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The state of music today is essentially a mixed bag of various rap-turned-pop tropes that have been distilled down through the charts. It doesn't take a musical genius to predict when the next guttural "Yeah!" will erupt from the production. Why is that, though? What about Lil' John yelling "Yeah!" brought the early 90s trend back into musical fashion?
Rap Genius, a music lyric site that combines Wikipedia, Urban Dictionary, and lyrics, wants to help solve that question. Rap Stats is Rap Genius' digital histogram of all things trending in music. It's a tool that helps track the popularity (and subsequent decline) of music trends from their first foray up through their taboo state, and into Top 40 fame. It tracks the frequency of words used in rap (although what's considered "rap" is arbitrary) from 1988 to today. Type in "twerk" and you'll find the term came into fruition the year Miley Cyrus was born.
The search tool doesn't go into much detail beyond the visual graph, but a curious mind can use it as a platform to back up their arguments when bickering over the history of crunk music (hint: it wasn't the Ying Yang Twinz who invented it). We did a few searches of the current trends in music today just to see how "original" these artists are with their content. The facts might surprise you. (Rap Genius)
Photo: via Rap Genius.
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