Mapping the vocabulary of rappers

NYC designer and programmer Matt Daniels has created an interactive map that charts 85 of the biggest names in hip hop, by the vocabulary used in their works. He used the first 35,000 words from the lyrics of each artist (which cover about 3-5 studio albums and EP's), based on data provided by Rap Genius.

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.

The Largest Vocabulary in Hip Hop | via