Ice T’s recent documentary The Art of Rap was a social exploration of what makes some of the best rappers. Now neuroscientists are using brain scans to figure out exactly was going on in Biggie’s brain when he first spit the rhyme “I got nines in the bedroom/glocks in the kitchen/a shotty by the shower if you wanna shoot me while I’m shittin.”

The study compared what happens in a rapper’s brain when they are freestyling, versus reciting a verse that they already know. It was found that while making up rhymes on the spot, the brain activates the areas responsible for thought and action, and decreases the areas that control and censor thoughts.

This suggests that the people who are best at freestyling are the ones who can relax their neural constraints to allow more natural creative expression. So relax, turn your mental censors off, and you might find it easier to come up with that career starting line.

Read the full study over at National Geographic.