Charting The Popularity Of Tech Through Hip-Hop Lyrics

Charting The Popularity Of Tech Through Hip-Hop Lyrics

Rap music is usually a pretty good marker of what’s trendy — or what’s going to be trendy in a few months. Maybe people were bragging about Sidekicks in the early aughts, but when did that drop off? RapGenius’s new RapStats feature shows you.

For the uninitiated, RapGenius is a massive database of lyrics from hip hop songs, so there’s plenty of material to go on, from Biggie Smalls to 2 Chainz and many lesser-knowns in between. Type in a word, and it will show you through the years how often the term has showed up in a songs. Separate terms by commas to see several words and phrases on the graph.
AllThingsD kicked off the party by charting social media (below), but we thought we’d take a look at some other trends:

Charting The Popularity Of Tech Through Hip-Hop Lyrics

Surprisingly, Friendster has almost no mentions at all. MySpace on the other hand peaked around 2007.

Charting The Popularity Of Tech Through Hip-Hop Lyrics

Rap had a 2-way Rennaissance between 1999 and 2003.

Charting The Popularity Of Tech Through Hip-Hop Lyrics

Rappers just don’t have love for Escalades like they used to.

Charting The Popularity Of Tech Through Hip-Hop Lyrics

Other consoles are still no match for Sega’s popularity among rappers. Thanks Biggie.


Frankly, I’m having way too much fun with this. It’s a pretty cool way to track trends, especially considering how deep RapGenius’s database goes. Feel free to track your own and post ’em below. [RapStats via AllThingsD]


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.