Hip-Hop Has the Highest Average Vocabulary Among the Popular Genres of Music

Hip-Hop has the highest vocabulary among the eighth most popular genres. A research group called Musixmatch did a study comparing the average vocabulary sizes of popular genres. Among hip-hop was folk, rock, heavy metal, country, indie rock, pop and electronic. Hip-Hop has the highest average vocabulary size of 1,963 words with 478 words used per song and 94 new words per song. Coming in second place was heavy metal. The last two spots pop and electric coming in at seventh and eighth.

The list of most searched artists for each genre is used to represent the vocabulary for each category of music. Jay Z, Dr. Dre, Drake, Sean Combs, Eminem, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, The Notorious B.I.G. and Snoop Dogg as the first 10 entries. It's also interesting to point out that Nicki Minaj was included in the top 10 entries of pop but not hip-hop. 51 artists were considered for each genre and some genre bending artists—like Nicki Minaj Kanye West, Iggy Azalea,,etc.—appear in multiple genres.

In a previous study done by the same research group, hip-hop artists had dominated the overall vocabulary rankings. Eminem came in at the top spot, with 8,818 distinct words used in his 100 densest songs, followed by Jay Z at 6,899, 2Pac at 6,596 and Kanye West at 5,069. With dense verses in each song plus slang, it's no surprise that hip-hop has such a huge lead over other genres.