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.

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Oh. Right.

The point I’m trying to make is that these two are on top of the rap game right now and this record is kind of a big deal, comparable to Ye and Hov’s Watch The Throne back in 2011. These two seem unstoppable right now. Drake got into a beef over alleged ghost writing, and came out on top after releasing one of the most quotable diss tracks in history. And Future, yeah maybe Russell Wilson is trying to be your baby’s daddy, but this year you had a #1 album and Russell did this.

Right now the album is projecting almost half a million first week sales, even though that week will only be five days long. If you’re claiming to run the game and then prove it, I’d say that’s worth a 10 point bump.

Check out What A Time To Be Alive on iTunes.

Oh… Okay then…

This is like when you come home and Kevin is sitting on your couch and you go “What up, Kev” and Kev’s like “Yo, I don’t know who finished the last of your chips”

Really, Kev? Cause I think you do know…

I was gonna eat those, Kev…

But do people ask Nicki this enough that she thought she needed a verse to address it? And if so, why the fuck would she care? Nicki, you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone here. How can you go on a “fuck-the-haters” themed verse when your first line implies that you care who they think you slept with?

-15 points to Nicki for caring what the haters think of her sex life.

-25 to Kevin. Stay out of my kitchen.

But, seriously…

On the night of the 26^th Drake was outside of Club Stadium in DC when he reportedly received word that his DJ, Future The Prince, was involved in some kind of altercation inside. Some reports have claimed that the DJ was jumped by Tyga’s crew, but so far these are just rumors. We’re still not sure what went down in that club, but what we do know is that upon hearing what had happened, Drake… Well, see for yourself:

While the prospect of violence from the man who wrote “Take Care” might seem laughable, this just shows that Drake is there for his people. Even if he has to leave a trail of dropped stacks in his wake. “Cause one of us goes in, and we all go through it” for real. +50 for Drake.

On that note though, -150 for the doorman. Bro, your whole job is based on being the biggest, scariest dude at the club and you just let Drake push past you. Not a good look.

But someone did bring it up recently, when Common was interviewed on VladTV.

In the clip Common admits that the whole thing was about his ex, Serena Williams, who had been seen with Drake around the time the two rappers started butting heads.

Look, Common, I’m not mad. Just disappointed.

We’ve all had girl problems but very most of us have the sense to not write diss tracks aimed at a dude she’s been seen around town with.

And you were 39 at the time, man. You should be beyond this bullshit by now. So when I give you -25, but don’t penalize Drake, just know that it’s because I’m holding you to a higher standard.