The Data Rich Rapper
This project draws on Franco Moretti’s concept of “distant reading,” the process of “understanding literature not by studying particular texts, but by aggregating and analyzing massive amounts of data.” While close reading relies on analysis about the apparent inner workings of a literary text, distant reading compiles data about many, many works.
The “Jay-Z dataset” raises the possibility of looking at a dozen works by a single artist. In short, metadata provides an added context to my exploration of Jay-Z’s body of work. The data provides more context about the rapper's lyrics and albums.
One of the main implications of the “Jay-Z dataset” concerns approaches to major authors in African American literary studies. Literary scholars regularly concentrate on major authors, and they tend to do so one major work at a time: Richard Wright’s Native Son or Toni Morrison’s Beloved, or a few canonical poems by Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks. The dataset raises the possibility of moving beyond the so-called masterpieces of major authors and instead concentrating on their productivity and output over an extended time period.
Take these findings pulled from our dataset:
- Between 1996 and 2013, Jay-Z produced 12 solo albums.
- Across his 12 solo albums, Jay and his producers use 276 samples.
- At 39%, Jay-Z’s most frequent samples come from hip hop music.
- Soul music, at 30%, constitutes his next most frequent source of samples.
- Jay-Z deploys over 500 similes across his 12 albums.
