(AllHipHop News) Using Shakespeare’s reputation for using thousands of words in his work, designer, coder, and data scientist Matt Daniels decided to explore which rappers possessed the largest vocabulary.
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To make it fair, Daniels focused on the 85 artists’ first 35,000 lyrics. He then compared those calculations to the first 5,000 words of seven Shakespeare plays and the first 35,000 words of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
The results of Daniels’ analysis placed Aesop Rock at number one. The Wu-Tang Clan and its respective members controlled 6 spots in the top 25 with GZA coming in at number two. Kool Keith took number 3 while Canibus (4) and CunninLyguists (5) rounded out the top 5.
Some of the most recognizable names were near the bottom of the list. 2Pac was 68, Kanye West was 71, Lil Wayne was 72, and Drake was 83. DMX came in last.
When broken down by region the East Coast had the highest vocabulary level and the South had the lowest. Only 4 out of 17 southern artists in the dataset were above average, but southern representatives OutKast made the top 20 at 15.
To check out Matt Daniels’ full Hip Hop vocabulary analysis visit here.
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