How Sleep Deprivation Impacts Rapping and Creativity

Other potential creative benefits of sleep deprivation include self-induced trips, a loss of the boundaries of your body, hallucinations, and delusions, and the creation of a high not dissimilar from one caused by a drug like acid. These effects manifest after two days without sleep, according to Ostrovsky. 

As it pertains to writing raps, there are also other benefits:

“You’re more likely to dream and remember your dreams. So if [an artist is] rapping about their emotions and their basic instincts… Because dreams come from your primitive mind, then they percolate through your emotional mind, then to your rational mind… If they need access to their unconscious, through sleep deprivation, they’re much more likely to be able to access [those emotions].”

Before you cut sleep from your creative flow in hopes of penning your version of Kendrick Lamar’s “u,” Ostrovsky notes that sleep deprivation can be just as detrimental to rapping. “There are other problems with sleep deprivation,” he explains. “Let’s say an artist is freestyling. After one day of sleep deprivation, it was found that people have decreased verbal fluency. They have a decrease in originality and flexibility. That’s after 32 hours without sleeping, straight.” In layman’s terms, you’ll need a good night’s sleep to crush your 5 Fingers of Death freestyle on Sway In The Morning.

In fact, if you’re a lyrical rapper, Ostrovsky notes that good sleep is paramount: “If you’re the kind of rapper who puts a lot of thought into your rhymes, and has these complicated internal and external rhyme schemes, I would say good sleep would be helpful for you because then you can remember what you were thinking and dream about it.”

Ostrovsky also outlines a handful of damning physical consequences: “You gain weight. Your insulin resistance can get worse. Your immune system doesn’t work as well if you’re chronically sleep deprived… Heart failure can happen… I’d say, the rule of thumb is after three days [deprived of continuous sleep] you start really hallucinating. After two days it starts being unhealthy. After seven or eight days, you can die from sleep deprivation.”

That being said, Ostrovsky subscribes to the “everything in moderation” mindset, noting that creatives must approach advice from a place of humility. “I can’t argue with the fact that you can get in a trippy headspace if you’re sleep deprived,” he admits. “If that’s what an artist needs, then that’s what they need. I don’t see any long-term physical consequences for not sleeping more than three hours for two days and then crashing on the third day, as long as they don’t do it all the time.”

Key words: “don’t do it all the time.”

“It’s way better for you than, say, taking ecstasy or LSD, or smoking marijuana to be more creative,” Ostrovsky adds. “I’d say that smoking pot every day probably has more negative consequences than [limited periods of sleep deprivation].” Naiman agrees, in part, that sleep deprivation can produce a creative lens, but also made crystal clear that there is no avoiding the incredible toll sleep deprivation takes on the mind and body.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *