Critics of hip-hop music have long rallied against the genre's lyrics when it comes to explicitly referencing drugs and their usage, but a new study from Addictions.com shows that when it comes to artists penning songs that concern narcotics, rap isn't as big an offender as they might think.
The site scraped data from SongMeanings.com, combing through lyrics from over 1.41 million songs across all genres for their findings. The analysis revealed that country music features the most drug references, followed by jazz, pop, electronic and rock, while rap sits dead last.
"Out of eight categories, country leads the way with a 1.6 percent occurrence on average, followed closely by jazz and pop music," the study outlines. "Hip-hop actually falls in last place at less than 1.3 percent behind folk, challenging the assumption that all rappers are lyrical drug peddlers."
The study also found that when it comes to individual artists writing references, rappers reign supreme. The Game and Cypress Hill have made 125 and 124 references to marijuana in their music, respectively, while Too $hort tops titans such as Jay Z, Lil Wayne and Eminem in referencing cocaine, having worked 85 mentions of the drug into his music.
You can read the entire study here.
The site scraped data from SongMeanings.com, combing through lyrics from over 1.41 million songs across all genres for their findings. The analysis revealed that country music features the most drug references, followed by jazz, pop, electronic and rock, while rap sits dead last.
"Out of eight categories, country leads the way with a 1.6 percent occurrence on average, followed closely by jazz and pop music," the study outlines. "Hip-hop actually falls in last place at less than 1.3 percent behind folk, challenging the assumption that all rappers are lyrical drug peddlers."
The study also found that when it comes to individual artists writing references, rappers reign supreme. The Game and Cypress Hill have made 125 and 124 references to marijuana in their music, respectively, while Too $hort tops titans such as Jay Z, Lil Wayne and Eminem in referencing cocaine, having worked 85 mentions of the drug into his music.
You can read the entire study here.
