
Rap Stats: Breaking Down The Words in Rap Lyrics Over Time - jsomers
http://news.rapgenius.com/Sameoldshawn-rap-stats-breaking-down-the-words-in-rap-lyrics-over-time-lyrics
======
madsushi
I have always been a big fan of rap vocabulary, and I've already lost an hour
poring over different results. What would be amazing would be a cross-
reference to the Google Trends results for the same words. You could try to
see the difference between cultural events (global) and specific events in the
rap community (local) that caused certain words to spike or ebb.

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dmix
Regarding the NBA chart: "Jordan, Kobe and Lebron":

> Rap and professional sports have always gone hand in hand, and we can see
> the evolution of rappers’ favorite basketball players:

"Jordan" keyword for example would more often be used in reference for Nike
shoes, so not a direct representation of the sports players popularity.

/pedantic rant

~~~
golergka
> not a direct representation of the sports players popularity

And how exactly did these shoes got their name?

~~~
joenathan
How did the Teddy bear get its name? The popularity of plush bears doesn't
much reflect the popularity of Theodore Roosevelt.

~~~
rhlahuja
Not really the same thing. Those bears weren't named after Roosevelt and thus
don't reflect his popularity whereas Jordans were clearly named after MJ
himself.

~~~
bostonpete
> Those bears weren't named after Roosevelt

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_bear#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_bear#History)

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ChrisNorstrom
I never liked rap and I can finally explain my reason:

[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=woman%2C%20women%2C%20girl%2...](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=woman%2C%20women%2C%20girl%2C%20ho%2C%20hoes%2C%20bitch)

And I've heard a lot of rap. My highschool bus driver always played rap on the
bus's radio every time we had him as a driver. Honestly, I went to school
angry every morning. Similar to how you feel when you try to listen to Glen
Beck or Rush Limbaugh.

~~~
eulerphi
Hahaha, what an awful reason. Keep white knighting and see how your life turns
out.

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PhasmaFelis
"White knighting"? Fuck off, troll.

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eulerphi
Not trolling, you're assuming that all those words are used in a derogatory
manner and discarding the actual content of the music so you can "defend"
women. You're a pathetic white knight.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Bahaha. I don't care about rap one way or the other, and neither do you.
"White knighting" is just as made up as "fake geek girls" and the Tooth Fairy,
and we both know it. Therefore: fuck off, troll.

~~~
eulerphi
I do care about hip hop. White knighting is as made up a word, as any words
are. You have the mentality that if you bend over to defend women, it will
somehow make you more righteous of an individual. Women don't need defending.
And those terms can refer to men as well.

Let's just put this in perspective Robert. You're a KFC nerd who plays video
games, knows a little programming from modding them, you don't shave your
neck, hang out with your cat, and defend women's social justice with respect
to rap, through some poor analysis of word frequency on supposedly derogatory
"demeaning" words on women. Somehow, hoping this ill-formed sickness of a
view, helps women recognize your sentimental romance toward their engendered
cause. Ain't gonna happen Jack. Be a man and stop playing internet politics.
And lay off the Hollandaise sauce.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Interesting! But far from accurate, I'm afraid. For example, my neck is as
smooth as a baby's ass.

But let's do put things in perspective. Don't you have better things to do
than try to dox people who disagree with you on Hacker News? I'd like to think
we have a higher quality of discourse than that.

~~~
eulerphi
You're right, let's stop rapping and pull out the trombones.

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skipchris
well, i guess that settles it:
[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=emacs%2Cvim](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=emacs%2Cvim)

~~~
byoung2
Sadly, vim matches a lot of Portuguese lyrics:
[http://rapgenius.com/search?q=vim](http://rapgenius.com/search?q=vim)

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cing
I'd like to see a more thorough analysis of "big words" in rap songs. I
started manually compiling examples in a blog a while back,
[http://rapwords.tumblr.com/](http://rapwords.tumblr.com/)

~~~
emiljbs
Check out the lyrics of Death Grips.

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Jach
Anyone found another word that peaks past 0.53%?

[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=nigga%2C%20yo%2C%20bitch](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=nigga%2C%20yo%2C%20bitch)

~~~
dangerlibrary
"get" is over .65, and "up" peaks above .7:

[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=nigga%2C%20yo%2C%20bitch%2C%...](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=nigga%2C%20yo%2C%20bitch%2C%20get)

[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=nigga%2C%20yo%2C%20bitch%2C%...](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=nigga%2C%20yo%2C%20bitch%2C%20up)

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danso
Wow, rappers were surprisingly prescient in predicting the fall of newspapers
and the rise of the Internet:

[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Newspaper%2C%20internet](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Newspaper%2C%20internet)

~~~
christoph
Traditional media still rules though:

[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=radio,tv,internet](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=radio,tv,internet)

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hawkharris
Gangsta rap is like PHP: I enjoy it because I grew up with it, but it's
getting hard to defend intellectually.

~~~
Larrikin
Rap is extremely diverse, but why do you even need to defend it? Can't a song
just be fun to listen to?

~~~
hawkharris
Haha. I agree that rap diverse, and I was just having some fun comparing the
genre to programming.

Setting aside jokes, I've listened to many different types of rap, but I don't
like rap that's intellectual. I prefer the mainstream songs about drugs and
partying (e.g. Rick Ross and Lil' Wayne) to the songs that try to start a
dialogue about social issues (e.g. Common).

I'm open to hearing about intellectual issues when I read articles or listen
to talk radio, but I really don't like music that tries to make a point
because I associate music with entertainment. Interesting how the medium can
affect the message on a person to person basis.

~~~
eulerphi
Doesn't have to be an issue about social issues to not be plain retarded in
terms of linguistics. Point in case: Big L. Gangsta rap that had flow and
cleverness. Lil Wayne and Rick Ross don't really cut that, but I do love that
song 8 Ball by Rick Ross, he's just plain fun to listen to.

~~~
hawkharris
Big L does have an amazing flow. I put Big Pun in the same category:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiwvPmRTv6M](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiwvPmRTv6M)

Sometimes when I'm stuck in traffic I'll say to myself, "Dead in the middle of
little Italy little did we know that we riddled some middle man who didn't do
diddly."

Girlfriend: "What was that?"

Me: "Oh...uhhh..nothing."

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muratmutlu
If anyones interested - we made [http://www.tuner.io](http://www.tuner.io) at
a hackday in SF last year.

It reorders the Billboard top 100 based on lyrics, so top 5 songs with the
most profanity etc.

After the hackday the API access to the services expired, but check it out
anyway!

~~~
nathancahill
API access expired? What kind of hackday is that?

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ZanderEarth32
Love this. I had a similar idea a few months ago except I wanted to map the
number of times certain popular phrases were mentioned in different rap songs.
For example, how many rap songs have the lyric

"if it don't make dollars it don't make sense (or cents)"

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yesbabyyes
This is great! We actually built something very similar to this for the 2011
Node Knockout, we called it Rapminder (as a nod to Gapminder, and serendipity
had it that I met Hans Rosling just outside our office the day before the
hackathon).

We mined the lyrics from OHHLA [1], matched the metadata from Discogs [2],
built a word structure in Redis and drew the graphs with D3. We built it with
an eye to Rap Genius, but sadly we haven't kept it online after the Knockout.
I'll look into setting it up again.

[1] [http://ohhla.com/](http://ohhla.com/) [2]
[http://discogs.com/](http://discogs.com/)

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zalew
> Lil Wayne wasn't being hyperbolic -- money really is over bitches:

But Biggie apparently was wrong
[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=money%2Cproblems](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=money%2Cproblems)

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beloch
Money and bitches dwarfs pretty much every other thing I've tried, and both
are trending upwards. It's nice to see that rap is becoming a deeper, more
intelligent genre.

~~~
flycaliguy
Don't pretend that other genres of popular music would reveal anything more
"intelligent".

~~~
zebra
Rock and metal aren't that shallow.

~~~
flycaliguy
I think for this argument to be sound we have to define what artists would be
included. Is it a survey of popular music? All music? There is a lot of
intelligent hip hop out there. There is a lot of shallow rock out there.

Generalizing about any genre is pointless.

Edit: And I put intelligent in quotes because who is to say that using the
word money or (less so) bitch even means there is not an intelligent point
being made.

~~~
beloch
I admit I was trolling, but the amount of rap out there that plays into the
macho-gangster-materialist-misogynist stereotype is _obscene_. Decent rap does
exist, but gangstacrap still dominates the genre. Other genres of music have
their own dominant stereotypes that are equally vapid, but seldom as scummy.

~~~
dasil003
You're conflating stupidity with poor taste, but they're clearly independent.
Consider the Wu-Tang Clan's lyrics which are more intelligent and have a level
of wordplay that is non-existent in rock music, but at the same time can be
the most offensive thing you've ever heard.

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dangerlibrary
I guess it never really took off...

[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=smash%2C%20bang%2C%20smang](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=smash%2C%20bang%2C%20smang)

~~~
dopamean
I came here hoping someone searched for smang. Thank you.

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zjgreen
Democract vs. Republican

Who. Will. Win.

[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=democrat%2C%20republican](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=democrat%2C%20republican)

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kin
I wish the lyrics distinguish between the word la and the abbreviation L.A.

Then I can accurately compare New York vs. L.A. mentions, 'cause no rapper
says Los Angeles.

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zmitri
This is great work. Would be cool to see some songs that contribute to each
data point.

Eg. I would love to know how much [http://rapgenius.com/Migos-versace-
lyrics](http://rapgenius.com/Migos-versace-lyrics) and variations contributed
to this
[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=versace](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=versace)

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dcre
Reminds me of Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg's talk at Eyeo Festival.
They visualized use of body part words across different genres.

[http://hint.fm/projects/listen/](http://hint.fm/projects/listen/)

And here's their talk: [http://vimeo.com/69497902](http://vimeo.com/69497902)

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cgdangelo
Very cool. I think an interesting feature would be to plot songs along the
graph as nodes you could hover over. You could see the artists' and songs'
information, maybe the word frequency in those songs. I suppose you could look
for radical changes in slope to figure out where to place each node, too.

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jaredandrews
Is there a way to see what song the word is used in? I'm interested in knowing
what hip hop artist was rapping about eBay[0] all the way back in '94.

[0]
[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=ebay](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=ebay)

~~~
ptmx
I'm also dying to know who was rapping about web development from ~2003-2009:

[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=html%2C%20javascript](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=html%2C%20javascript)

~~~
pinwale
Just throw the terms in the RapGenius search bar:

[http://rapgenius.com/search?hide_unexplained_songs=false&q=h...](http://rapgenius.com/search?hide_unexplained_songs=false&q=html%2C+javascript)

Javascript is mentioned in "White & Nerdy" by Weird Al Yankovic. Also, looks
like there are non-songs that are being counted into the rap stats.

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RaSoJo
Money over bitches..but "The Bitch" over Money!!! O_O
[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=bitch%2C%20bitches%2C%20mone...](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=bitch%2C%20bitches%2C%20money)

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aestra
What rappers think about video game consoles:

[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Nintendo%2C%20Xbox%2C%20Play...](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Nintendo%2C%20Xbox%2C%20PlayStation%2C%20Wii%2C%20Sega)

~~~
concernedctzn
That can't be right, xbox didn't come out until 2001. Might be matching
something else?

~~~
jlgreco
I have to suspect that "Sega" is matching something else too. It is such a
thing of the past that I wouldn't have even thought to include it.

Searching a little on their site doesn't turn up any obvious alternative usage
though... maybe Sega is just easier to rhythm with.

~~~
aestra
Recent songs that mention Sega:

[http://rapgenius.com/The-cool-kids-a-little-bit-cooler-
lyric...](http://rapgenius.com/The-cool-kids-a-little-bit-cooler-lyrics)
[http://rapgenius.com/Snow-tha-product-cookie-cutter-
bitches-...](http://rapgenius.com/Snow-tha-product-cookie-cutter-bitches-
lyrics)
[http://rapgenius.com/Logic-30000-lyrics](http://rapgenius.com/Logic-30000-lyrics)

------
davydka
I think they mean watch as MySpace holds on for dear life, not Twitter.

------
yardie
How did facebook get a bump before 2005?

Also, you might want to add blackplanet, migente, and asianavenue to the
Social networks graph. I know a few southern rappers were namechecking them
before 2005.

~~~
eCa
Facebooks existed before facebook:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book)

~~~
yardie
First time I've heard of this. Then again I went to a land grant university of
25000 undergrads. I'm assuming these are more common at smaller colleges.

~~~
ameoba
Facebook started at Harvard, a 20k student school. It might be more of a
tradition at the old East Coast institutions - growing up on the West Coast,
I've never heard any reference to anything of the like.

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muratmutlu
Spotify & Napster
[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=napster%2C%20spotify](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=napster%2C%20spotify)

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bdon
Nice! What data source are you guys using for song years?

~~~
jsomers
It's crowdsourced by our users, and vetted/edited by our moderators (also part
of the community).

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DotSauce
Will it ever end?
[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Turn%20Up](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Turn%20Up)

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dmak
Wow, this is really fast. Anyone have insight on how they can provide stats
like this so fast? Is it precalculated?

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thehigherlife
Are you guys using Splunk for the data crunching and graph builds?

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emhart
Nice to see them getting back to their roots. :)

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BrianEatWorld
Where is the chart for "ugh"s (sp?)?

~~~
Fishkins
If you're talking about the footwear:
[http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=ugg,uggs](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=ugg,uggs)

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api
The money vs. bitches graph made me LOL.

