Just when you think you’ve read every last interesting obscure fact floating in cyberspace, Matt Daniels blesses Hip Hop fans with an analytic breakdown of rappers with the largest vocabulary. Matt, a “designer, coder, and data scientist,” examined a pool of 85 of the most famous rappers by counting the number of different unique words in each of the artist’s first 35,000 lyrics. The results are, well, pretty effin’ cool.
Some notable results include:
– Aesop Rock (Not to be mistaken for Asap Rocky), absolutely steals the show with 7,391 unique words. He tops #2 on the list, Wu-Tang’s GZA, by almost 1000 words. Damn!
– Wu-Tang Clan collectively ranked at #6, however, 5 of the members ranked in the top 25 with their individual body of work.
– E-40 ranks 15th and higher than Eminem?!?!?!?!???!!!!??? E-40, a respectable rapper in the bay area hip hop scene, surprised us that his vocabulary bank even ranked that high. Then again, he is a trend setter in slang and “making up words” (for a lack of a better phrase). Well, props to you E.
– Ranking at dead last on the chart was DMX. With DMX’s early highly acclaimed projects, he definitely captured the hip hop scene by storm and even won the respect of many rap purists as a legend of the art. Apparently this is one list, he does not place high on. However, with bars that include just 2 or 3 words and a slew of dog barks interjected through out, we are not THAT surprised.
For the detailed breakdown of Matt’s work, go visit his site below with plenty of interesting charts and analysis:
http://rappers.mdaniels.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/