I love it. If you track your mouse over the graph, the image of 50 Cent expands with inflation.

It reminds me of another great interactive rapper graph: "rappers, sorted by the size of their vocabulary":

https://pudding.cool/projects/vocabulary/index.html

▲ codyb 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Using the first 35,000 words is a bit unfair for a rapper such as Lil Wayne who's been releasing work since he was 14.

Also I wonder if this is including proper nouns and other references. (I'd think it should, but it's hard to account for the fact that referencing seven different Chris's would be counted as one token used seven times. Similarly, many words have many meanings, and those are all being lumped together as well, so no accounting here can probably ever be perfect).

If you had all the lyrics for all the rappers I think I'd - aggregate word counts - combine variations - remove most commonly used words in each language (I, I'm, You, You're, etc)

Then see who came out ahead. You shouldn't get penalized for releasing more.

You could probably do a bunch of cool analysis with that data.

edit: Oh no, there's actually a Genius API isn't there. No no no no. I have no time!

▲ Rendello a day ago | parent | next [-]

The original author was pretty clear about the limitations of his work. I certainly would like to see an updated version, so I'm glad you got nerd sniped and not me. I look forward to see your super accurate updated version in a few months ;)

▲ Jach a day ago | parent [-]

I've wanted to see a version that segmented rappers by topic clusters of what they rap about, with fine enough details that you could take something like "drugs" and drill down or aggregate specific ones, and even have some sentiment data as well like pot good/X bad. It'd be fun to see who has the most unique general topics and topics only covered by one rapper. I can see how that might be biased in favor of total lifetime output, but perhaps not. My favorite dead rapper is Eyedea, his album output didn't exceed the 35k word minimum for the vocab list but his topic breadth was pretty wide. I've thought LLMs might be good enough to do that for a lot of songs now, if they don't have a panic attack over the language anyway, but I haven't experimented. Maybe someone else can be sniped into doing it~

▲ defrost a day ago | parent [-]

I too have always been curious about the volumetric comparison of rap lyrics about Edgar Allan Poe Vs those about the people in the front row.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8Z0VynTR84

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqCyTM1bF6Q

▲ Rendello a day ago | parent [-]

Aesop Rock's first on that graph, I think his track about going to the drive-through is pretty poetic:

https://genius.com/Aesop-rock-time-moves-differently-here-ly...

▲ defrost a day ago | parent [-]

Moving forward to the B's there are lyrics that are poetic, specific, expand the vocabulary breadth of rap and don't see much in the way of overlap:

  Brother boys, Yolŋu boys, all the way from Arnhem Land
  räwakpuy yindi djäl napurr dhuwal giritjinyaraw
  Yolŋu balanda buŋgul go
  dhumurr'yurra ŋanya marrtji go
  napurr ga djälthirr
  napurr dhu wiripukum walalaŋ maŋutji
  marr ga manapanmirr wiripu wiripu miṯtji go
  babu'yurrnha ŋanya marrtji go

▲ giancarlostoro a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Lil Wayne also has an insane amount of mixtapes and freestyles.

▲ giancarlostoro a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm surprised Twista isn't much higher, if you listen to his lyrics he's always busting out different words like a thesaurus (I think he's one who mentioned reading one as a kid or something?) but I guess this just means he's not released as many songs. I do like that MF Doom is listed as well, big respect to him, I never listened to him heavily.

One thing to note, you don't need every word on the planet to convey amazing lessons with lyrics, some of the more profound lyrics (I can't remember, but it certainly felt that way to me 15+ years ago) were by artists somewhere in the middle of your graph for me.

Just looked up Tech N9ne on there, really surprised he's in the middle. Immortal Technique more to the right with the list of people who really use an insane amount of words in their lyrics, not surprised honestly.

Edit: Just realized its the first 35,000 words... Man... this needs to do its best to get all of them. Unfortunately, there's songs by artists I can't find on ANY lyrics sites, so I fear this list will never be 100% but a close enough ballpark.

▲ defraudbah 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

yeah, no wonder cunninglinguist was pretty high in that list :)

▲ elestor 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

NF being there right at the back needs to be shown to the NF fans

▲ jihadjihad 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Blackalicious near the top of the pack checks out.

▲ yunwal a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Would love to see playboi carti on here.

▲ HPsquared 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

And "0 Cent" before June 1994 :)