IFWT_Vocab

A lot of people haven’t been happy about the “happy” rap going on, and now we know why thanks to Matt Daniels. Daniels describes himself as a data scientist and digital analyst and his latest venture proves just that. Titled “The Largest Vocabulary in Hip-Hop” Matt has created a series of charts that examine the number of unique words used for various rappers. The chart shows that today’s rappers, aside from a few, fail to expand their vocabulary in music. Check it out after the jump.

Jamaal Fisher

According to Daniels:

Literary elites love to rep Shakespeare’s vocabulary: across his entire corpus, he uses 28,829 words, suggesting he knew over 100,000 words and arguably had the largest vocabulary, ever.

I decided to compare this data point against the most famous artists in hip hop. I used each artist’s first 35,000 lyrics. That way, prolific artists, such as Jay-Z, could be compared to newer artists, such as Drake.

Daniels goes on to say, “35,000 words covers 3-5 studio albums and EPs. I included mixtapes if the artist was just short of the 35,000 words.” However, for artist like Biggie or Kendrick Lamar, He’s compare their most popular song.

Check out the chart in the Gallery!