We do not often compare the work of creatives who live in the distant past with more contemporary ones, which makes the project of New York City-based designer, coder and data scientist Matt Daniels an interesting one.
Inspired by how Shakespeare has been said to be the person with the largest vocabulary ever—he supposedly knew over 100,00 words, and has used 28,829 of them in his writings—Daniels decided to pit the Bard against 85 of the most famous hip hop artists.
To find out whose vocabulary is the most diverse, he analyzed the first 35,000 words from selected Shakespeare’s works and the first 35,000 lyrics from each of the hip hop rappers, and counted the number of unique words that each personality used.
The result is a surprising one. Hip hop artist Aesop Rock beats Shakespeare—who used 5,170 unique words—hands down by using a whooping 7,392 unique words in his first 35,000 lyrics.
Read more about this intriguing literary project here—do you agree with the methodology of Daniel’s research?
[via The Largest Vocabulary In Hip Hop]