Profanity Explorer A comprehensive visualization of profanity in Rap! [ What's this? ] What is this?

Profanity Explorer lets you explore the usage of profanity in Rap!

You can explore the global trends that compiles profanity usage across all rappers

You can compare rappers across different facets of profanity How is it measured?

Rapalytics measures a total of 8 types of profanity: N-word, Sh*t, F*ck, A*s, Sexual, Homophobic, Misogynistic. Any word that does not belong to these 7 but is still a dirty word is put into the "miscellaneous" category.

Rapalytics uses a flag list of words for these classes. You can look at the full list here. Any word that matches these words is marked as a profane word under that category.

It is then measured as a simple percentage of the total words (number of profane words/total number of words). The same extends for individual categories as well. Coverage

Rapalytics has processed about 10,000 songs from over 150 artists between 1987-2013. The next update will expand to 25,000 songs.

Compare Rappers across Profanity types! [ What's this? ] This module lets you compare rappers along different lines of profanity

Some artists will be preloaded. You can load top artists and/or select your own artists and add them into the visualization

You can pick any of the profanity type to compare artists by clicking on the appropriate button

You can clear and start over

Add Remove [ or Click to bulk-add top artists ]

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(Click/tap for analytics)

Click to select profanity type Overview N-word F*ck Sh*t Misc Misogyny Homophobic A*s Sexual

Your device is just like me.. Awesome, but small! View on a larger screen or remove a few artists.. [ close ]

Age Under 35 35 + Un-highlight Clear viz

% profane words

Disclaimer: While featured verses are attributed to the corresponding featured artist, sometimes they get attributed to the main artist erroneously. For example, there is a small percentage of "n-words" incorrectly attributed to Eminem.

Take Home Facts.. Eminem's lyrics have strong homophobic language, but he has also expressed his support for marriage equality

Lil' Wayne and his love for all womanly body parts gives him a very high score on sexual profanity!

Nicki Minaj ironically has high misogynistic score but the word "b*tch" is used more casually and sometimes even positively to reference herself as a "bad b*tch"

Younger rappers have little or no usage of homophobic slurs more to come...... more to come...... [ Read more.. ]

Profanity timeline How has profanity in Rap evolved over time? [ What's this? ] The trends lets you look at how different types of profanity have varied over time in Rap. The time period is currently between 1987-2013

The visualization is a stream/stackgraph. You can see how much each type of profanity contributes to the overall profane words and how they have varied over time by looking at the thickness of the corresponding layer

The x-axis/horizontal line is the year and the y-axis/vertical line is the % of profane words

Click on a profanity type button to zoom in on it, toggle between stack/stream views and hover for breakdown of word counts!

Click to zoom in on the profanity type Overview N-word F*ck Sh*t Misc Misogyny Homophobic A*s Sexual

% profane words between 1987-2013 p.s - Hovering over the visualization while its in transition will mess it up. Refresh if that happens!

Stack Stream

Take Home Facts.. The rise in profanity in the 1990s coincides with the rise in Gangster Rap

The N-word is the most popular profane word accounting for almost 1% of the total words used in 2012

Homophobia has been declining from 2000's that co-incides with the decline in the percentage of Americans who believe homosexuality is morally wrong more to come...... [ Read more.. ]

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