Aesop Rock has a lot of really neat phrases in his songs, but he doesn't really have any kind of sense for how to build any kind of intellectual or emotional narrative to give them some kind of a structure to hang on.
My man..Aesop Rock established himself as a competent storyteller early in his career with 'Lucy'.
Sorry, he's just an above average rapper to me. He's outstanding at one element of MCing (words), but he's not charismatic and his rapping technique is sloppy.[EDIT : the aesop hates funny because he's definitely smart, witty, and talented enough to embarrass a sizable portion of the rappers on that list if they went head to head in a rap battle. if he's not your style that fine, but people trying to say he's no good have no fucking taste or never listened to his work.
It's unique words used in their first 35,000 total words.K-rino has been rapping for 20 years and all he has is 4000? Hmmm....
In Apple headquarters not working on Detox.Where's Dr. Dre?
You know what? You're absolutely right..what an odd omission.I think the more egregious omission is MC Paul Barman.
Does larger vocabulary = better?
In Apple headquarters not working on Detox.
Does larger vocabulary = better?
Ah OK that explains it.It's unique words used in their first 35,000 total words.
Does a larger vocab translate into excellent lyricism or storytelling?
Not even a little. It doesn't really translate into anything other than "who is more likely to consult a thesaurus when writing their lyrics."
What does this really mean at the end of the day? In the grand scheme of things as far as lyricism, sonically, and content? Nothing much.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing. And to think, J. Cole went to "college"! My ass.
Going to college rarely translates to "sizeable increase in vocabulary". Likewise NOT going to college doesn't necessarily translate to "smaller vocabulary." If anything, matching these artists by who reads the most would match up much better than going by their educational achievements. A good 2/3 of the artists on this list have never gone to college some not even finishing high school.
I mean GZA barely finished Highschool, but GZA on many interviews has stated how much he loves reading and use to read while on the road during Wu-Tang tours.
I'm pretty comfortable with where DOOM, Outkast, The Roots, and Redman are.I think MF Doom got shafted a lil bit, He's high on the list but words that man uses are elaborate.
Am I blind or is Biggie missing?
Literary elites love to rep Shakespeare’s vocabulary: across his entire corpus, he uses 28,829 words, suggesting he knew over 100,000 words and arguably had the largest vocabulary, ever.
I decided to compare this data point against the most famous artists in hip hop. I used each artist’s first 35,000 lyrics. That way, prolific artists, such as Jay-Z, could be compared to newer artists, such as Drake.
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).
Read the link.
Are you taking requests?