Kool Keith should be exempt from this list. He's not from any of the 4 regions listed, but from Jupiter.
And, does his Dr. Octagon work count as Kool Keith or it's own thing? Is his work in Ultramagnetic MCs counted or just solo stuff?
Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
11–20 of 276 posts
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#12I'd really like to see this broken down by established vocabulary and made up vocabulary. I think that would really start to show who were the best lyricists on both ends. Rappers with a lot of made up words might be on the far left, and rappers with a lot of unique words that aren't made up would be on the far right. Both sides of the scale would show rapping talent on different dimensions. Influential rappers like E-40 who add new words to the vocabulary, and wordy rappers like Aes on the right who use a really dense and descriptive vocabulary.
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#13I find it hilarious that DMX is dead last. I've now got empirical evidence of what I always thought. I think DMX rhymes words with themselves more than any rapper I've ever heard.
I'm pretty sure this fails to take into account DMX's rich canine vocabulary.
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#14This is fascinating. I'm only a recent listener of hip-hop (primarily because of Earl Sweatshirt and Odd Future) and I'm in awe of the vernacular.
And similarly, as a boredom exercise a few weeks ago I did some lexical analysis of the song Timber (the monstrosity was being constantly played on the radio at the time) and here's what I came out with:
"83.1% of the words in the lyrics are five letters or less, 58.9% are four letters or less. The lexical density (the number of unique words divided by the total number of words, multiplied by one-hundred) is 29.1%. There is only one word in the song which has three or more syllables. Eleven people were involved with the writing of the song, each of them capable of producing just nine unique words each."
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#15"Each word is counted once, so pimps, pimp, pimping, and pimpin are four unique words" So much for the modern Shakespeares on the list.
unlike shakespeare who was so high class and never made 'your mom' jokes or used any toilet humour or anything like that.
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#16Its a nice touch including portmanteaus and 'incorrect' ebonics on the list (like "ery'day"), since authors like shakespeare, joyce and others took the same liberties with language. Arguably, that's how language develops and makes it interesting to study and think about. The OP could have easily stuck to words in the OED, kudos.
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#17I'm a big fan of the project and the way it is presented. Not sure why Wu-Tang features so prominently but I guess I'm okay with that. Kool Keith should be broken down further into his constituent parts. I also would have thought the Beastie Boys would have run higher.
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#18Is Del tha Funkee Homosapien on this list? I'd be curious, since he has pretty non-standard lyrics.
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#19"Each word is counted once, so pimps, pimp, pimping, and pimpin are four unique words" So much for the modern Shakespeares on the list.
unlike shakespeare who was so high class and never made 'your mom' jokes or used any toilet humour or anything like that.
or jokes about "nothing".
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#20Awesome. This guy should definitely work for RapGenius.com.