Tokirap

"the tokirap (nimi ale lon toki pona)" (lit.literal translation 'Every word in Toki Pona') is a list song written and performed by jan Misali and produced by Sapaa, released in August 2021.

The song groups all 137 nimi pu and nimi ku suli into a series of couplets, with additional verses about learning Toki Pona vocabulary. It is a pun on and pastiche of the original "Pokérap" featured in the Pokémon anime. Misali suggested that the tokirap, like similarly written pieces of educational music, could be a helpful resource for memorizing Toki Pona words.

Writing and composition

jan Misali first conceived of the tokirap circa 2017, carrying it through as part of the 20th anniversary of Toki Pona and in homage to Brian David Gilbert's 2019 "The Perfect PokéRap". Misali worked to distinguish the song from prior art, namely kala Asi's "kalama nimi pi toki pona" released earlier in 2021.

Misali experimented with several methods for ordering the words, such as usage frequency; the final lyrics mainly group them by meaning. He worried that evoking the Pokémon tagline, "Gotta catch 'em all!", to encourage memorizing the vocabulary of a conlang, would be "unbearably dorky". To circumvent this, he wrote the verses fully in Toki Pona, so that anyone who could prove their meaning would be on the same level.

External links

• Music video
• Explanatory video
• Instrumental