The image above (50 Cent and Jay-Z) are from Tahir Hemphill‘s “Hip-Hop Word Count” project. Using seven criteria, the software:
…estimates the education level needed to understand each rhyme as well as, rates the artistic sophistication employed through the metaphors, similes, cultural references, consonantal/vocalic alliteration and overall pattern of each rhyme. We calculate the final score by averaging the syntactic (readability measures) and semantic (artistic sophistication) scores of each rhyme. On a scale from 0 (illiterate) to 20 (post-graduate degree).
The result is tabulated into a form that looks like this:
Interestingly, President Obama’s energy policy speech ranked lower than a Jay-Z album.
