No way Das EFX is smarter than KRS-1, Rakim or Mos Def

[Philaflava]

http://rappers.mdaniels.com.s3-website- ... onaws.com/

35,000 words covers 3-5 studio albums and EPs. I included mixtapes if the artist was just short of the 35,000 words. Quite a few rappers don’t have enough official material to be included (e.g., Biggie, Kendrick Lamar). As a benchmark, I included data points for Shakespeare and Herman Melville, using the same approach (35,000 words across several plays for Shakespeare, first 35,000 of Moby Dick).

I used a research methodology called token analysis to determine each artist’s vocabulary. Each word is counted once, so pimps, pimp, pimping, and pimpin are four unique words. To avoid issues with apostrophes (e.g., pimpin’ vs. pimpin), they’re removed from the dataset. It still isn’t perfect. Hip hop is full of slang that is hard to transcribe (e.g., shorty vs. shawty), compound words (e.g., king shit), featured vocalists, and repetitive choruses.

It’s still directionally interesting. Of the 85 artists in the dataset, let’s take a look at who is on top.

[step one]

Its not interesting at all. Why would anyone even..?

[Philaflava]

What is the % of jibberish in Aesop Rocks lyrics?

[Spartan]

@ Just

[sleazy_j]

could've used some Bigg Jus.

it's KRS-ONE, not KRS-1

but, KRS and Mos use common vocabulary and Das Efx was name dropping household products and TV show references in their songs, so
obviously they'd have more "unique words" in their songs.

"Oh Finster Baby come to Papa Duke
A babaloo, ooh, a babaloo boogedy boo
I went from Gucci to Stussy, to fliggedy flam a groupie
To Zsa Zsa, to yibbedy-yabba dabba hoochie coochie
Tally ho I'll take my Stove Top instead of potatoes"

lots of unique vocab in there.


Rakim was definitely using some common man vernacular. i was surprised to hear him using slang in recent interviews, considering
most his most popular raps were void of too much slang.

in other words, people aren't looking at this list properly.

i don't think anything in that article said anything about being "smarter", either...

ctrl+F "smart" = no results.

Its not interesting at all. Why would anyone even..?

Red Bull threw some money his way, that's why. Where's your Red Bull check?

[Versive]

Interesting. I don't think it purports to say anything about who is smarter, just who uses a larger vocabulary in their verses. Beyond that, it's pretty evident why Das EFX would place higher than those mentioned. The researcher is taking the first 35,000 words an artist uses, right? Well, Das usually rapped in double time and/or to faster tempo beats. Hence it'd require less songs for them to go through 35,000 words than it would require for KRS or Rakim to do the same ... unless of course by "lyrics," the researcher means lines, but I doubt that because 35,000 lines seems like a lot. So, if it takes less songs and less verses and less lines to cover as many words, there is a greater likelihood that they'll be switching up their vocabulary.

Plus, Das EFX consists of two people.

I'm not trying to say that this study actually means anything ... just that I find it interesting.

[TheBigSleep]

Apparently only three artists have a larger lexicon than Melville: Aesop Rock, GZA, and Kool Keith. And it feels like I've always known that.

[Rhyme 4 Rhyme]

What a fuckin loser.

[AWAE]

needs a function = the amount of records sold dickhead

[B. Ware tha Siniq]

And here I thought "motorola, over the shoulder, boulder, and colder" were the only words Raekwon used in his raps.

[LilLeftBrain]

thought u-god only ever repeated 'hoo-hah & stay in your lane' for most of his career but here he is toppermost of the wu

[siLLy KiD]

What is the % of jibberish in Aesop Rocks lyrics?

[samdoom]

while an argument could be made that the more diverse an artist's vocabulary is, the smarter they are, I don't think that's what the chart was trying to show/prove. this was simply an exercise in showing who re-uses words more or less than other artists. krs and mos for instance, are both intelligent mcs that were very capable of making their points without using big words to get across larger concepts.

[Dids]

There's a kinda sad anti-intellectual bent in this thread and it seems like everybody's missing the point of this. It's not trying to say anything about hip-hop, it's just linguistic/statistical noodling for the sake of it. Not going to be interesting to everybody and you're sure as fuck not in the intended audience.

[Philaflava]

You're all dicks. Of course this isn't about IQ, but you clicked and now you're sucked in the vortex. DPB starts with the naming of the topics.

[step one]

Its not interesting at all. Why would anyone even..?

Red Bull threw some money his way, that's why. Where's your Red Bull check?

Someone getting paid to do something doesn't validate it. Why did Redbull think this would be a worthwhile endeavour.

[LilLeftBrain]

no real reason to be crabby about it

[drizzle]

this is cool factoid stuff but in of itself its kinda arbitrary and there is no control data anywhere either. a real interesting thing would be to correlate this against other stats - how does the size of word bank correlate to album sales, critical reviews, single performance, volume of output, etc. also, knowing things in 2014 is not the same as knowing things in 1580something - how does a word bank of a an average person stack up then to now, how does that compare vs an average rapper's word bank, etc

also, the actual validity of his data is not great... 'Each word is counted once, so pimps, pimp, pimping, and pimpin are four unique words'.. and this is taken from rapgenius which is notorious for misspelling and misquoting lyrics....

at least he's not trying to claim that one rapper is better than the next based on this kind of thing like that rap metrics guy

[Rachel Hobozal]

Tupac used 13 words his entire career and sold millions of records. He was the smartest one of all. In no particular order, those words were: Hennessey, enemies, adversaries, cemetery, thug, life, nigga, mama, passion, bury, me, leotard.

[the dead poet]

thought u-god only ever repeated 'hoo-hah & stay in your lane' for most of his career but here he is toppermost of the wu

"if you ain't my maaaaaain man........like rza.

as he looks over his shoulder to the mixing room.

[Kace]

Ka's and Roc Marciano's lyrics generally also are on par with Shakespeare's language and you don't need a study to notice that. Yet these two rappers are not on that list.

[Dids]

He thought Aesop Rock was too obscure and you're thinking he should have listed those guys?

[LilLeftBrain]

where pedestrian at,

[Odnet]

Das Efx is going to have a lot of false positive "unique words" since half of it is going to be shit with "-iggidy" added to it that the algorithm will identify as a unique word, especially since the lyric transcriptions will probably have it spelled differently every time (diggidy, diggedy, digidy, etc.)

[sleazy_j]

http://www.thefader.com/2014/05/09/inte ... ent-chart/

"I am not a data scientist at all. This would get like an F if you were at a data science school. This is a personal project I made it in sabbatical time to test my chops in data visualization. I think it’s worth existing on the Internet, if only to encourage discussion."

[Thun]

Pretty sure Das Efx have more formal post secondary education than the other three combined. Just saying.