Tonight though, a rap album might actually take home Album of The Year. Kendrick Lamar’s unapologetically black To Pimp A Butterfly none the less. Some would say this is a big deal, since The National Academy Of Recording Arts And Sciences has a history of snubbing rap albums. Currently only Outkast’s Speakerbox/The Love Below and Lauryn’s Miseducation have taken home the grand prize. The only way they could be more disdainful would be if they held the Best Rap Album ceremony at the Red Lobster down the block from the theater.

But I digress. In honor of this we decided to take a look at the rap album category and break down the nominees lyrically. In this category we have:

• Kendrick – To Pimp A Butterfly
• Nicki Minaj – The Pinkprint
• J. Cole – 2014 Forest Hills Drive
• Dr. Dre – Compton
• Drake – If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late

While going through this breakdown we will be looking only at verse (no hooks), and omitting featured artists. Without further ado, here are our findings:

• Most Used Words – For this we’ve removed the obvious recurring words (“the,” “a,” “him/her,” “nigga,” etc) to get a better picture of what’s going on in these lyrics. Drake and Kendrick shared the same word, “Know,” with 64 and 71 uses respectively. Cole, dropped “Love” 49 times and Nicki used the related pair of “say” and “tell” 15 and 16 times. For Dre the most used word, with a count of 48, was “fuck.” Don’t ever change, Dre.
• Cursing – While Kendrick, Dre, Drake, and Cole averaged 46 uses of “fuck” and 33 uses of “shit,” Nicki only came in with 16  and 5 of the two curses respectively. This can probably be attributed to her history of radio friendly singles. Basically, everyone else said “fuck” more because they gave less fucks.
• Bitch Vs. Woman – The use of “bitch” in hip hop has been debated so long that most people have tuned it out by this point. We’re going to leave that argument up to Kanye and Taylor Swift’s brother and just bring you the facts. J. Cole’s Bitch-To-Woman ratio (BWR), which figures in the word “girl” as well, was 3.00. That means 3 uses of bitch to every use of woman. Nicki and Dre were in a similar state with BWRs of 3.25 and 3.33. Kendrick came in lower at 1.57, but it was Drake the stood out in this metric, with a remarkably low 0.13.
• Stated Blackness – Across Cole, Drake, Nicki, and Dre’s albums, use of the word “black” averaged only 4 instances per album. With 16 uses on TPAB, Kendrick’s total was 4.5 times that. Makes sense for an album about the modern black experience in America.
• What Happened To Gangsta Rap? – Of the five albums nominated, Kendrick’s was the only one on which any variation of the word “gang” appeared more than once, and there it only was used 5 times. References to guns were also low, averaging 3.4 uses per album. While there definitely has been a decline in gangsta rap in the post-Kanye era, we’d largely chalk this stat up to The Academy not being comfortable nominating a Vince Staples album.
• A Sad Year For Ass – The word ass only averaged 2.6 appearances across these albums. “Shameful… Just shameful…” mutters Sir Mix-A-Lot from somewhere in the distance.
• Total Vocab – When tallying up the total number of different word across each album we were unsurprised to find that Kendrick, with his ambitious content and complex rhyming, came in on top with nearly 1,983 different words. Cole came in a distant 2nd with 1,289 and Drake was hot on his heels at exactly 1,200. Nicki was a good deal below this at 836. Dre, with his simpler style more focused on intensity than lyricism, rounded out the bottom at 698.

Got questions or other lyrics you’d like to see analyzed? Give us a shout in the comments.

Costume 1: Dr. Dre

Dre was in the news a lot this year, not because he finally put out Detox but because he fucking CLEANED UP when Apple bought Beats By Dre.

This should be a pretty easy costume for most of you to put together last minute. You have the basic black tee or thermal, The beats that your parents already bought you for christmas last year, and the stack of fake money (If you can’t print/buy some try to tweet at Soulja Boy and maybe he’ll send some over). Bonus points if you can find a Chronic cassette tape to really put the outfit over the top. While this costume is easy and effective, be forewarned that if you’re being a fuckboy someone WILL try to jack your headphones. You may want to stick to your suburban house parties with this one.

Costume 2: Lil Wayne

Lil Wayne has slid back into the next this year with some notable collaborations and the impending release of Tha Carter V. Even though people have been rocking this costume since 2009, you can still wear it while remaining somewhat topical.

The degree of difficulty for this costume is a step higher than Dre, but you have the benefit of not getting robbed on your walk home. All you’ll need to be the dopest (read: only) Lil Wayne on the block is a Rasta/Dreads wig, some random colored sunglasses, a fake gold chain, a fitted, and a wife beater. This costume will give you plenty of opportunity to practice your lil wayne voice, try to skateboard, and explain to drunk girls that you’re not Bob Marley. This costume also gives you an automatic in to hook up with whichever thick white girl goes to the party dressed as Nicki Minaj. Bonus points if you bring a fake Carter V CD and drop it on the ground.

Costume 3: Young Thug

Don’t try. No matter what you do you won’t be able to pull off Young Thug. Young Thug can barely pull off Young Thug.

Costume 4: Trinidad James

This costume is slightly less topical than it was twelve months ago, but it is a thousand times more topical that it will be at this time next year. This might be your last chance to appear as Trinidad James. Don’t let it slip by! It’s pretty simple to put together as well. Here it is in 3 easy steps:

1. Gather all your worldly possessions

2. Buy one bucket of gold paint

3. Go to town on that shit.

Costume 5: Pusha T

This one is a little harder since King Push doesn’t have as recognizable a signature look as some of these other rappers. Braids and a snapback are pretty much all you can do. Fortunately there is a way to get around this and make it clear what your costume is: make sure every single conversation inevitably turns back to the fact that you used to sell dope. Every. Single. One.

Conversation about football? “Marshawn Lynch run that ball like I run the block”

Girl wants your number? “Shawty this my true number, cause the burner just for re-ups”

Looks like it’s gonna snow next week? “Snow is another word for cocaine… Which I used to sell”

Costume 6: Kanye West

Kanye is a recurring favorite every Halloween, but in the past year we’ve seen a different side of Kanye so it’s as fresh as ever. The bonus of this costume is that your girl gets to go as Kim (Spoiler alert: prepare to be disappointed). Here’s what you’ll need to make this costume work:

1. Leather clothes. Kanye’s been into leather a lot this year.

2. A goatee and close-cut hair.

3. A willingness to speak angrily and emphatically to complete strangers about a variety of topics for ten minutes non-stop

4. A 20-foot tall stage-mountain

This is non-negotiable

Note that you will lose points if you’re still trying to pull off a Kanye costume with just a backwards cap and stunna shades.

Hopefully this guide will help you turn an otherwise shitty Halloween into something memorable. Lastly, we would like to close with a message to our white fans:

Look guys, when your costume is finished and you look in the mirror there’s going to be something missing unless you go as Shady or Riff Raff. The costume might seem incomplete without some pigmentation, but I know what you’re thinking.

Don’t. Just don’t do it.

Frankly, I shouldn’t even have to tell you this. And if I hear one more person bring up Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder I am going to lose it.

• At the going price of $9.99 on iTunes, Dre could purchase 52 million copies of The Chronic: 2001, making it the best selling album of all time, and still have enough left over to buy 51 million copies of “Forgot About Dre” (at $1.29 apiece) to make it the best selling single of all time.

• US farmers produce roughly 26 million metric tons of sugar beets annually, or 9.6% of the global annual output. California beet farmers yield nearly 160 tonnes per hectare and the average price of irrigated farmland in California is $29,640 per hectare. This means that if Dre spent all of his Beats money on a new farming venture, there could be a 13% chance your salad is made with Beets By Dre.

• For the “I Need A Doctor” music video Dre let a film crew crash his Ferrari Modena. Judging by his reaction he actually kinda enjoyed it:
  Assuming a $250,000 price tag, Dre could total a Ferarri every day for the next 6.8 years if he wanted. Maybe a full seven if he took a break on federal holidays.

• Last May, Dr. Dre and Beats co-founder, Jimmy Iovine donated $70 million to the University of Southern California to establish a new undergraduate major for students with interest in the arts and entrepreneurship. USC honored Iovine with an Honorary Doctorate of Music. Dre however, while also present at the 2013 commencement, was not and still does not have any legitimate basis for calling himself “Dr.”  If that ever bothered him, Dre could afford to enroll in one of USC’s 126 Doctoral Programs… or all of them. He could first complete the 106 Undergraduate majors and 131 Masters  Degree programs as pre-requisites and would still have 90% of his Beats money intact.

• The cost of renting a 10 foot U Haul in Long Beach, CA and driving it to Nebraska City, NE is $1,465. The population of Compton CA is around 94,000. For less than 25% of his yearly income, Dre could literally move every single person straight outta Compton

To wrap this up: In the words of JT’s character from The Social Network “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Releasing Detox”