REUTERS Eminem performs on stage at the 2014 MTV Movie Awards in Los Angeles, California.
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He’s been lauded as a modern-day William Shakespeare on more than one occasion, so it should come as no surprise that Eminem has been named the artist with the biggest vocabulary in music.
A study, by Musixmatch, has shown that rappers Eminem, Jay Z and Kanye West have a more extensive vocabulary than folk legend- Bob Dylan.
Artists like Journey, Bruce Springsteen, The Doors, Def Leppard, The Beach Boys and Chicago, were excluded from the research, as they did not permit Musixmatch to use their lyrics.
Jay Z (6,899), Tupac Shakur (6,569) and Kanye West (5,069) were in second to fourth place respectively.
“The aim is to compare the vocabulary size of these musicians”, the duo write in the intro to the study.
This study only factored in the amount of unique words an artist said in a song, not the combinations or the actual message that may be contained within it. It isn’t surprising to see rappers at the top of the list as hip-hop is a word-heavy genre, however this does vindicate, in way, some of the best (Tupac, Eminem and Jay Z) as lyricists.
“Varun Jewalikar and Nishant Verma, who put the report together for the lyrics site Musixmatch, looked at 93 artists across 25 genres from pop to new age”, CNN reported. Dylan finally broke up the rap domination, with a modest 4,883 words, earning him fifth place as well as being credited as the artist with the most frequent use of new words, with a new word appearing every nine words on average.
“Given how articulate and descriptive his songs are, it is no wonder Bob Dylan ranks so highly”, the study says.
For all of the good, there are those who like to keep it very simple with their vocabulary.
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At the other end of the scale was Kenny G, a saxophone player known for his instrumental pieces, with a vocabulary of 809 words. Bruno Mars, the Beatles, and Spice Girls were found to be even further down.
