Explorative Visual Analysis of Rap Music

Detecting references and similarities in music lyrics can be a difficult task. Crowdsourced knowledge platforms such as Genius. can help in this process through user-annotated information about the artist and the song but fail to include visualizations to help users find similarities and structures on a higher and more abstract level. We propose a prototype to compute similarities between rap artists based on word embedding of their lyrics crawled from Genius. Furthermore, the artists and their lyrics can be analyzed using an explorative visualization system applying multiple visualization methods to support domain-specific tasks.

From roadman to royalties: Inter-representational value and the hypercapitalist impulses of grime

This paper explores how digital media can cause the representational value of rap artists to be transformed. Ubiquitous access to digital recording, production and distribution technologies grants rappers an unprecedented degree of representational autonomy, meaning they are able to integrate the street aesthetic into their lyrics and music videos, and thus create content that offers a more authentic representation of their (past) lives. Sidestepping the mainstream music industry, the digital enables these integrations and bolsters the hypercapitalist impulses of content creators. I illustrate these ideas through a case study of grime artist, Bugzy Malone, who uses his music to narrate his evolution from a life of criminality (selling drugs on the street; a ‘roadman’), to one in which his representational value is recognised by commercial brands who want to partner with him because of his street credibility (collecting ‘royalties’). Bugzy Malone’s commercial success is not predicated on a departure from his criminal past, but the deliberate foregrounding of it as a marker of authenticity. The representational autonomy provided by digital media can therefore enable artists to maximise the affective cachet of the once-criminal self.

Bridging and bounding Asian-ness in hip-hop : a content analysis of Asian hip-hop lyrics and media discourse

Asian and Asian American rap artists have been marginalized in mainstream American music industry and media for a long time. Searching for a public recognition of their works in a Black music genre, Asian artists during different time periods had to apply different strategies on describing their race in lyrics. Therefore, Asian-ness was also framed differently by journalists during different time period since they receive different messages from Asian rap artists. To find out how Asian rappers mark their racial identities, how media receive and present Asian artists' lyrical messages, as well as a correlation between them, the researcher applied framing theory and racial-aesthetic boundary model (Roy, 2004). This research started with examining three generations of rap artists who debuted in 1990s, 2000s and 2010s on how they applied four racialaesthetic boundary frames and the non-race frame. The results indicated significant differences when Asian rappers of different generations applied identity, appropriation and non-race frames. The researcher also analyzed the usage of the five frames applied by media about Asian-ness when the media refers to the three artists. The researcher then examined the correlation between artists' self-marked frames and media-marked frames. The results indicated a linear-like correlation for identity framing, which means messages under identity frames in lyrics were well perceived and presented by journalists, as well as possible exponential correlations for two negative racial-aesthetic frames, appropriation and segregation, which means messages under the two frames in lyrics were exaggeratedly perceived and presented by journalists. The results also showed that media would mention Asian-ness when cover and review Asian artists even they never mentioned their race in lyrics.

Detecting Text Reuse and Similarities between Artists in Rap Music through Visualization

Detecting references and similarities in music lyricscan be a difficult task. Crowdsourced knowledge platforms likeGenius can help in this process through user annotatedinformation about the artist and the song but fail to includevisualizations to help users finding similarities and structures ona higher and more abstract level. We propose a prototype todetect and visualize the similarity of rap artists based on theirlyrics and monolingual alignments of song lyrics. For this, weapply word and sentence embeddings to lyrics we crawled fromGenius.

In Brief

Racial disparities and discrimination in the job market, why white women vote for trump, and are present day rap artists speaking to and about their communities?

Assessing hip-hop discourse: Linguistic realness and styling

This study provides a corpus-linguistic take on hip-hop discourse (as represented in rap), relating to one of the most influential cultural mass movements to date. To this end, a custom-built corpus of lyrics by US-American rap artists (LYRAP) was compiled, containing performed hip-hop discourse over a 25-year period. This material is used to test the alignment of hip-hop discourse with African American English in terms of morphosyntax, and to determine the amount of styling present in the lyrics. In addition, a comparative perspective with pop lyrics (as represented in the LYPOP corpus) is established, and highly characteristic lexical and discourse features of hip-hop discourse are identified. The analyses suggest that “linguistic realness” (in terms of conveying a street-conscious identity) is created on multiple structural levels, but that different artists style their lyrics to various extents to achieve this realness, and that a complete congruence of African American English with hip-hop discourse cannot be traced.

“My Rap Is a Prayer but with a Razor in the Mouth”: Religious Themes in Russian Rap

The paper presents the analysis of religious themes in the lyrics of Russian rap artists. The songs of such musical groups and artists as “Kasta”, Detsl, FACE, Husky, Noize MC, “Sol’ Zemli”, “25/17” are considered. The article proves that rap in Russia has become a significant cultural phenomenon, and the lyrics of rap artists can be interpreted as poetry, inscribing it in the tradition of Russian literature. The article demonstrates that in Russian rap we can find such religious themes as God-seeking, anti-clericalism, criticism of religion as an institution, philippics against its individual representatives, a premonition of the coming Apocalypse, expressing a general sense of impending disaster. Musicians sensitively capture the atmosphere of the era and reflect it in their lyrics. Despite the fact that rap is a new form of art, in the world’s poetic tradition, dating back to the biblical texts, is reflected the works of Russian rap musicians, and at the same time it has a clear and sharp social character.