说唱歌手创作押韵作品比莎士比亚更游刃有余
The Oxford English Dictionary credits William Shakespeare with coining up to 2,000 words we use today. But linguists from Manchester have found that rappers, such as Eminem and London-based Akala, are actually more adept at creating lyrics and prose than the 16th century poet.
《牛津英语词典》把我们当代常用的2000个单词的诞生归功于莎士比亚。曼彻斯特的一些语言学家却发现痞子阿姆和伦敦音乐人Akala等说唱歌手在创作歌词、散文方面其实比这位16世纪诗人更游刃有余。
By studying rap lyrics, the experts said that traditional and complex rhyming comes so easy to hip-hop artists, the skill is almost 'second nature' to them.
The research was led by Louise Middleton, a third-year linguistics student at Manchester University.
Lyrics were taken from Eminen's 'Rap God' and Akala's 'Shakespeare', as well as tracks by Public Enemy.
Ms Middleton found that while Shakespeare and poet John Keats, as examples, may have had a better style when it came to rhyming couplets and more traditional verse, modern rappers excel at rearranging sentences to make them fit.
This includes creating so-called half rhymes, which are typically much harder to create because traditionalists view them as incorrect.
For example, in Akala's Shakespeare track, he raps: 'Its William back from the dead/But I rap bout gats [guns] and I'm black instead/ It's Shakespeare, reincarnated/Except I spit flows and strip hoes [prostitutes] naked.'
Reincarnated and naked aren't traditional rhyming couplets but sound similar enough for them to work for the purposes of the song.
Ms Middleton explained: 'The high vocabulary score and high prevalence of 'imperfect' half rhymes and unique sentence structure, over and above the use of more traditional and deliberate rhyming couplets, show that rap music proves the theory that [its] biggest stars find their success in their ability to rhyme subconsciously.
'My research found that more than 70 per cent of the time, artists used half-rhyme, such as 'hop-rock', rather than traditional rhymes like 'cat-mat'.
Experts said imperfect rhymes do not typically come naturally when writing, but the study said the skill is 'second nature' for popular rap artists.
'In Eminem's track 'Rap God', he boasts of his rhyme skill saying: 'But for me to rap like a computer must be in my genes' which proves the point made by my research - that rapping is outside his conscious control,' continued Ms Middleton.
'I think that hip-hop has the most sophisticated use of rhyme of any genre and when written down it reads just like poetry.