Image via Pop Chart Lab
It's impossible to come to a
consensus on the best rapper of all-time, but this statistical ranking
may sway who you think is on top. Based on a study conducted by Matt Daniels, a data scientist in New York, Pop Chart Lab has created a print that ranks rappers by the size of their vocabulary, called The Hip-Hop Flow Chart.
Daniels' study was conducted by analyzing 100 rappers' first 35,000
lyrics, which averages out to the artists' first three to five albums or
EP's. AESOP Rock comes in first by a long haul at 7,392 words, over a thousand words more than in Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Jay Z, Busta Rhymes, Ludacris, and Childish Gambino stand in the middle, around the 4,000 mark, while DMX trails with a vocabulary of only 3,214 words.
Adapting the study into a print, Pop Chart Lab employed artists to
create colorful caricatures of the featured rappers. The result is the
best hip-hop print since the Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names. You can buy The Hip-Hop Flow Chart for $23 here. Check out a few blown-up images below, and peep the entire full-sized chart here.