More hard evidence that rap music is making you dumber than you already were…
KING TEE from StapleCrops Studios posited a great question to me the other afternoon. He asked me if I thought that popular rap music was less intelligent now then say, 15 years ago. From the onset when I look at songs like ‘Laffy Taffy’ and acts like the Black Eyed Peas I think that this is a no-brainer question, but how do I answer this query based on empirical knowledge without any of the emotional baggage?
Very simply. I will study two factors that lend themselves to intelligent discussion, word count and number of polysyllabic words used. I think we can all agree that the breadth of someone’s vocabulary is a good measure to their relative intelligence which in turn correlates to other areas like their understanding of the world around them. Why is intelligence important you might ask? cRappers have become the de facto statesmen for a generation of people (mostly coloreds). If you are to trust these people to express your issues wouldn’t you want someone that has the most knowledge to represent you? After this exercise is complete we will know who we should listen to if anyone at all.
Let’s try an example…
D4L – ‘Laffy Taffy’
word count = 392 (including ‘dis’ 6x and ‘dat’ 5x)
polysyllabic words (3+ sylable) = 4 (longest = motherfuckin’)BIG DADDY KANE – ‘Raw’
word count = 670
polysyllabic words (3+ sylable) = 22 (longest = tie: perpetrating, fascinating, entertaining)
O.K., that was pretty obvious from jumpstreet. Southern rap music doesn’t pretend to be any more elevated than slavespeak. Let’s go deeper into the rap music matrix to see who matches up when true lyricists are considered…
JAY-Z – ‘Can’t Knock The Hustle’
word count = 437 (barely more than ‘Laffy Taffy’)
polysyllabic words = 10 (longest = entertainment)NAS – ‘N.Y. State Of Mind’
word count = 730
polysyllabic words = 20 (longest = tie: composition, information, investments, equivalent)RAKIM ALLAH – ‘Microphone Fiend’
word count = 550
polysyllabic words = 40 (longest = hypochondriac)
Imagine for a moment if you will the amount of ideas that RAKIM would have conveyed if he had used as many words as NAS. It’s clearly evident the less that you know and express lyrically has an inverse relationship to your popularity. EMINEM might be the anomaly to this experiment, but I leave that for you kids to examine for yourselves.
you should do a count for a wanye song
yeah, I could, but I’m in St. Maarten.
Wow. I think Dallas Penn can now be considered the Bill James of hip hop.
o yeah my bad i forgot dont waste your time with that shit
i dont know why, but i have a lot of fun with this.
Personally i preferred the polysyllabic words per 1000 words format from the first syllables counting post. I believe word choice is much more important than word volume.
anyways, most of the song on Eminem’s first album, (if you were wondering) totaled around 600-650 words with 20-30 polysyllabics per, peaking with Just Dont Give a Fuck with 32 polysyllabics in 651 total. that’s 49.15/1000 (longest=Pathological), compare that to 72.72/1000 for Microphone Fiend. The winner is still clear.
Weezy is, predictably, all over the place. Just from the last album, he ranged from 13.33/1000 on Phone Home to 64.01/1000 on Playin with Fire (longest=OshKoshB’Gosh, Assassinate).
I think even Wayne’s syllabic inconsistency supports the general principle here. Just from listening to him it becomes clear that he puts a lot more thought into some songs than others.
ok, i know what yall are thinkin:
what about Wu Tang? Triumph has gotta be the most polysyllabic track of all time, right?
i believe so.
the entire song included 98 polysyllabic words on 1016 total words.
that’s 96.46/1000.
over 15% of Raekwon’s lyrics in that song are polysyllabic.
smartest rap group ever. period.
“It’s clearly evident the less that you know and express lyrically has an inverse relationship to your popularity.”
Real talk. Rap is like the unsolvable math problem nowadays, for instance you got cats like D4L 2.0 (soulja boy) murderin’ radio & ringtones with hot garbage (yah trick yah, is he serious???) while people who have shit to say like hmmm Joe Buddens barely get burn (not pump it up Joe, But Mood Muzik Joe) You can talk out ya ass to these youngin’s about how rap was and thats all they’ll say it “was”. Weezy goldberg got them thinkin’ he the 2nd or some shit when half the time you don’t know what the phuck he sayin’. Hopefully cats like Wale, Mickey Factz or Hiroller can change the direction of this shit but that’s just me.
“It’s only Entertainment…….Lately not so much”
this is the post that made me a fan back in 06
Yeh it is a good post, isn’t there some website around that does these comparisons and grades rappers? I forget the name
I thought you was on vacation…
“Investments” is only 3 syllables . . not 4.
Intelligence stay losing. Ignorance on the rise like these gas prices. Crap rappers have made dumb…cool.
How bout you do Papoose’s “ALPHABETICAL SLAUGHTER”? Nigga spits like 600 words and does 10 polysyllables in just the A’s alone.
I feel alot of anti-southern sentiment here: anyone wanna run your expiriment on andre/cee-lo/scarface/bun b vs. some diplomats bs?
i got another wildcard other than em: how bout 40 water?