Killah Priest should be grouped with Wu-Tang.
OP: he's an associate, not a member
Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
241–250 of 276 posts
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#242I would love to see the same analysis across different music styles. How compare vocabulary size of Madonna, Bob Dylan and Justin Bieber?
I only have rap data, sadly :(
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#243What I would like to see, is this same comparison done against album sales with the implication of mainstream vs. underground.
I kept this focused on vocab so that the data viz was very straightforward and easy to digest/draw insights from. I've had many requests for album sales to be added, and I plan to as soon as possible :)
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#244Couldn't find Aceyalone - I thought he'd be in the top 10, I guess he wasn't included.
Top 10? I would put money on him being at least #2 and giving Aesop Rock a run for his money for #1 (depending on which albums his 35,000 words fall on - he's got a solid discography). I just put on A Book of Human Language( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwVNp42l3Xo - full album or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnsCO0Fxw3A - solid song selection). Along with that, Wu Tang as the only crew analyzed? how about Free…
Mos def is in there
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I wasn't familiar with the label as such (I was surprised at Madlib/Otis Jackson being featured so prominently) the recent documentary "Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton: This Is Stones Throw Records" is highly recommended for those that want to get a glance at what the label is all about. And for those that like both poetry and rap, I suggest these two artists (in every way opposite, yet similar): the legendary Gil Scott…
thanks for the recommendations!
You're most welcome. And thank you for the thanks -- it wasn't entirely given that anyone would read them and enjoy them...
[edit: unless you're profile page is meant to be a riddle/tease, I think you might want to put some actual contact info in there... Just, saying (no, I don't have a start-up for you (yet anyway) :-) ]
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#246Many here seem to be interpreting vocabulary size as a signal for quality. When it comes to rap I completely disagree. Firstly, the repetition is rap's main ingredient. I read an article a while ago where researchers found that listening to a spoken phrase that is looped activates the same part of the brain as music, which helps explain this phenomenon. Personally, if I want food for thought I read. Rap is not an int…
I never made the claim that vocab size was correlated with quality.
I'm addressing what seems to be a common interpretation, not an explicit claim.
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#247OP: Did your analysis of MF DOOM include his work alongside Madlib as Madvillian or his various other pseudonyms (King Geedorah, Viktor Vaughn, etc.)? I find it a little hard to believe he's not at least in the Wu Tang/Canibus/KK cluster, if not #1 overall.
Seriously, DOOM is in his own league. At one point in "All Outta Ale", he rhymes "3-4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine" with "oxyacetaline."
Also, probably my favorite individual rhyme of all time, from "Meat Grinder": "Borderline schizo, sort of fine tits though"
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, perhaps the 35,000 most recent words would be better.
OP here: the challenge is that most artists' best work is in their earlier years. I'd rather have Jay-z's first album than last, ya know?
Would sorting by popularity, or critical acclaim, or something along those lines be a possibility?
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#249Really interesting, but not as representative as it should be. It's not clear why some have larger vocabulary than others. It could be using words like "zeitgeist" (in case of Aesop Rock) or some clever wordplay (I don't know much about hip-hop, so I can't find example for some artist from the list right off the bat, but I remember Marilyn Manson using word "gloominati" for instance) or pretty meaningless made up wor…
OP here. Do I really need to provide all of this to satisfy the reader's ability to grasp the basic premise of the site? this isn't a thesis or academic pursuit, just comparing some rappers for fun. I used plain NLTK token analysis on rap genius lyrics. in terms of several more data slices...I agree that there should be more cuts of the data, but you must understand the amount of time that it took me to put this toge…
Of course it's entirely up to you what to provide. It would be silly of me to question that. I'm not paying you for that, so how can I demand anything? I'm just saying what I think should've been done. That's how I would do it, at least.
You see, I have a strong opinion on that any data-analytic work is pretty close to being useless if it's not reproducible. And I mean really close. I already mentioned few questions that naturally arise reading your article which are crucial to understand your results and are not addressed by the article. So, ideally, any data analysis done for the open community should provide both full dataset and full sources. Unfortunately, it's not always possible: dataset may be several terabytes long, there might be legal issues about disclosure of the data (or letting everyone know how exactly author acquired them), sources might be under NDA, whatever. In this case description should be as pedantic as possible, because some little details can change the whole meaning of statistics entirely.
By the way, NLTK allows you to do all kinds of processing, so it isn't the answer.
So what would I do? The usual course, actually: would do the work in iPython Notebook, cleaning it up afterwards, would've drawn graphs in place and printed some few slices I've said already while processing, so it would be easier to understand what actually that unique words counted might be like. While fancy d3 graphs are cool for sure, but not nearly as useful.
Re: Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary
#250Really interesting, but not as representative as it should be. It's not clear why some have larger vocabulary than others. It could be using words like "zeitgeist" (in case of Aesop Rock) or some clever wordplay (I don't know much about hip-hop, so I can't find example for some artist from the list right off the bat, but I remember Marilyn Manson using word "gloominati" for instance) or pretty meaningless made up wor…
The example you used for clever wordplay, "gloominati," is actually considered a portmanteau word. It's the result of combining multiple words to create a new word. (I say this not to be a pedant, but because I learned the term recently and was amused that we actually have a word for it.)
Yes, portmanteaus are exactly what I was meaning by "clever wordplay". English isn't my primary language so it's hard to remember the right word sometimes, sorry for that. :)