It’s catchy first, clever second, which is the point. If a line is memorable, it travels. Dylan knew that. Ren knows it too. Both of them smuggle difficult ideas inside rhythms your body wants to repeat.

There’s also the delivery. Dylan’s vocal is half-sung, half-spoken, all momentum. He punches the rhyme tails like a drummer—short vowels, quick consonants, snap on the downbeat. Ren rides pockets the same way; he’ll lock into a groove, stack internal rhymes, and twist a scheme right when the meaning needs to bite. Different eras, same engine: the voice is the drum.

I like how the song doubles as a survival guide. It’s funny on purpose. The jokes keep the medicine moving. One minute it’s a gag, the next it’s a warning label: keep your head up, watch the angles, don’t get played. Ren’s track has that too—wry asides, plain images, then a line that suddenly feels like it’s written in bold. Neither artist lectures; they brief you, like a mate pulling you aside on a busy street.

Production-wise, you can hear the seams and it makes the message stronger. No gloss to hide behind. Guitar, groove, voice, go. Ren keeps that honesty in a modern way—loop clicks, breaths, room noise, characters stepping into frame. The arrangement says “this is happening now.” It’s news, not a museum piece.

And the language—so much of the power is how ordinary it is. Dylan’s lines sound overheard: alleys, meters, manholes, a coat, a cough. Ren does the same with shells, clocks, brands. Small details, big picture. You don’t need a manifesto when a clean image will do the job. As soon as you recognise the object, you recognise the system wrapped around it.

In the end, that’s why this pairing makes sense to me. Dylan zooms out: patterns, systems, crowds. Ren zooms in: choices, mirrors, the cost of being awake. Put them together and you get a full map of the maze and the person trying to find the exit. And if “proto-rap” is the right phrase for Subterranean Homesick Blues, it’s because rhythm turned language into action there—just like Ren does when he turns a chant into a key.