
The Largest Vocabulary in Hip Hop (2014) - kolbe
https://pudding.cool/2017/02/vocabulary/
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booleandilemma
DMX would have scored a little higher had barking sounds been counted as
words.

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user2426679
Would like to see a similar analysis that instead looks at the number of
syllables, specifically vocabulary that has greater than 2 syllables.

In addition to being of personal interest (I think it's much more difficult
and impressive to create rhymes with 3+ syllables due to the natural
constraint of a smaller basket of words), it would also, presumably, avoid the
issue that the author highlights:

> I used a research methodology called token analysis to determine each
> artist’s vocabulary. Each word is counted once, so pimps, pimp, pimping, and
> pimpin are four unique words. To avoid issues with apostrophes (e.g.,
> pimpin’ vs. pimpin), they’re removed from the dataset. It still isn’t
> perfect. Hip hop is full of slang that is hard to transcribe (e.g., shorty
> vs. shawty), compound words (e.g., king shit)

~~~
waltertan12
You might like this read [https://genius.com/posts/1921-Rapper-s-flow-
encyclopedia-ear...](https://genius.com/posts/1921-Rapper-s-flow-encyclopedia-
earl-sweatshirt)

~~~
user2426679
Thanks for the link... enjoyable and educational :)

Wonder where Immortal Technique would fit within that chart.

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WrathOfJay
I am legitimately intrigued by this analysis. I've always wondered why I found
certain rap so much better than others. I stopped liking the kind of rap that
was becoming popular around the time of Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Tupac, etc.
Looking at this data, it pretty obvious to me that the stuff on the right I
tend to like a lot more than the stuff on the left. Sure enough, I just
listened to Aesop Rock for the first time and it is exactly the kind of rap I
enjoy.

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glitcher
Similarly, I was happy to see Blackalicious and MF Doom place fairly high in
the list too. Aesop Rock is a legend and I have a couple old favorites by him
("Daylight", and that same song's antithesis "Night Light"), but I also find
him to be mentally over-taxing at times.

Since you enjoyed your first listen of Aesop Rock so much, for something newer
I highly recommend Milo's 2018 album "budding ornithologists are weary of
tired analogies". Enjoy :)

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dsnuh
Don't miss out on Hail Mary Mallon, which is Aesop Rock and Rob Sonic. I would
highly recommend their album Bestiary if you like Aesop's solo stuff.

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brownbat
The bars at the end of the article are some of my favorite in hip hop. Jay Z
is tackling the claims that the most skilled rappers don't sell head on...

He's taking our assumption that good art isn't the most popular art, or that
pop isn't skill, and deconstructing it while making a platinum record, his
best selling of the decade.

Chapelle talks about listening to that line on the Black Album with Common,
Kanye, and Talib Kweli:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4SYIfhzMmU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4SYIfhzMmU)

Maybe it happened that way and maybe not, funny story though.

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skookumchuck
For reference, the TV vocabulary is about 3,000 words.

The average high school vocabulary is 10,000 words.

The average college graduate vocabulary is 30,000 words.

The English language has about 1,000,000 words.

The good news is that one needs to learn only about 3,000 words to become
conversant in English.

~~~
fiblye
I'd like to see a source on this info. But it's definitely wrong.

4 years in college isn't enough to triple your vocabulary. And the average
fluent speaker uses far more than 10000 words. In my second language, I'm
slightly over 10,000 words (I keep track of everything I encounter in Anki)
and I'm still nowhere near as fluent as a typical high schooler. I encounter
several new words daily.

~~~
gjm11
I'm also skeptical, but note that "average college graduate = 3x average high
schooler" doesn't mean "college triples your vocabulary" because there are two
things potentially going on here: the effect of 4 years at college, and the
difference between people who graduate college and and people who don't.

~~~
skookumchuck
Sure. Someone who reads a lot is more likely to go to college, and reading a
lot expands vocabulary a lot. (I often mispronounce words because I've never
heard them spoken, and had long ago invented my own sound for them.)

Newspaper vocabulary is dumbed down, and TV even more so, because that's their
market.

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dnautics
Definitely curious about some of the 90s Oakland rap like del, heiroglyphics,
alt-hip-hop like binary star, and maybe some old school like young mc.

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Implicated
Del is pretty well represented (#7) in the print version
([https://popchart.co/products/the-hip-hop-flow-
chart](https://popchart.co/products/the-hip-hop-flow-chart))

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kgwxd
At first glance, I thought higher on the Y-axis (even though there isn't one)
was more words. I was frantically hovering looking for Aesop Rock until I
realized how the grid worked. Sure enough.

That's what I put on when I want to listen. It's like watching a movie, I
don't want to work or exercise to it, it demands all my attention. On the
other hand, nothing hypes me up like a DMX track.

~~~
stdplaceholder
I knew it would be Aesop Rock before I even clicked through. Definitely not
the kind of thing you listen to at work to block out the noise. It’s
interesting but I guess not surprising that people in the same circle, like
El-P, have similarly huge vocabularies. But now El-P is practically the
biggest name in hip hop. Maybe wordiness is catching on.

~~~
MaxLeiter
El-P is not nearly the biggest name in hip hop. Maybe in the online world him
and RTJ are big, but amongst the general population of hip hop listeners I
don’t think he’s very big.

~~~
stdplaceholder
Their last album was the #1 best-selling album on the Billboard R&B/Hip Hop
chart and they sold out every venue on their tour. I think they're reasonably
well-known.

~~~
MaxLeiter
It may have been best selling when initially released, but that relies on a
lot of factors (other albums released at the time being a major one).

According to [https://www.billboard.com/music/run-the-
jewels](https://www.billboard.com/music/run-the-jewels), RTJ 3 peaked at #13
on Billboard 200. That's good, but it isn't being 'practically the biggest
name in hip hop' good. Plus, most people probably wouldn't recognize Killer
Mike or El-P (although more people may recognize Mike over El-P from his time
supporting Sanders).

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wufufufu
I think track time matters more than word count. You could have two songs that
are the same length and have the same lyrics _except_ one song has the N-word
at the end of every line, and this analysis would prefer the censored version
as having more vocabulary.

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wodenokoto
Count of unique words tend to be a function of the length of a document or
corpus. So the comparison won't make sense either, if you take every artists
complete works and did a unique count.

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deltron3030
Suprised that Company Flow, Lootpack, Souls of Mischief and rappers from these
collectives don‘t appear in that list. or somebody like Ras Kass.

~~~
posterboy
The measure is meaningless, because more doesn't equal better.

Music works well with repetition. Just look at graffiti for comparison, little
one word poems repeated over and over.

The measure also doesn't account for ambiguity used to good effect--who makes
the most sense?

I'm not sure why you put Lootpack in there, anyhow. Madlib for example talks a
ton about weed, known to inhibit speech production. And the sound is blunted,
too, literally. I just wonder how they can be as productive as they are, at
all. I still like it, sure.

Nice Nick by the way.

~~~
deltron3030
>The measure is meaningless, because more doesn't equal better.

Absolutely.

>Music works well with repetition. Just look at graffiti for comparison,
little one word poems repeated over and over.

Yeah but it‘s a bit like writing texts, where you might substitute words in
longer ones that you have used a sentenced before.

In Graffiti you have tags and throwups, muscle memory that is usually
repeated, but also more complicated pieces where freshness and coming up with
new stuff has more value.

>I'm not sure why you put Lootpack in there

A shameful confusion of Lootpack with Swollen Members (Wildchild != Madchild).

> Nice Nick by the way.

Thanks!

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dylanz
I wonder if when they count in Kool Keith they also factor in Dr. Octogon,
Black Elvis, Dr. Dooom, etc, etc. If they did I bet he’d be a lot higher.

~~~
joecool1029
Just his rhymes in Ultramagnetic MC's alone would push him way up I think.
Looks like the creator tried to collect only solo stuff.

Kool Keith gives the best interviews too:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQtfeszBgAc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQtfeszBgAc)

~~~
dddw
decorating his refrigerator :D

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sudofail
The creator of the site said they're working on updating it. Should be up in a
couple weeks.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/a4urje/rap...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/a4urje/rappers_sorted_by_the_size_of_their_vocabulary/ebhybox/)

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djaychela
Question to the OP of this link - were you listening to 6 Music yesterday (UK
digital/online BBC Radio station) - purely mention this because there was a
running thread on Radcliffe/Maconie about unique words in songs, and someone
had mentioned a rapper's vocabulary being much greater than most others.

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nwhatt
Amazing how many wu-tang solo members are up there, along with the group as a
whole.

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jghn
I remember seeing this a number of years ago and the sentiment then was that
it's an effect of them all coming together, and because they got to bounce
rhymes off of each other they started to learn each other's words and
incorporate them into their own material.

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dang
Seems to go at least as far back as 2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7704183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7704183)

~~~
RickS
The data only goes to 2012 sadly.

Drake would likely rise since he's been prolific since then. Logic and
Kendrick would also probably see some gains.

It's tough to think of new entrants that might debut high on the chart, at
least in pop/modern rap. If anything "mumble rap" is the standard these days
and it would be pretty funny to see how the kodak/purp/yachty cohort compares
to some of the other eras.

And _nobody_ is unseating Aesop Rock. The man is one of a kind.

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4thaccount
"and nobody is unseating Aesop Rock"

I was going to say that. Several years ago I saw either this list or a similar
one on Reddit and a lot of comments wanted to know why Aesop Rock was missing.
I grew interested and people gave "none shall pass" as a good first song to
listen to if you want to get familiar with his work. My only problem with his
stuff is that I have zero idea what he is talking about. It's basically just a
lot of words jumbled together except for that song about the dog saving a
little girl from drowning. I've heard it 50x now and still tear up.

~~~
Vector919
I think his music has gotten much more accessible and less obscure over time.
I think The Impossible Kid (his most recent album) is a much better point of
reference for what's interesting about his work, and it deals with topics in
ways that are easier to understand and relate to, but equally as interesting
and well considered (See: Lotta Years -> reflections on getting older, Blood
Sandwich -> Looking back on some family moments, Kirby -> Heartfelt and
hilarious ode to his cat)

~~~
neetodavid
Check out the album he did with Kimya Dawson (The Uncluded - Hokey Fright).
Kimya is pretty matter-of-fact in a lot of the songs and seems to reign Aes in
(or at least offer a point of reference for when he starts getting out-there).
Its one of my favorite albums. "Earthquake" is beautiful

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tzury
No wonder the second one on the left named "Too Short".

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nicoburns
I'd be interested to see where Akala would fit on this list. His vocabulary is
pretty impressive to listen to at least. But it seems they only included US
artists.

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adamsea
It’s not how many words you know, it’s how you use them.

~~~
kgwxd
I'd put Aesop Rock at the top of that axis too.

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tomcam
Wonder if Nicki Minaj gets credit for her made-up wordsounds

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wavefunction
KRS-1 barely leading Lil Kim huh

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posterboy
KRS is _the teacher_ , not _the distinguished professor of fine arts and
lexicography_.

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time-domain0
I would expect Eric B. & Rakim to be on the list for _Microphone Fiend_ and
_Don 't Sweat the Technique._ Seems like this list should include more artists
rather than just a random selection of popular artists.

