Rap Stats: Breaking Down The Words in Rap Lyrics Over Time | Hacker News Reader

Rap Stats: Breaking Down The Words in Rap Lyrics Over Time

news.rapgenius.com

178 pointsjsomers93 comments

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.

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

> not a direct representation of the sports players popularity

And how exactly did these shoes got their name?

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

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.

> Those bears weren't named after Roosevelt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_bear#History

There is a much higher connection between the shoes and player for "jordan", though. Especially a link in time.

Michael Jordan doesn't much factor in, that is why no rappers are wearing his jersey or his number(23). Jordans, the shoes, are mentioned in rap songs because of the status(very expensive and hard to come by) and fashion of the brand, like other brands mentioned in rap, Gucci, Prada, Fendi, etc.. Rappers don't know and don't care about the people who started or who are behind those brands, they are only mentioned for the high status and fashion associated with those brands.

> Rappers don't know and don't care about the people who started or who are behind those brands

This is...incredibly not true. The crossover between basketball and rap and hip-hop is significant and the cultural awareness of, uh, Michael Jordan is certainly there. Kendrick Lamar, Kurtis Blow, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Drake--the group of major rappers who've written songs about Jordan (Lamar) or have written songs that draw heavily from basketball and its history (the rest of that list) is huge.

I see what you are saying, he is acknowledged and recognized as one of the greats, but most probably never even think of him when talking about the shoes. Michael Jordan doesn't much factor in when rappers are talking about Jordans, his person is very separate from the fashion and status the shoes have come to represent.

Hell I spent $200-$300 4-5 years ago and bought a pair of the Spike Lee Jordans http://images.freshnessmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ai... - I bought them purely for the fashion.

-I never like replying on a subject too much like this; this topic isn't that important, guess I must be bored :-/

For one, nobody wears jerseys anymore.

I'll just leave this here.

http://rapgenius.com/Macklemore-and-ryan-lewis-wing-lyrics

Usually the shoes are referenced with the plural "Jordans", whereas the player is referenced with the singular "Jordan".

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

http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=woman%2C%20women%2C%20girl%2...

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.

That isn't a good reason.

If by rap you mean commercial rap, then I don't blame you. But keep in mind rap is a very diverse genre with many hard-working artists, and a large, passionate subculture. You will not hear that on the radio because it doesn't sell, in the same way you don't hear metal, classical, or experimental music on the radio. I hate to say it, but your school bus driver exposed you to very little "rap".

Source: I was in the breakdance community for several years, where you'll meet all sorts of wonderful hip-hop heads. And yes, such a thing still exists and it is not the tacky stuff you see in commercials and in movies.

I'd love to see the same chart for, say, classic rock.

Don't paint the remaining 99.7% of wrap with the same brush as that 0.3%.

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

"White knighting"? Fuck off, troll.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Sadly, vim matches a lot of Portuguese lyrics: http://rapgenius.com/search?q=vim

Does RapGenius index nerdcore lyrics?

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/

Check out the lyrics of Death Grips.

Anyone found another word that peaks past 0.53%?

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

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

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

the is around 5%

'like' peaks at 1%

http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=a,%20the,%20my,%20in,%20of,%...

nigga gets up near 'be' and 'is' but it's well short of 'a' and 'the'

Incidentally: http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=nigger,%20nigga

Basic words do: http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=get%2C%20we%2C%20i%2C%20is%2... I + you is 3%, we and is are close around .5-.8%.

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

Traditional media still rules though:

http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=radio,tv,internet

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

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

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.

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.

Big L does have an amazing flow. I put Big Pun in the same category: 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."

>Can't a song just be fun to listen to?

Amen! I'm a self proclaimed audiophile. I've dump an absurd amount of money, and even more time setting up my listening environment. I will have listening parties with other snobby audiophile types and we'll have in depth discussions about compression aggressivness, staging, balance, etc.. but even given all that, I'll still put on a Lil John album -- which is like the poster child for "dumb" music -- and rock out.

Sometimes it's OK to have a little fun while listening to music, people! Not everything needs to be deeply mindful and complex. Just pop in something that fits the moment and stirs up a little emotion.

If anyones interested - we made 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!

API access expired? What kind of hackday is that?

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)"

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/ [2] http://discogs.com/

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

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

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.

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

Rock and metal aren't that shallow.

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.

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.

I'd agree but there are shades of grey where gangsta rap can actually be quite enlightening to listen to. Big L was very very _hard_ yet still had a real story to tell, and real perspective.

Ie. Street Struck: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwff61MTOUo

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.

Most popular metal is basically adolescent lord of the rings fanfiction, I think rap music might manage to stand up to that on a metric of depth, let alone social relevance or whatever else you might want to apply.

Although there is a whole sub-genre where that is the case, it is neither one of the current most popular sub-genres, or a sub-genre that the majority of the current most popular bands play. Folk metal and friends have had their day for now. Various spin-offs of metalcore and deathcore, along with the dying djent, seem to rule at the moment, I reckon.

I interpreted that comment as lamenting the evolution of rap (i.e., how the rise of gangsta rap made it a very different genre from what it started as in the late 1970s and the 1980s), not comparing it unfavorably to other popular music genres.

Oh I don't know. I think It ain't what you do but the way that you do it (by The Fun Boy Three & Bananarama) is a perfect signature tune for Hacker News. ;)

I guess it never really took off...

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

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

Democract vs. Republican

Who. Will. Win.

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

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.

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 and variations contributed to this http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=versace

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/

And here's their talk: http://vimeo.com/69497902

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.

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

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

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

Just throw the terms in the RapGenius search bar:

http://rapgenius.com/search?hide_unexplained_songs=false&q=h...

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.

I'd like to see some rap from before champagne overtook ale in popularity:

http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=champagne,%20ale

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

What rappers think about video game consoles:

http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Nintendo%2C%20Xbox%2C%20Play...

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

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.

Recent songs that mention Sega:

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

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

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.

Facebooks existed before facebook: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book

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.

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.

Well back in the 70's I had an American teacher and in one 6th form general studies class (on American culture) she mentioned the concept.

Spotify & Napster http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=napster%2C%20spotify

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

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

Will it ever end? http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Turn%20Up

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

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

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

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

http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=ugh

If you're talking about the footwear: http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=ugg,uggs

The money vs. bitches graph made me LOL.

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