Word(s)

January 21, 2019 3:57 AM

The Largest Vocabulary In Hip Hop (Updated): Some of the newer artists wield a smaller vocabulary comparatively, but this is not because hip hop has “dumbed down.” The genre has evolved; it has moved away from complex lyricism toward elements traditionally associated with pop music: repetitive song structure and singing. [Previously]
posted by chavenet (37 comments total)

Alright, so wordcount only gets you so far with examining artists. You could potentially judge originality by two metrics. The first would be which vocabulary is native to a specific artist, or their drift from a 'percieved' average rapper, and start to build out vocabulary classifiers. In lieu of unique or rare words, you could also put a first occurence dimension on words and topics and then understand the influence certain words had on other rappers.
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:01 AM on January 21, 2019

a) Actual rap about dictionaries, absolute shite, with the exception of this one. That one is by rapteach, which if I hadn't burned up my stupid once a week quota on FPP's would be one, no it's actually legit, somebody get on this.
b) Where is El-P? The previously missed him too. Like, do fake words not count?
c) Wacka Flocka says nobody wants to hear dictionary rap anyway.
posted by saysthis at 5:09 AM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'd be interested to see where Abdominal fits on this list.
posted by pipeski at 5:47 AM on January 21, 2019 [4 favorites]

Nice to see Busdriver added, esp after last year's album. I wonder where Milo would end up? He can be pretty darn discursive.
posted by humuhumu at 6:05 AM on January 21, 2019 [3 favorites]

I like the assertion that hip-hop hasn't been dumbed down, it's just starting to look like simpler forms of songwriting. If only we had a term for taking something complex and making it more simple so it's more palatable to the masses... :)

Personally, I like intricate flow with witty wordplay and lots of internal rhyme (like Jurassic 5, say). But that's not the only metric for what makes a song great. There's room for minimalist lyrics in my shuffle. I also like (despite his recent departure from this plane of reality) Kanye West's brand of so-stupid-it's-smart lines, like "The critics trying to blackball me forgot about two things: My black balls."
posted by skullhead at 7:06 AM on January 21, 2019 [11 favorites]

Before going into this I would've thought (with the exception of Aesop Rock) that I'd have equal favourites across the board but it appears most of my faves fall into the wider vocabulary group. I wonder how much of that is Spotify recommending "similar" artists and it and its listeners grouping those artists together.

Very interesting.

(Sidenote, "Malibu Ken" the Aesop Rock & Tobacco collab that came out last week is, though a bit slight, a good listen.)
posted by slimepuppy at 7:51 AM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

Jean Grae FTW! I also loves me some MF Doom and Flatbush Zombies.

The chart overlaying lyrical complexity across genres is completely unsurprising. There is only so much information one can convey in a song, and if you're splitting that information between music (in the sense of melody, harmony, motifs, etc.) and lyrics, you're either going to sacrifice complexity to make it work or sound like one of those insufferable neo-prog-rock bands.

That said, I'll take word-dense hip-hop with minimal singing over hybrid hip-pop any day of the week.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:21 AM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

I couldn't quite tell - is "nahmsayin,” and “ery’day examples of unique words that add to their word count? Yeah, I don't think so. Made up slang? Yes, that definitely counts. But drawl doesn't make unique words.

It also makes you wonder who will be the 'Robert Palmer' of rap, which of course can only come in after it's been dumbed down (I agree that it's kinds of pejorative, but it's also explicitly what JayZ says he's doing in the lyrics quoted in the article) and someone takes the easy route for increasing their unique word count. Robert Palmer - "Simply Irresistible" "Her methods are inscrutable - The proof is irrefutable"
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:36 AM on January 21, 2019

Yeah, E-40 still mops the floor with these mumbling chumps.
posted by East14thTaco at 9:15 AM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

Largest vocabulary? Seriously who cares. I love language and love words but lyricism is not the be all and end all of rap. To wit: Playboy Carti's Die Lit is an Epitome for Less is More
posted by jcruelty at 9:28 AM on January 21, 2019

No dictionary's necessary to use - Big words do nothin but confuse and lose.
posted by cashman at 9:30 AM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

It's not about big words but diversity of words. If a rapper were so inclined they could presumably game this the same way people game Scrabble/Words With Friends: a huge number of very short words.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:55 AM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

There's a certain point at which vocabulary size stops being a useful marker for lyrical skill. That bit where Jay-Z claims he totally could write lyrics like Talib Kweli always does make me laugh, though.
posted by praemunire at 10:00 AM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

>It's not about big words but diversity of words.

How do you think that idea plays into this concept, given its essential (basic) origin in hip hop?
posted by cashman at 10:02 AM on January 21, 2019

"Some of the newer artists wield a smaller vocabulary comparatively, but this is not because hip hop has “dumbed down.” The genre has evolved; it has moved away from complex lyricism toward elements traditionally associated with pop music: repetitive song structure and singing"

Umm, that's not "dumbed down"? I mean, sure, if you mean hip-hop as HIP HOP the totality of music/songwriting and rapping, but RAP... yes, that's dumbed down. Some of that, you should be able to forgive, because the lower ones are later, so they'll up their game a bit (one hopes).

It seems the lowest of my faves is 3900 (Run DMC), but most of my faves are in the upper half/tier above 5k.

Am I a rap snob? Yeah, I am. I try to give people chances, and I'm just an old curmudgeon cuz this fucking rappysingywithautotune bullshit has got to go. The worst autotune offenses are over, thank god, but I can still tell you motherfuckers can't sing worth shit. Marvin Gaye didn't need to use Autotune. Maybe try harder.

If your rap game was up a notch, I'd let it slide, but it's just jack of all trade generic beats repeated motifs that I got my beefs wit'
posted by symbioid at 10:23 AM on January 21, 2019

How do you think that idea plays into this concept, given its essential (basic) origin in hip hop?

What idea? I'm not making any claims, just explaining what the linked piece is measuring: diversity of words (number of unique words), not word complexity or size.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:28 AM on January 21, 2019

evolve /= improved
MF Doom don't need no hooks
Aesop just needs Kimya Dawson
posted by es_de_bah at 10:55 AM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

What idea?

So, what I posted wasn't my words. It's the words of Ra. He said that line, but if you know his body of work, it kind of goes against that saying. At least in some respects (he's right in the middle). So when I made that post, I was calling out to the idea vs the execution, for lack of a more elegant term. I also personally think that this whole discussion, as some have alluded to, is someone meaningless because like Eminem showed in "Rap God", or like others said when calling guys "lyrical miracle" rappers, just stringing together words is not skill in rap. So while some might take a phrase that's rarely heard and flip it and make it a daily word, others just churning out rap with random words doesn't mean a thing. Recontextualizing the primary flow of popular culture has always been a hallmark of rap. A cherished feature. So while genres can always evolve and place an emphasis on new things, to me this is still a concept that is focused on by people who are largely outside of hip hop, not those within it.
posted by cashman at 11:40 AM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

Is there any similar comparison of breadth of lyrics for other genres? I'd be curious where rock/pop artists fall, or country, etc.
posted by jzb at 12:44 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

The fact that we only seem to get these sort of articles and analysis about hip-hop and not, say, punk records (Bad Religion on top I'm guessing) or country songs (something beyond how many times someone says "USA" or "God") could just maybe be problematic.

You could easily take this at face value and read this as a breakdown of the lyrical gymnastics performed by people who are very much wordsmiths and an affirmation that rap has a complexity behind it that a lot of folks like to ignore. Or does that continued focus on hip-hop over other lyrical forms of music make this the textual analysis equivalent of "but he's so well-spoken!" instead?
posted by thecjm at 12:55 PM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

Is there any similar comparison of breadth of lyrics for other genres? I'd be curious where rock/pop artists fall, or country, etc.

There's a chart in the link that shows a comparative of unique words used for a few different music genres. Country has the least, then rock, and hip hop the most, virtually doubling that of country in their random selections at its furthest end.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:21 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

You could easily take this at face value and read this as a breakdown of the lyrical gymnastics performed by people who are very much wordsmiths and an affirmation that rap has a complexity behind it that a lot of folks like to ignore. Or does that continued focus on hip-hop over other lyrical forms of music make this the textual analysis equivalent of "but he's so well-spoken!" instead?

Maybe a third alternative is that hip hop contains a lot more lyrical content that is itself about the quality of the lyrical content, going all the way back to when Big Bank Hank bragged about rocking a vicious rhyme like he never did before. The best MC has been a perpetual topic of discussion, and thus it makes sense to try to look at that quantitatively.

In some heavy metal circles, there are discussions about the fastest songs; in certain punk circles, there are endless discussions about musical purity. These are not necessarily axes that make sense to judge hip hop on, because that's not the stated goal of hip hop.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 1:37 PM on January 21, 2019

The fact that we only seem to get these sort of articles and analysis about hip-hop and not, say, punk records (Bad Religion on top I'm guessing) or country songs

Country and rock have gotten to the point where they are self-policing, in that there are entire separate genres of music (alternative/college radio/indie rock and alternative/Americana respectively) so I don't think rap has quite gotten to the point where it has splintered. And I would dare say that both indie rock and alternative country exist not so they can be musically different (maybe sometime) but mostly lyrically more creative.

Maybe rap articles about lyrical complexity are predecessor to that split occurring. But we are still at a point where the industry and the big names in rap still admit that smaller, less $$ popular bands exist and are the artistic competition.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:48 PM on January 21, 2019

Lyrics (along with delivery) are what an MC has to offer. They are the tool of the trade. Acapellas are set to various beats all of the time, implying that the beat is a distinct entity. Given that, a focus on distinct word count as a comparative metric is so obvious as to be inevitable. There may certainly be a classist element to that metric (I went to high school with Aesop Rock, we had all the AP classes an aspiring Ivy Leaguer could want and the post-graduation acceptance rate to match) but to reduce it to "but he's so well-spoken" is pretty much ignoring the history of hip-hop criticism and theory which focuses heavily on lyrical dexterity without taking a Classic Western Literature approach. I mean, it is almost an axiom that successful hip-hop artists are well-spoken. They speak and they do it well. If they didn't, nobody would listen to them.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:38 PM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

Or does that continued focus on hip-hop over other lyrical forms of music make this the textual analysis equivalent of "but he's so well-spoken!" instead?

The best MC has been a perpetual topic of discussion, and thus it makes sense to try to look at that quantitatively.


I think there's some potentially constructive use in trying to better evaluate standards of merit in any genre, to understand how it works as a genre and to better appreciate the particular sets of techniques involved. This, however, only seems to vaguely point in that direction, being more an instance of putting ability of the technology before the implications for the music. Since we can measure it, we'll do so and then figure out a way to sell it after.

Word play is unquestionably important to the history of hip hop, but word play isn't the same as vocabulary. Take even that basic Kanye lyric quoted above, The critics trying to blackball me forgot about two things: My black balls. He draws out three or so different meanings for black ball within the line, crudely put, testicles, daring, and social rejection (often by secret ballot). The vocabulary as would be measured doesn't encompass the play in the use of the words and the variations in meaning that inform the song.

That, to my limited experience of his music, seems a common method for Kanye, drawing out the multivalence in the words and through that his experience of life. Things being both one thing and another simultaneously is central to the understanding of many of his songs. That isn't going to be measured by a vocab test directly, though that kind of play may also indirectly reflect a wider vocabulary as well.

The talk about pop songs though does suggest the author didn't fully think the implications of their claims through as it's hard not to read that as setting pop songs as a clear standard of not "dumbed down" music that hip hop now is reaching. Popular music in general, though not in an absolute sense by its attempted appeal to the largest possible audience is going to be less adventurous in many ways than music that appeals to the fringes of the culture.

Mass audience works, again in general, are in that way dumbed down by their appeal to the lowest common denominator. They are the status quo of art/entertainment. When something joins or becomes status quo it loses some of its challenge to the audience in its more ready acceptance. That doesn't mean its "bad" necessarily, but more constrained. Evaluation can help better explain, or at least suggest, different concepts of merit and how they work to challenge the status quo or provide their own paths to meaning. Vocab tests alone don't go very far in that direction, but aren't entirely without use in pointing towards areas of difference that might merit further exploration.
posted by gusottertrout at 3:02 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

That, to my limited experience of his music, seems a common method for Kanye, drawing out the multivalence in the words and through that his experience of life.

Lookin' smart like a London bloke,
Before he speak, his suit bespoke...

I guess that lyric probably increased his vocabulary rating ("bloke" and "bespoke", not to mention English use of "smart"), but that's not really the point, right?
posted by praemunire at 4:14 PM on January 21, 2019

Hip-hop is about a lot of things, but it isn't really about vocabularity or the breadth thereof. There was a period in the 90's-00's when every backpack rapper was trying to be more verbose than the next, and it hasn't held up very well at all. To me hip-hop is all about the flow, or the way the syllables are arranged for sound and articulated as a function of time that amounts to a highly pleasing effect that's elusive and hard to define but unquestionably exists for all of the best rappers out there. A better metric (though still point-missing) might be something like, say, which artists have the highest variance in flow (capable of switching it up and staying limber constantly), or which ones have established the most distinctive flow that others before them never used and others after them copied relentlessly. Still point missing because neither of those metrics capture whether the flow actually works and sits in a pocket that makes heads nod and/or brains explode trying to catch up with it, etc., but at least gets closer to the idea that hip-hop is primarily a music form with poetic elements, not a poetic form with musical elements. (Even poetry is more concerned with how the poem scans than the breadth of vocabularity used; a poet trying hard to show off their vocabularity is a clear sign of an amateur)

Not a perfect analogy, but it's kind of like people being interested with an analysis of which jazz drummers have the widest variety of drums in their drumkit or hit the most number of notes, when what really matters is whether that shit swings or not.
posted by naju at 7:15 PM on January 21, 2019 [11 favorites]

naju i was waiting for you to weigh in!
posted by jcruelty at 8:40 PM on January 21, 2019

Well put, naju.
posted by praemunire at 10:18 PM on January 21, 2019

A understandably subjective but interesting video from Vox getting into what naju above is talking about:

"Rapping, deconstructed: The best rhymers of all time"
posted by slimepuppy at 4:50 AM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Fourthing naju's take. I dabbled in backpack/nerdcore rap in a past life, and I didn't write anything that flowed until I realized it didn't matter how clever my wordplay was if it wasn't 100% rhythmically consonant. Usually this meant paring back a dense line or series of lines to get across the same meaning with half the syllables and a natural word rhythm. Occasionally a big vocabulary helps, but it's only one tool and not a critical one imho.

You can even write a hook that doesn't make any literal or figurative sense, but if it sounds real nice and is evocative or provocative, it'll work.
posted by johnny jenga at 8:45 AM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

I just noticed my comment uses the non-word "vocabularity" 3 times. I have no idea why, but it wasn't intentional!
posted by naju at 8:56 AM on January 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Should have included this in my previous comment: the quintessential example of the rapper-as-jazz-soloist I've heard is Pharoahe Monch's Intro to his album Internal Affairs.
posted by johnny jenga at 9:21 AM on January 22, 2019

In case it sounded like I was at odds with the naju's explanation, I didn't mean it to read that way. Flow is the thing that comes up most when people talk about great rappers and I couldn't possibly contradict that. I think my crude Kanye example might have sounded more limiting than I mean it to.

I didn't mean that was the only kind of wordplay, things like complicated internal rhyme schemes, slant rhymes, misdirection/direction change via metaphor or homonym/multi-definitional word use, and the like, as I understand it, all are used as a way to build flow and say something pointed within it. While those aren't the only things that matter, they seem integral to a lot of the music I most appreciate. I always took it as a musical form build on word use in their sound, meaning and cadence of delivery, but please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong though since I'd like to get a better grasp of the idea if I am off-base.

I fully admit my connection to the music can't possibly begin to match that of others, so I'm well aware my enjoyment will miss out on somethings that require greater expertise to appreciate. That's the case with all the arts, there are things one can't "get" unless you're more tuned in to the form as well as some things that only being tuned into the technique makes meaningful. The line between those is sometimes hard to parse.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:47 AM on January 22, 2019

but it's kind of like people being interested with an analysis of which jazz drummers have the widest variety of drums in their drumkit or hit the most number of notes, when what really matters is whether that shit swings or not.

Thank you for putting this in a good way, because I couldn't come up with good examples that weren't still inside baseballish.

For me it's beyond even flow, because at this point there are enough people with good flows that have meaningless lyrics, and it's not enough to just ride the beat and rhyme meaningless or overdone things together yet again.

Another thing to note is that this "unique words" metric penalizes referencing in hip hop, which is one of the best things about rap. It takes out of your control what you can and can't reference, or limits you to trying to reference something that adds to your count. You might be saying something someone else has said, but using it in a new and novel way to call out to unique concepts.

I feel like a good measure of hip hop is having all of it - the flow, the lyrics, but also the concepts. The concepts are the most important thing to me at this point, after having listened to rap for years now. Two guys can use the same words and one expresses something amazing, and the other's stuff is mundane.

So if I listen to a guy rhyming and hear concepts I've never heard in thousands of songs, that's a plus to me. You can use different words and say the same thing everybody else is saying, or that you yourself have said. That definitely isn't as exciting to me as a guy using everyday words to evoke concepts I hadn't thought about previously.

I am not a Jay-Z fan in the slightest, but his middle verse on Threatz is so much fun to me. "Grown man I put hands on you. I dig a hole in the desert and build the sands on you. Lay out blueprint plans on you. We ratpack *** - let Sam tap dance on you then - ah, Sinatra shot cha, god damn you". And on to the "Yall wish I was frontin', I George Bush the button, for the oil in your car lift up your hood **** run it - then lift up your whole hood like you got oil under it."

That's bananas in so many ways. The flow is there and the concepts are there, and almost none of the words are anything special in the least. Of course there could be the lyrics on top of it, with guys like Monch or Black Thought.
posted by cashman at 6:37 PM on January 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

If only we had a term for taking something complex and making it more simple so it's more palatable to the masses... :)

...democratizing?
posted by clavicle at 10:29 AM on January 23, 2019

I was up at ungodly hours thinking about this. Now I'm looking at my comments in the previous thread and I guess I just like to repeat the same thoughts because the first thing I started talking about in 2014 was basically concepts. Mentioning how the word "Biscuit" could have multiple meanings. So if Ludacris raps "Yo love is butta like a bisCUIT!" it's different than F.T. saying "When I aim the biscuit, don't get it confused, changed or twisted" is different than Redman saying he gave someone a 2 piece with a biscuit. I mean there's the obvious record and record and dove and dove, etc, but where you could probably pick a homophone page and program in the ones that have been that way for decades, vs biscuit/biscuit/biscuit.

Other thoughts - I wonder how you would do Money Gone? Just act like the words are being said normally? That song is so not normal, and one of the most innovative rap songs I ever heard.

Similarly, OneBeLo's verse on Lyrictricity. Some of that is even hard to write because it operates in two different meanings, all along there's a "current" going through his flow. That verse is also one of the most innovative I've ever heard.

All of this is layered on top of the massive amounts of poor transcribing on genius. I won't go into the details of the personal problems I now have with the site, but my main issue is that there are a bunch of people with lets just say not enough knowledge and respect of the culture, writing down things they don't understand and don't know about. There is a blatantly wrong line in the Lyrictricity lyrics and I'm not even going to correct it. But it's stuff like that, and this project, that just smack of attempts to monetize hip hop. And while nothing is more hip hop than trying to monetize hip hop, it just disturbs me.
posted by cashman at 3:33 PM on January 23, 2019 [1 favorite]