Hip Hop Deaths: Why 2015 Was a Bad Year

I’ve always wondered about the death rate of rappers and hip hop artist because of the dangerous lifestyle some of them promote. So, I decided to find out the major causes of death among this segment. Luckily, a data source was available that would allow me to dive deeper. The data that built this data visualization was based on some great data on Wikipedia. Please interact and have fun with the data visualization below.



&lt;a href=’http:&amp;#47;&amp;#47;www.absentdata.com’&gt;&lt;img alt=’Hip Hop Deaths by Numbers ‘ src=’https:&amp;#47;&amp;#47;public.tableau.com&amp;#47;static&amp;#47;images&amp;#47;Hi&amp;#47;HipHopDeath2015TheWorstYearforRappers&amp;#47;HipHopDeaths&amp;#47;1_rss.png’ style=’border: none’ /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;

The majority of the rappers who are in this data set succumbed to violence in the form of gang shootings or gun violence. Note that this data can be found at Wikipedia. There are certainly other artists that are absent from this list. So ,please don’t hesitate to add these in the comment section. This will help to keep the infographic can be updated.

How I Built This Data Visualization

I built this by scraping the data with Excel 2016 Power Query. I imported this data into the data model from an URL. Then the data was manipulated so that it was ready to be used for Tableau. The first visualization that I built was the lolly pop chart for Deadliest Age. This was made by using the Age dimension which was on the rows. Next, I added the sum of the number of records into one axis. I put number of records on the second axis and synchronized the charts. One axis was using circular shapes while the other was a bar graph. The bar graph was narrowed. This formed the lolly pop. Finally, I renamed number of records measure to number of deaths.

Cause of Death: The Cause of Death dimension was placed on the columns shelf. On the row shelf the number of deaths metric was placed. The measure was added to the color mark. The mark used was squares. Then the number of death measure was added to the color mark to create the viz.

Where they Died: The map was created by simply using the state of death on a dark map background. I used the empty circle mark to highlight multiple deaths in the same location. It was very difficult to see with a closed circle. I added Name, Cause of Death, and Age to the tool tip.

Death Year: The death year was simple with the dimension of year in the column shelf and the sum of number of deaths. Then the measure was placed on the color shelf. I chose the pie chart for this viz and change the border color to black.

Death States: This was made by adding states and the sum of number of deaths with the horizontal bar graph visualization. The color mark was used with the number of death measure. Also, the number of deaths was added to the label.

All these sheets were added to the dashboard with a black background . Finally I created a parameter in order to choose the names of rappers. I linked this to a simple calculated field. With this formula below:

IF [Choose a Name]=[Name] THEN [Name] ELSE NULL

END

Please don’t hesitate to comment below 🙂