Eminem And Kanye West Put Hip-Hop Above Dylan For Vocabulary
Bob Dylan is revered in the music industry. Hailed as the original rock poet, Dylan has almost 40 albums in his back catalog, and his Never Ending Tour, which started in 1988, hit almost 2,700 shows in May of this year. Amazingly, a new study has shown that when it comes to the breadth of vocabulary used in their songwriting, Dylan is eclipsed by the likes of Eminem and Kanye West.
According to the Guardian, researchers Varun Jewalikar and Nishant Verma conducted research on behalf of Musicmatch. They found that Eminem used the widest vocabulary in his songs with a total of 8,818 unique words used in his 100 most “lyrically dense” songs. Dylan trailed some way behind with just 4,883 unique words. Kanye also scored higher than Dylan with 5,069 words. Jay-Z used 6,899 words, meaning that the hip-hop stars tended to use a wider vocabulary than rock musicians.
The Telegraph reports that bands like Queen and the Beatles failed to break the 2,000-word barrier, trailing a long way behind Eminem and Kanye. Of course, as with any form of research, the results have to be treated with caution. Eminem has released just eight albums, whilst Kanye has just six to his name. In order to level the playing field, just 100 songs were considered from the 93 best selling artists, a paltry number when you consider that Dylan has well over 4,000 songs in his back catalog.
The research fails to consider the output of some hugely prolific bands like Bruce Springsteen and the Beach Boys because they were not given permission to use their lyrics. Nonetheless, the findings are interesting, especially in the case of Kanye. The rapper was recently slammed by David Crosby, who said that Kanye “can’t write, sing, or play. At all.” Crosby described Kanye as “dumb as a post – he creates nothing.”
Arguably, the research is skewed by the inclusion of slang and swear words. The likes of Eminem and Kanye West are at a considerable advantage when these are taken into account. Dylan and the Beatles tended to write their lyrics in plain English, and they are from an era when slang and swear words were very rarely included in song lyrics.
The researchers argue that the inclusion of slang words and profanity is essential when considering the output of people like Eminem and Kanye because “in certain kinds of music, the slang is a very big part of the music and how people connect with it.”
Of course, the researchers also point out that the number of words used by the likes of Eminem, Kanye, and Dylan does not in any way provide a measure of artistic merit.
[Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images]
