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Just a note, those artists don't necessarily use all their vocabulary. Eminem for example clearly holds back on his vocabulary. Rap is as much an art as anything can be so there are all sorts of factors. Be careful what you might want to draw here other than curiousity.
> Eminem for example clearly holds back on his vocabulary. What makes you say this?
This looks at the first so many lyrics in each rapper's career. Aesop Rock came out with some weird stuff right off the bat. I wonder if some of these other rappers became more sophisticated over time. Maybe an average per song would be better, or average uniques per word, would be better.
Gotta wonder about the garbage-in factor of Rap Genius. From one randomly selected Aesop Rock cut: "Please I want to donate my brain to the monstrous Panasonic profit" I guess it could be. I always heard it as "monstrous Panasonic prophet." It would be in keeping with the previous lyric "Television, all hail grand pixelated god of fantasy."
However, that said, that page (http://rapgenius.com/Aesop-rock-basic-cable-lyrics) does need some love. You should help out! Use the "suggestions" box on individual annotations to leave things for Editors (trusted members of the community, like myself) to integrate into the existing annotations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the term you're grasping for is "Lowest Common Denominator."
I don't disagree that there is a lot of catering to the lowest common denominator in the music industry, both in pop music and the "best songs of all time" lists. However, I think the parent post has a point. (Now, I'm having a hard time figuring out how to effectively articulate it) The point of music isn't necessarily an insight . Listening to music is an experience , which is about how it makes you feel. Sometimes…
sometimes being obvious is what makes it art in the first place. hell, some art needs to be obvious.
Gotta wonder about the garbage-in factor of Rap Genius. From one randomly selected Aesop Rock cut: "Please I want to donate my brain to the monstrous Panasonic profit" I guess it could be. I always heard it as "monstrous Panasonic prophet." It would be in keeping with the previous lyric "Television, all hail grand pixelated god of fantasy."
There's some other howlers in the same song like "canope" instead of "canopy", "intervenes" instead of "intravenous".
This song has no credited transcripter, so it was one of the originals added to "bootstrap" the site, and hence has a lot lower quality then the later songs added and cleaned up by users.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a rapper released one song using n distinct words their score would be n/1, and if they released a second song using the same set of words their score would halve, to n/2, despite the fact their demonstrated vocabulary is still n words. In fact, if their first song used n distinct words and their second used a completely distinct set of words, but the second song was shorter than the first, their score would drop.…
I don't think that's what the poster meant. By "average unique words per song" I take it to mean, within each song words are only counted once, but across songs, words can be counted multiple times. So if song A had the words "I like cats" and song B had the words "I like dogs", then the average unique word count would be ((3 + 3) / 2) = 3, not ((3 + 1)/2) = 2.
For those who aren't familiar with Aesop Rock, I'd invite you to give him a listen sometime. His earlier albums, in particular, have been very influential to me in many ways. Both in my artistic and professional careers. From comments on the conditions of the working man and the condition of feeling trapped in a "j-o-b"[1]: "Now we the American working population Hate the fact that eight hours a day Is wasted on chas…
I don't know man, I listened to a couple of the tracks and he definitely has lyrical skills, and I like some of the tracks, but the quotes you selected aren't very good at all, at best obvious topics with all the insight of a million college freshmen. Having said that I like "None Shall Pass" that has a really great sound. To be entirely honest, I love rap, but not for any insight rappers have in world affairs, but f…