Music and Identity: How Rap Lyrics Reflect Changes in Socioeconomic Status

I conducted a lyrical analysis study of 2 songs by Kendrick Lamar, 2 songs by J.Cole, 2 songs by Nicki Minaj, and 2 songs by Rihanna to compare their lyrics before and after they got famous. The results reveal a lot about rap, hip-hop, and pop culture. Here's the shortened version.

Overview of the Study

Many modern rap and hip-hop artists often write and release songs with only a few common themes: drugs, girls, alcohol, money, and partying. However, it was not always this way. Rap and hip-hop artists from the 1990s explored themes of economic hardship, gang- related struggles, and racial inequalities. This paper seeks to track change over time to determine whether a rap/hip-hop artist’s values and lyrics change as they achieve higher levels of success and socioeconomic status through lyrical analysis of two rap/hip-hop artists and two pop artists before and after they had achieved significant levels of success.

Success is a rather subjective term but will be defined in this paper as significant if the artist has achieved more than one song in the “Top 10 Hits” section of the year-end chart, Billboard “Hot 100” chart. Billboard rankings are based on sales, radio airplay success, downloads, and internet exposure. Evaluating two artists from the genres of rap/hip-hop and pop, each artist has had many songs on Billboard’s “Hot 100.” Kendrick Lamar has had forty-six songs on the Hot 100, with eight of them being top ten hits and two of them topping the chart as number one hits. J. Cole follows Lamar as the second artist selected for the rap/hip-hop genre, with thirty-nine charted songs and four top ten hits. For the pop genre, Nicki Minaj is the first artist with ninety-nine charted songs with seventeen of them reaching within the top ten hits. Rihanna is the second artist selected for the pop genre, with sixty-one songs on the Hot 100, thirty-one of them being top ten hits and a whopping fourteen chart-toppers at number one hits.

Rap and Hip-Hop Culture: The Old to The New

The United States was the breeding ground for rap music with its low-income minority inner cities rampant with “poverty, police brutality, drug abuse, educational inequality, high dropout rates, and violence,” and yet it neglects to acknowledge its responsibility in the foundation and production of the genre. Inequalities in U.S. social and economic systems have traditionally targeted minorities such as people of color and/or people of low socioeconomic status. This leads to an increase in crime and violence, therefore transforming an entire community. Many early rappers, and specifically Tupac Shakur, wrote a lot of “unequal opportunity” creating “hopelessness, distrust, and early death” in his community. Shakur, an urban young black man who was murdered, went on to become a victim of the violence and distrust he rapped about. America’s role in urban violence has sparked a new revolution in music, but the debate over whether rap music is appealing because of the representation of “one’s reality,” or the allure of a “foreign lifestyle” remains prominent. Regardless of its appeal, however, rap and hip-hop have as a trend has an immense influence over economic, political, and social sectors.

Since the 1990s, there has been a decrease in themes of death, violence, social/political issues, and interpersonal hate/hostility, themes that were much more present in rap and hip-hop songs of the 1990s, supporting the hypothesis that artists may change their lyrical content as they achieve higher levels of success and socioeconomic status, or possibly supporting the “what sells” business model of major labels in the industry. However, this analysis does include the content of other popular genres of music, such as pop and rock music, that could be skewing the changes in content over time. To complement this study and to address this issue, a thematic lyrical analysis of popular Billboard songs during tough widespread social and economic conditions is included in the full version.

Choosing Genres

Rap/hip-hop and pop are the selected genres of analysis for two reasons:

1. Rap and hip-hop artists are more likely to come from a lower socioeconomic status than artists in other genres.

This means that their lyrics when they begin writing and producing music are more likely to be about economic hardship, poverty, drugs, gang-related crime, and racial inequality. However, many rap and hip-hop artists rap solely about money, drugs, exploiting women, and alcohol. The intent is to investigate whether the artists who begin rapping about social issues eventually transform into the rappers who rap almost exclusively about having money and the benefits that come with increased popularity and wealth. This will also bring about the question of whether these rappers “sell-out” to popular culture or not in the transformation and development of their lyricism over the course of their music careers.

2. Rap and hip-hop artists are less likely to buy their songs from songwriters than pop artists.

Because pop music is produced to appeal to the masses, many of the songs are bought from professional songwriters to ensure that they are relatable to a wide audience and to remove any personal scandals from the artist’s image. Rap and hip-hop artists, on the other hand, approach song-writing with the intent of making it “unapologetically direct and personal” to attract fans that may be struggling with similar issues as they are. Rap and hip-hop have also been combined into one encompassing genre for this paper because many rap and hip-hop elements, basic principles, and artists overlap each other. Therefore, rap/hip-hop and pop have been selected as the two genres because of their differences in lyrical content, their likeliness to “sell-out” to popular culture, and their likeliness of buying songs from songwriters.

Choosing Artists

Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Nicki Minaj, and Rihanna have been selected for a couple of common reasons:

Each artist generally “started from the bottom.” Even the pop artists were selected with this same baseline to make a more accurate comparison to the rap/hip-hop artists. Making sure that each of the artists “started from the bottom” at a lower socioeconomic status levels some of the playing fields in terms of what their song content may be about, promoting the relatability across the artists’ music.

Each artist also must have been active for at least 10 years with increasing recognition and must have achieved significant success, as defined above, on Billboard’s U.S. charts. Billboard’s “Hot 100” is used for all artists in this paper for consistency, though each artist has achieved varying levels of “success” on the chart. For a general baseline, the artist must have at least two songs that have charted within the top ten hits on Billboard’s Hot 100 to be considered “significantly successful” in this paper.

The rap/hip-hop genre’s artists are both males, as male artists dominate the genre. While there are female rappers, they either often borderline between rap/hip-hop and pop or they are no longer active. For the pop genre, both artists are female to counterbalance the two male artists used in the analysis of rap/hip-hop lyrics. Nicki Minaj, cited as the “queen of rap,” bounces between rap/hip-hop and pop music and was therefore selected for the pop genre.

Artist Biographies

Kendrick Lamar

Born and raised in the infamous Compton, California, Kendrick Lamar grew up around “precarious street activity.” However, rather than letting it harm his personal development, Lamar interpreted the violence and gang activity around him as an influence and muse for his music. Lamar was a good student in school and spent much of his time writing stories, poems, and lyrics. Though his family was “directly touched” by the street violence surrounding them, Lamar remained “thoughtful and soft-spoken,” took up the stage name K-Dot, and began performing as a rapper. He released his first mix-tape at age sixteen, eventually landing him a record deal with Top Dawg Entertainment in California. He built up his reputation by collaborating with other upcoming West Coast rappers and began using his own name in 2010. Lamar’s first full-length independent album, titled Section.80, gained him more recognition and led to his mentorship with “one of hip-hop’s most respected and influential producers,” Dr. Dre. Dr. Dre signed Lamar to his independent record label, Aftermath Entertainment, and Lamar’s career began to skyrocket.

J. Cole

J. Cole, on the other hand, is an East Coast rapper. Born in Germany and raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina in trailer parks, Cole’s family suffered many hardships regarding abuse and drugs, crumbled marriages, and the loss of houses. However, Cole remained passionate for music and taught himself about rapping and production. As a teenager, he took up many part-time jobs while he fine-tuned his production skills, and he moved to New York to attend St. John’s University after graduating high school. He graduated magna cum laude in 2007, the same year he released his debut mixtape titled The Come Up. In 2009, he released his second mix-tape, The Warm Up, and had tried to give it to Jay Z after waiting outside his studio for three hours. Jay Z rudely rejected the disc, but when one of Cole’s tracks from the mix-tape, “Lights Please,” caught the attention of other music producers, it was played for Jay Z and he was impressed with what he heard. Suddenly, Cole was signed to Roc Nation, Jay Z’ entertainment and record label. Subsequent album releases gained increasingly positive critic recognition and approval, eventually guiding Cole into achieving multiple top-charting albums. Recently, on top of continuing to release new music, Cole has founded his own record label dedicated to “releasing music by up-and-coming artists.”

Nicki Minaj

Nicki Minaj is not your average pop idol. Popularly known as the “Queen of Rap,” Minaj freely crosses between the genres of rap/hip-hop and pop music, establishing her identity and her presence in mainstream music. She was born Onika Tanya Maraj in Trinidad and Tobago and moved to Queens, New York at the age of five. Her father was a severe drug addict and often exhibited violent behaviors, such as setting fire to the family’s home in an attempt to kill Minaj’s mom. However, her life struggles did not inhibit her life—they fueled it. Starting at the age of twelve, Minaj began writing rap songs and attended LaGuardia High School of Music and Art for acting. She began taking up background singing for local New York City rappers and continued writing her own material. She was discovered by the CEO of the label Dirty Money, who found Minaj’s MySpace page and signed her to his label. This label deal led Minaj to Lil’ Wayne, where he collaborated with her on several mixtapes before becoming the first female to be signed to Lil’ Wayne’s label Young Money in 2009. Following this, Minaj’s albums caught wind and she gained popularity exponentially. She grew involved with multiple projects outside of her music as well, including being a judge on American Idol, voice acting and acting in movies, and participating in ads and endorsements for companies. Despite her activeness in other forms of entertainment, her albums continue to top the pop, rap, and R&B charts.

Rihanna

Rihanna, born Robyn Rihanna Fenty, was born in Barbados. Similar to Minaj, Rihanna’s father struggled with alcohol and crack cocaine addiction and her parents often suffered marital problems. She also endured “crippling headaches” for years during her childhood, which could be a result of the stress and conditions of her childhood. While she did not actively pursue music in her younger years, Rihanna did form a girl group at the age of fifteen with two classmates to escape her troubles at home. They scored an audition with Evan Rodgers, a music producer from the United States, and he was captivated by Rihanna’s talent. Within the year, Rihanna moved to Connecticut with Rodgers and his wife to work on a demo album. Rodgers secured her an audition with Def Jam Records in 2005, where Jay Z was the new president. After her audition, Jay Z was so impressed that he signed her on the spot. Eight months later, she released her first single, “Pon de Replay,” that climbed to number two on the Billboard singles chart. Since then, Rihanna has released a total of eight studio albums, two compilation albums, two remix albums, and seventy-one singles all while making the transformation from a “cute teen pop princess” to a “superstar and sex symbol.” She has also dabbled in movie-work doing voiceovers and acting, playing roles in movies such as Ocean’s 8, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and Battleship, as well as a role in season five of Bates Motel. Recently, Rihanna had also released her own successful line of women’s lingerie, labeled Savage X Fenty. Despite some controversial situations in her personal life and her partaking in other areas of entertainment, Rihanna’s musical success has won her 8 Grammy Awards and has made her the top-selling digital artist of all time.

Song Choices

Prior to song selection, an evaluation of each artist’s discography took place to determine which albums were critical albums prior to the artist’s success, and which modern post-success album is the most representative. For Kendrick Lamar, his first full-length studio album, Section.80, rather than any of his earlier mixtapes which tend to contain heavy sampling and appearances from other rappers, was selected based on the album’s content. His most recent album, DAMN., was selected based on its success in terms of the number of sales (1,300,000 worldwide and 1,002,000 in the U.S.) and worldwide certifications. J. Cole’s early album was also his first full-length studio album for the same reasoning, and J. Cole’s post-success album was selected based on the same criteria of the highest number of sales (1,240,000 in the U.S.) and worldwide certifications.

Nicki Minaj’s and Rihanna’s albums were selected in the same manner. Minaj’s first album, Pink Friday, released in 2010, was her first debut studio album. As Nicki Minaj’s album has been steadily declining in terms of sales, her second album, Queen (2018), was selected not because of its popularity but because of its current release. Rihanna’s first album, Music in the Sun (2005), like the other three artists, was also her first debut studio album. The comparative album selected for Rihanna was her 2010 release, Loud, with about 8,000,000 worldwide sales and about ten different certifications with varying ranks and recertifications.

Keeping things consistent, songs were picked based on their ranking in the Billboard “Hot 100.” For Lamar and J. Cole, their earlier songs pre-date their induction onto the Billboard chart. Lamar’s song “HiiiPoWeR” was released as the lead single and appears on his album Section.80 (2011), for which Metacritic was used to obtain a music critic’s album review that determined “HiiiPoWeR” as possibly the most important song on the album in terms of lyricism, presentation, and overall musical concepts. An identical process was performed to obtain J. Cole’s song “Who Dat,” dropped as a single prior to the release of his first full-length studio album Cole World: The Sideline Story (2011). “Who Dat” did also achieve a Billboard Hot 100 peak at number ninety-three in 2010. Lamar and J. Cole’s later singles, “HUMBLE.” and “No Role Modelz,” respectively, were selected based on their ranking. “HUMBLE.,” off Lamar’s 2017 album DAMN., peaked at number one on the Hot 100 on May 6th , 2017 as one of two of Lamar’s number one hits on the chart. J. Cole’s “No Role Modelz,” off his 2014 album 2014 Forest Hills Drive, peaked at number thirty-six on the chart on January 2nd , 2016. While not ranking nearly as high on the chart as Lamar’s single, “No Role Modelz” is J. Cole’s most popularly streamed song on Spotify, a popular international digital music service, with 535,606,504 streams per month.

Nicki Minaj’s and Rihanna’s songs were chosen similarly, though each of their songs had charted and the use of Metacritic was not necessary. “Moment 4 Life” was Minaj’s charting song from her debut album, peaking at number thirteen on March 19th, 2011. On her 2018 album Queen, her song “Chun-Li” peaked at number ten on April 28th, 2018. Rihanna’s debut single, “Pon de Replay,” from her very first album peaked at number two on July 30th, 2005. Her chart-topping single “Only Girl (In the World)” from her 2010 album Loud, reached number one on the Hot 100 on December 4th, 2010.

Lyrical Analysis

Lyrical analysis conducted on each of the artist’s songs was performed in three ways: the testing of word frequency in each song to see which terms appear the most through the use of word clouds, the evaluation and analysis of lyrical meanings, word-play, and word ambiguity to decipher each song’s deeper meaning through lyrical annotations, and a word analysis through a limited version of the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software. LIWC analyzes words for traditional variables such as the frequency of personal pronouns, social words, positive and negative emotions, and cognitive processes, as well as summary variables like analytical thinking, clout (social status, confidence, or leadership), authenticity, and emotional tone to output the percentage of analyzed words that fit each variable. All songs were categorized and analyzed in LIWC as “personal writing.”

Kendrick Lamar

An analysis of Kendrick Lamar’s “pre-success” song, “HiiiPoWeR,” reveals that his early music focuses heavily on themes of social justice. Lamar incorporates phrases such as “slave ship” and “my issue [poverty, violence, inequality, revolution, etc.] isn’t televised” to advocate for social equality and periodically references black civil rights and nationalist leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Huey Newton, Malcolm X, Bobby Seale, Fred Hampton, and Marcus Garvey. Lamar covers topics from slavery, the faults of the system, and the crack-era in black communities to the Illuminati and government conspiracy killings. Word cloud analysis for frequency shows that some of Lamar’s most repeated words are “slave,” “black,” “resist,” and “revolutionary.” LIWC analysis in Table 1 (see Appendix) reveals that 12.1% of words in this song are social words, authenticity is at 50.2 out of 100, and analytical thinking is at 65.5 out of 100.

Contrastingly, Lamar’s song “HUMBLE.” talks a lot about Lamar “be[ing] the greatest” and being able to buy “the world with my paystub.” He mentions “syrup sandwiches and crime allowances” as brief references to his pre-fame life, but the rest of the song focuses on sexual themes and telling his competition to “be humble” and “sit down” because they “do not amaze [him].” Yet he does mention his distaste for the media’s portrayal of women, an increasingly important social issue. The corresponding word cloud analysis determined that the most popular words included money-based words such as “Parmesan,” slang for money, “allowances,” “paystub,” and “Mercedes.” LIWC analysis in Table 1 shows that Lamar’s inclusion of social words decreased from 12.1% to only 4.7%, while negative emotions increased from 4.8% to 7.2%. His level of clout, or social status, confidence, or leadership in writing, decreased from 63.9 out of 100 to 21.1 out of 100. At the same time, analytical thinking jumped to 93 out of 100 and authenticity reached 99 out of 100.

J. Cole

J. Cole’s lyrical analysis for his song “Who Dat?” returned several interesting results. Themes in the song include sex and fame, with only minor references to his life prior to any fame and recognition. Phrases such as “I got that flame,” “heating up like May weather,” and “anything you can do I can do better” reflect Cole’s confidence in his newfound fame but do little to address social issues. He does state things like “I been through hell conditions wishing for air conditioning” and “the cloth from which we came me and them is not the same,” but the latter may imply that he grew up in different or harsher conditions than his rivals or be interpreted to mean that he has more grit than other rappers. Word cloud analysis shows the most frequent words to be “flame,” “Cole,” “world,” “chain,” and “want.” LIWC analysis in Table 2 concludes that social words make up 18.8% of all words while analytical thinking and authenticity is 16.8 out of 100 and 30.6 out of 100, respectively. Finally, clout is at 69.3 out of 100.

Lyrical analysis for “No Role Modelz” by J. Cole shows interesting trends. With themes of corruption in Hollywood and the downsides of fame and money, Cole reflects on how life in Hollywood isn’t as glamorous as he imagined it to be prior to fame. This theme leads him to include phrases such as “no role models to speak of” in regard to his childhood and talking about “a better [him] before [he] was a B-list celebrity callin’ bitches ‘bitches’ so heavily,” where he discusses his heightened disrespect for women as a result of indulging in fame and fortune. He also references social inequalities and issues such as the police coming fast in “white neighborhoods” and his dissatisfaction with “out-of-touch-with-reality” shallow women in Hollywood. Word cloud analysis reveals the most frequent words to be “fool,” “shallow,” “save,” “shame,” “reality,” and “regret.” LIWC analysis in Table 2 determines similar levels of social words at 17.2% of all words and a surprising increase in positive emotions, from 1.5% to 4.3%. However, analytical thinking, clout, and authenticity all decrease to 10.4, 41.5, and 5.3 out of 100, respectively.

Nicki Minaj

Analysis of Nicki Minaj’s early song “Moment 4 Life” reveals a combination of self-confidence and success and hope for the future of her career. She uses sentences such as “I am no longer trying to survive [in the face of oppression]” and “this night reminds me of everything they [the system of oppression] deprived me of” to describe how she is finally achieving success as a rapper. She credits her record label company, Young Money, for helping to “raise” her, but states that she is “still hood” and that “Hollywood couldn’t change [her].” Word cloud analysis lists her most frequent words as “moment,” “alive,” “wish,” “believe,” and “survive.” LIWC analysis in Table 3 places 6.6% of all words as social words, and 10.8% of words as “I” words, or words referencing herself. Cognitive processes, such as thinking, insight, causation, etc. account for 11.6% of all words. Authenticity rates are at 73.9 out of 100, but analytical thinking and clout are at 20.4 out of 100 and 21.5 out of 100.

“Chun-Li” by Nicki Minaj focuses largely on her achieved fame. Minaj frequently mentions her “Burberry trench,” “quarter milli [car] off the lot,” “Bentley tints,” and “Fendi prints,” pointing to her status and financial gains. Minaj also cites various powerful women in fictional games, such as Lara Croft from the game Tomb Raiders and Storm from X-Men. She frequently bashes her critics and states that she’s “in the top shit, box seats” to avoid drama and gossip. The major themes of this song are Minaj’s fame, her wealth, and the rejection of her critics. Word cloud frequency analysis shows that Minaj’s most frequent words are designers such as “Fendi,” “Bentley,” “Benz,” and “Burberry,” as well as “lifestyle,” “tints,” “prints,” and “bad.” LIWC analysis in Table 3 places “Chun-Li” at a similar rate for “I” words as “Moment 4 Life,” with 10.4% of all words being “I” words. There was a 3.6% increase in social words, and an overall increase in authenticity (75.6), clout (36.2), and analytical thinking (62.3). However, there was a decrease in cognitive processes from 11.6 to 5.1. Compared to her previous song, Minaj no longer appears to be humble in the face of Hollywood.

Rihanna

The lyrical analysis for Rihanna’s “Pon De Replay” returned little to no results the for ambiguity of terms and/or varying themes. The major theme of lifestyle/sociality overlooks the entire song, and the lyrics focus on dancing “’til the moon becomes the sun.” Originally written as a club song, Rihanna does a great job at delivering the pop and club-vibe the song was intended for. However, it leaves little for analysis, as is sometimes found with pop songs. Word cloud analysis determined the most frequent words to be “come,” “DJ,” “dancefloor,” “replay,” “music,” and “everybody.” LIWC analysis in Table 4 detected 13.2% of all words to be social words, as well as a high level of clout at 91.2 out of 100. Emotional tone was also fairly high at 48, and analytical thinking was at a surprising 79.7 out of 100. Authenticity was at 81.6 out of 100, but positive emotions were relatively low at 1.7% of words.

For Rihanna’s song “Only Girl (In the World),” the focus of female dominance, love, and sex take over. Asking her partner to “love [her] like [she’s] a hot ride” before stating she wants to “make [them] beg for it” reveals a strong tendency towards a theme that sells—sex. Word cloud analysis places “want,” “girl,” “world,” “love,” “feel,” “ride,” and “command” as some of the most frequently mentioned words, while LIWC analysis shows an increase to 10.6% of “I” words and 12.8% of cognitive processes. Analytical thinking saw a decrease to 48.8 out of 100, and clout decreased to 87.2 out of 100. However, authenticity increased to 89.3 and emotional tone went from 48 out of 100 up to 54.2 out of 100.

Conclusion

The analysis of Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole reveal some interesting trends in terms of social issues. Lamar’s lyrics across the two songs display a trend from widely discussing and advocating against social issues to rapping about one’s own fame and escapism from those same issues. J. Cole, on the other hand, began rapping about his fame and growing fortune before he began rapping about his dissatisfaction with the realities of Hollywood and a life of wealth and fame.

On the other hand, with Minaj being liminal between the genres of rap/hip-hop and pop music, she combines structural and thematic elements of both genres in her lyrics. Her trends in song themes support the thesis of a change in lyricism as a result of a change in socioeconomic status, with her first song talking about her goals and stating that she will remain humble before her second song talks largely about designer brands and her overarching success as the “Queen of Rap.”

Rihanna, as a pop artist, on the other hand, sang in the two selected songs solely about what sells: sex, love, dominance, and partying. Rihanna, unlike the other three artists in this comparative analysis, did not contribute to writing either of her songs. This could be a large part of the reason why Rihanna’s songs lack any depth and reference to social issues.

Rap/hip-hop music’s origins in inner-city, poor black communities spawn a lot of original content about personal and systematic issues. The change in values and themes as a result of fame could, in part, be due to the corporate aspect of music labels; they only want to produce what they know will sell and that includes similar themes to pop music (sex, love, drugs, partying, etc.) However, because rappers are largely still in charge of writing their own songs, the theory of corporate influence could also be refuted.

The limitations of this study and its analysis include a limited version of the LIWC software that omits several highly beneficial categories for this study. LIWC and word clouds also do not account for local words, slang, and word ambiguity that could help explain the significance of certain lines or phrases in each song of analysis. This study would also be more valid if the song sample size was larger than two songs per artist, as it is not representative of an artist’s entire discography. However, this baseline research does leave plenty of room, doors, directions open for further research on whether or not a rap/hip-hop artist’s values and lyrics and change as they achieve higher levels of success and socioeconomic status.

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