The lyrics retrieved from Genius.com provide a rich look into the language used in mainstream music throughout the last sixty years. There is a lot to analyse, so the page is divided into three sections. The first section goes over the differences and similarities between genres. Next comes a section exposing the trends of each decade, and lastly, the reader is invited on a deep dive into the linguistic proficiency of the most successful artist in modern times.

Investigating each genre

For the text part, we have chosen the following genres to inspect:

pop, rock, rap, folk, blues, country, uk, funk and r&b

These genres were chosen as they have been popular through time, cover a large portion of the world of music and show exciting differences and trends worth looking into. Pop, in particular, is an interesting genre. It is defined as a genre of popular music (they are different, although often used interchangeably) that started developing in the mid-1950s. Back then, pop music encompassed rock and roll, and they were essentially synonymous until the ’70s, at which point pop changed to become more accessible to wider audiences (source: wikipedia).

Let’s look at what genres we listened to throughout the last six decades. The plot below shows the ratio between genres as a % of the total amount of genres. Note that not all genres are included, but only a pre-selected list of genres.

We can clearly see that over 50% of all music on the Billboard ‘Hot-100’ chart was pop, with rock starting out on second and R&B and blues coming in on third and fourth. In 1990 R&B would take over as second, but more notably, rap would become the third most represented genre on the list, rising from almost 0 the decade before. The popularity of rap would increase until it, in 2010, overtook pop music as the most represented genre on the ‘Hot-100’ chart. In 2020, we also see trap music overtake pop.

Now, let’s inspect the happiness of the different genres:

We can see that most genres tend to have the same sentiment. All genres of music we have identified fall between an average sentiment of 5.4 and 5.7, and as one would probably expect, rap and trap are at the lower end of that spectrum. However, all genres are still above the average sentiment of all the words in the Hedonometer data. The hedonometer score is assigned from a range of (1) sad to (9) happy. Many profanities fall in the range between 4 - 6, because of the uncertainty of the context they are used in.

Let’s take a closer look at the important words for each genre. We do this by calculating a term frequency for inverse document frequencies (TF-IDF). What is that? Basically, it measures how important and unique a word is to a document in a collection of documents (corpus). The TF-IDF score becomes larger when a word appears frequently in the document, and it becomes smaller when the word is common in the corpus, e.g. appears in many of the other documents. (for more, see: explainer notebook or wikipedia). TF-IDF is used instead of simply the term frequency because many words are common across the entire corpus, and will not show much, except the most commonly used words.

Using the words deemed important by the TF-IDF, we can create a representation of the scores with wordclouds:

Some interesting trends we can see:

Pop

The pop genre seems to be about love, heartbreak and partying typically. We see words such as broken, breaking, fear and return but also words such as promised and amor. And then, of course, there are the party words: chorus, party, fame etc.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	know	0.0100	chorus	0.00009
2.	love	0.0099	miscellaneous	0.00007
3.	oh	0.0077	broken	0.00006
4.	like	0.0077	party	0.00006
5.	got	0.0072	breaking	0.00006
6.	time	0.0070	breathe	0.00005
7.	go	0.0066	rainbow	0.00005
8.	one	0.0063	happen	0.00005
9.	na	0.0062	nigga	0.00005
10.	see	0.0062	spoken	0.00005

Folk

Folk music is often about cultural or national identities. The words seem to suggest some wasted opportunity, with words such as annihilation, squandered and pursuit valued highest.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	know	0.0085	annihilation	0.00031
2.	like	0.0079	squandered	0.00025
3.	time	0.0065	ragged	0.00022
4.	wa	0.0064	sunlit	0.00021
5.	love	0.0063	birch	0.00021
6.	one	0.0057	knowed	0.00021
7.	come	0.0056	canal	0.00021
8.	go	0.0055	suppertime	0.00018
9.	say	0.0052	pursuit	0.00018
10.	day	0.0052	bojangles	0.00018

Blues

Blues originates from the deep south of the United States. Important words are layla, yakka and enriched, although all the words seem to have the same importance. This could be explained by the low number of blues songs - only 149.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	know	0.0097	layla	0.00039
2.	oh	0.0096	yakka	0.00035
3.	love	0.0083	enriched	0.00035
4.	got	0.0082	flaying	0.00035
5.	baby	0.0082	goanna	0.00035
6.	like	0.0076	conveniency	0.00035
7.	yeah	0.0073	alluded	0.00035
8.	go	0.0069	pled	0.00035
9.	time	0.0068	seeped	0.00035
10.	na	0.0068	scroungy	0.00035

R&B

R&B stands for rhythm and blues. It encompasses a lot of genres, and today a lot of rap and electronic dance music is classified as R&B as well. The important words are mostly slang terms used in African American communities, which makes sense as it originated in black communities in the 1940s.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	know	0.0097	nigga	0.00024
2.	love	0.0089	shawty	0.00015
3.	oh	0.0083	shorty	0.00015
4.	baby	0.0080	wit	0.00013
5.	got	0.0079	hoe	0.00012
6.	yeah	0.0077	crib	0.00012
7.	like	0.0075	playa	0.00011
8.	na	0.0070	pussy	0.00011
9.	get	0.0067	booty	0.00010
10.	time	0.0066	dick	0.00009

Country

Country is a genre of music often associated with western cowboy music, living on a farm and driving tractors. The words deemed important reflect this, with hillbilly and tailgate ranking highest, followed by a bunch of other terms often associated with farming. It is definitely safe to say that the country genre lives up to the stereotype.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	know	0.0084	hillbilly	0.00021
2.	like	0.0082	tailgate	0.00021
3.	love	0.0078	tractor	0.00018
4.	got	0.0070	porch	0.00018
5.	time	0.0065	redneck	0.00016
6.	one	0.0062	floorboard	0.00013
7.	go	0.0061	hank	0.00013
8.	get	0.0059	gravel	0.00012
9.	wa	0.0059	bocephus	0.00012
10.	yeah	0.0055	southern	0.00012

Rock

Rock originated in the ’50s and ’60s and took the world by storm, and it spawned a myriad of sub-genres. Rock seems to be a mix of pop, country, and some other genres, as it contains much of the same words. The many variations of ‘break’ implies that hardships in life is a common topic.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	know	0.0092	broken	0.00007
2.	love	0.0078	breathe	0.00007
3.	like	0.0075	tailgate	0.00006
4.	got	0.0071	fear	0.00006
5.	time	0.0067	sailor	0.00006
6.	oh	0.0066	redneck	0.00005
7.	go	0.0063	breaking	0.00005
8.	get	0.0060	escape	0.00005
9.	one	0.0060	southern	0.00005
10.	say	0.0058	floorboard	0.00005

Rap

Rap is a music genre primarily developed by urban black communities in the United States. It has a certain vocal rhythm, almost more like a spoken song, compared to more traditional genres of music. The tone of rap is harsher than in other genres, with many derogatory names for women being a mainstay of the genre. Furthermore, often rappers are said to have beef with one another, which is reflected in their songs.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	like	0.0056	nigga	0.00065
2.	got	0.0055	hoe	0.00046
3.	know	0.0052	dawg	0.00037
4.	get	0.0051	rapper	0.00031
5.	yeah	0.0044	bitch	0.00028
6.	ai	0.0044	pussy	0.00027
7.	go	0.0042	dick	0.00027
8.	back	0.0038	opps	0.00024
9.	make	0.0038	beef	0.00023
10.	see	0.0038	wit	0.00022

Funk

Funk is a music genre that originated in the 1960s. The TF-IDF suggests that funky musicians simply love to funk it up, with top words being funk, funky and funkin.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	know	0.0096	looka	0.00042
2.	oh	0.0089	funk	0.00024
3.	love	0.0085	maceo	0.00022
4.	got	0.0085	funky	0.00018
5.	get	0.0080	funkin	0.00016
6.	yeah	0.0079	wit	0.00015
7.	baby	0.0076	jab	0.00012
8.	like	0.0073	aflame	0.00012
9.	na	0.0072	maganoo	0.00012
10.	time	0.0069	karat	0.00012

UK

UK, or “grime” as it is often called, originated in the 2000s. British communities primarily develop it, and as expected, the most characteristic words for the genre are British slang and ad-libs. Specifically, cah means because, blud means friend and paigon means opponent.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	know	0.0094	mum	0.00023
2.	love	0.0082	cah	0.00016
3.	oh	0.0074	greaze	0.00016
4.	like	0.0073	uk	0.00014
5.	got	0.0066	transmission	0.00014
6.	time	0.0064	arsehole	0.00013
7.	go	0.0062	blud	0.00012
8.	see	0.0057	paigons	0.00012
9.	never	0.0057	krishna	0.00012
10.	ca	0.0055	cuh	0.00011

Music through the decades

We now take a look at the music through the decades. We start by looking at the sentiment through the years.

We see much the same trend as with decades - higher sentiment values in the early decades than in the later. This is probably explained by the rise of rap and hip hop from the ’90s and onwards. Let’s also try to look at the sentiment more closely:

We can see much the same trend here as in the above plot. However, it is clear that there are spikes in sentiment, going both up and down. However, it is important to note that almost all songs are still above the average sentiment from labMT, which could indicate that generally, we just prefer to listen to happier music since all the songs we are investigating are only taken from the ‘Hot-100’ chart.

To look at the lyrics used through the years, we split our corpus by release year instead of by genre. Once again, we compute the TF-IDF for each decade, and that leaves us with the following wordclouds:

The words which according to the TF-IDF score define each decade are vastly different when dividing the decades according to the two rows in the above figure. The ’60s, ’70s and ’80s all contain words which are completely normal words which everyone might use in their everyday life. Some perhaps more expressive and expressive than ordinary speech, but still real words. Some quite romantic words like tenderly and gentleness are also used. The wordclouds of the ’10s and ’20s are the polar opposite to this. One has to search the clouds quite extensively to find words which appear in the dictionary. All the important words are ad-libs used for rhythm in rap songs and slang. The ’90s and ’00s mark the transition between the two extremes. It is evident that as rap emerged, calling out artist names became more common. Further description of the wordclouds can be seen below.

1960

The 1960s were quite revolutionary for music. Rock was becoming more evolved, and artists were beginning to release more albums than singles. Looking at the defining words of the decade, a lot of people seemed to enjoy partaking in the watusi dance. Furthermore, songs were affectionate, using words such as tenderly and fickle.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	love	0.0122	watusi	0.00011
2.	know	0.0103	tenderly	0.00009
3.	oh	0.0083	looka	0.00007
4.	go	0.0069	sighin	0.00007
5.	got	0.0069	hully	0.00006
6.	like	0.0068	rovin	0.00006
7.	come	0.0067	billow	0.00006
8.	one	0.0066	fickle	0.00005
9.	baby	0.0065	twine	0.00005
10.	time	0.0064	doggone	0.00005

1970

The 1970s are probably best known for the rise and popularity of disco. If you simply look at the TF-IDF scores of the lyrics, you might believe that nigger was the most defining word of the decade. However, five different songs in 1970 had the word appear in them (in mostly provoking context), and it does not appear in any other decade. Another interesting word is doggone, whose modern counterpart you might be more familiar with - damn.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	know	0.0099	nigger	0.00006
2.	love	0.0098	doggone	0.00005
3.	got	0.0079	gentleness	0.00005
4.	oh	0.0078	toad	0.00004
5.	like	0.0073	unkind	0.00004
6.	time	0.0071	salina	0.00004
7.	get	0.0065	thoughtful	0.00004
8.	come	0.0063	softness	0.00004
9.	go	0.0062	crowing	0.00004
10.	na	0.0061	marianne	0.00004

1980

The 1980s had the rise of electronic dance music and modern rock. Most of the important words from this decade appear to be quite normal at a glance. Apparently, musicians really liked jellybeans in the ’80s!

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	know	0.0100	glancing	0.00005
2.	love	0.0098	temperamental	0.00005
3.	time	0.0078	marketplace	0.00004
4.	got	0.0074	untried	0.00004
5.	oh	0.0072	jellybean	0.00004
6.	like	0.0072	sightless	0.00004
7.	one	0.0065	trouper	0.00004
8.	go	0.0064	outgrown	0.00004
9.	say	0.0063	frantic	0.00004
10.	get	0.0063	oho	0.00003

1990

The 1990s truly saw the rise in hip-hop/rap. Many of the words here are slang terms, used mainly in rap.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	know	0.0076	cristal	0.00009
2.	love	0.0066	quik	0.00008
3.	like	0.0064	dank	0.00008
4.	time	0.0060	phillie	0.00007
5.	got	0.0059	floss	0.00007
6.	get	0.0053	buckwild	0.00007
7.	make	0.0053	betta	0.00006
8.	see	0.0053	representin	0.00006
9.	na	0.0053	ballers	0.00006
10.	go	0.0052	rump	0.00006

2000

The 2000s were indeed a mixed year. All genres saw a healthy consumption, but particularly teen pop and rap got increased participation. This is the decade where slang truly started taking over the lyrics of the music we listen to with words such as swag, shorty and its variation shawty. Also some artists and producers names appear. For example, luda and cris and darkchild.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	know	0.0074	crunk	0.00013
2.	like	0.0069	luda	0.00013
3.	got	0.0063	shorty	0.00011
4.	get	0.0058	cris	0.00010
5.	go	0.0055	shawty	0.00010
6.	love	0.0054	swag	0.00009
7.	see	0.0053	darkchild	0.00008
8.	na	0.0052	konvict	0.00008
9.	yeah	0.0052	dro	0.00007
10.	one	0.0051	titty	0.00007

2010

The 2010s had increased popularity in a hushed style of vocal delivery (dubbed whisperpop) as well as a steep rise in traditional instruments: Ukuleles, banjos, mandolins and bongos from indie-rock bands. Most notably, however, is probably the growth of hip hop, dominating most charts. Ad-libs played a massive role in the ’10s, and we saw the introduction of social media sites such as Instagram to the vocabulary of the artists.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	like	0.0070	wraith	0.00028
2.	know	0.0066	skrrt	0.00027
3.	got	0.0063	ayy	0.00022
4.	yeah	0.0057	brrt	0.00019
5.	get	0.0056	instagram	0.00017
6.	go	0.0051	thot	0.00016
7.	na	0.0047	swag	0.00013
8.	love	0.0046	maybach	0.00013
9.	time	0.0045	hunnid	0.00012
10.	make	0.0044	bae	0.00012

2020

Although the 2020s are still young, we can see a clear trend in ad-libbing. The words getting the largest TF-IDF scores are ad-libs, and they have become a huge part of our daily listening. Through the lens of a grandparent the words understandably may seem like gibberish.

	Word	TF	Word	TFIDF
1.	like	0.0064	opp	0.00069
2.	got	0.0061	skrrt	0.00048
3.	know	0.0060	opps	0.00047
4.	yeah	0.0057	ayy	0.00035
5.	get	0.0055	brrt	0.00034
6.	ai	0.0047	baow	0.00033
7.	go	0.0047	grrah	0.00031
8.	wa	0.0045	wraith	0.00030
9.	ca	0.0042	draco	0.00030
10.	one	0.0042	hunnid	0.00029

We investigated some select words from these and made a dispersion plot to see how their use changed through the decades.

Let’s go through some of the words:
Swag: The popularity of swag happened in the ’00s and ended around the ’10s. Few people still use it today, but the amount has declined steeply.
Shawty: A popular term for a young woman. Prevalent in rap, hip-hop and r&b music.
Boogie and funky: Boogie was a popular genre of music at the end of the disco era of the ’70s. On the dispersion plot it appears as if funk and boogie had a short revival in the ’90s as well.
Darling and bitch: Two words often used to describe women, but with very different meanings. It is interesting to see how their popularity is almost the opposite, with darling being phased out as bitch is being phased in. In a sense they display the transition from old-school pop and soul to modern pop and rap.
Drug: Singing about drugs is a staple in rap music, and it is not surprising to see its popularity increase through the ’90s.
Skrrt: A popular ad-lib used in most rap/trap songs.
Nigga: Often used in rap music, which saw a steep increase in popularity from its inception in the ’90s, which is denoted as ‘the golden age of rap’ and has become a staple in most rap music.

Inspecting individual artists

41 highly influential artists by the number of songs on the Billboard ‘Hot-100’ chart are split over four genres in the tabs below. Each artist has an associated word cloud, created from their TF-IDF scores and a similarity score that indicates which other artists are most similar to the given artist, based on the lyrics in our corpus. The TF-IDF scores were calculated using all artists. Finally, the average sentiment of the artist is presented with a comparison of all artists and top artists.

One funny aspect of the word clouds is that most modern artists have their own name as one of the most significant words. This could be because they use tags in their songs, like DJ Khaled’s iconic “It’s DJ Khaled” to promote themselves. Another explanation could be that when artists collaborate on a song, they often mention each other by name. Since the entire song is attributed to the artist and not just the part they wrote/sang, these lyrics will also be part of their TF-IDF scores. Either way, it is a tendency which is not shared by the old artists. Perhaps, back in the day back in the day when the competition in the music industry was not as fierce and fewer collaborations took place, artists did not need to include their names in the lyrics to be remembered.

Let’s take a closer look at Four artists: Ariana Grande, Drake and Juice Wrld and The Beatles.

Ariana Grande

Ariana Grande is a pop singer who went from starring in a Nickelodeon tv series to topping the Billboard charts with her debut album Yours Truly in 2013. Since then, she has continued to top the charts with every new release and has won numerous awards from various outlets. Today, she has had 68 songs appear on the Billboard ‘Hot-100’ chart.

Her word cloud reflects her style of humming and vocalizing, with top words being mmm, woah, ayy and yee. Her sentiment is pretty much right in the middle of everyone.

The top similar artists are Justin Bieber, Chris Brown, The Weeknd, Drake and Rihanna. All of these have heavy pop and R&B connections, which is what Ariana Grande excels at.

Drake

Drake is one of the most famous musicians living today. He has had the highest amount of songs on the Billboard ‘Hot-100’ list, coming in at 253 songs, almost 100 more than the runner-up. He is most well known for his rap songs. He debuted with his mixtape Room for Improvement in 2006. In 2018, he released the hit album Scorpion, which had three Billboard ‘Hot-100’ number one singles: God’s plan, Nice for What and In My Feelings.

His word cloud appears to have pretty common words from the rap genre (according to the rap word cloud from earlier). The term Drizzy appears, which is a nickname that he often uses to refer to himself with.

The most similar artists to him are other rappers. Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Lil Baby, Future and Nicki Minaj are all highly respected rappers, and he has worked together with them in the past.

His sentiment is average compared to the other artists, although he is skewing a tiny bit to the lower side - a common trait amongst all rappers.

Juice Wrld

Juice Wrld was a rapper who pioneered the emo-rap and SoundCloud rap subgenres. In 2018 he released his hit single Lucid Dreams, which took the number two spot on Billboard’s ‘Hot-100’ chart. Juice Wrld has had 70 songs appear on the chart. He mainly collaborated with other rappers: Drake, Future and the trio of Lils: Lil Wayne, Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Baby. All prominent names in the rap industry.

Juice Wrld tended to sing about battling demons and doing all types of drugs, which is also reflected in his word cloud.

His sentiment is comparatively low, and his songs were often associated with turmoil, heartbreak and fragmented feelings.

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band formed in 1960. They are often regarded as the most influential band of all time, and played a huge role pop musics' recognition as a proper art form. Their sentiment is comparatively on the high end, and they share similarity with other famous musicians from the same time period: Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles.

Their defining words are classic English/British terms: knickers, joob, gloucester etc.

The Beatles has had 65 songs on the ‘Hot-100’ list, and were one of the first bands to experience the hyper-fan culture, with many calling the period of time they were active a period of beatlemania.

We invite you to go through the tabs and see if you can recognise some of the artists and their similar artists or most defining words.

Note: Artist clouds may not indicate the average word usage by an artist. The word clouds are most likely skewed towards what is mainstream, as it is far from all songs by an artist which reach the top 100.

Pop

Ariana Grande

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Justin Bieber	0.615
Chris Brown	0.604
The Weeknd	0.594
Drake	0.584
Rihanna	0.558

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 68

Beyoncé

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Jay-Z	0.617
Drake	0.594
Chris Brown	0.591
Kanye West	0.582
Lil Wayne	0.557

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 64

Billie Eilish

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Taylor Swift	0.432
Ariana Grande	0.417
Justin Bieber	0.414
The Weeknd	0.390
Demi Lovato	0.384

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 30

Britney Spears

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Justin Bieber	0.494
Chris Brown	0.471
Rihanna	0.457
Taylor Swift	0.457
Ariana Grande	0.455

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 34

Cher

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Sonny	0.726
Taylor Swift	0.558
Dionne Warwick	0.546
Elvis Presley	0.538
Stevie Wonder	0.522

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 50

Ed Sheeran

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Taylor Swift	0.575
Justin Bieber	0.526
Drake	0.512
Kanye West	0.490
The Weekend	0.490

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 48

Elton John

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Taylor Swift	0.528
George Michael	0.509
Keith Urban	0.483
Justin Bieber	0.481
Tim Mcgraw	0.479

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 64

Frank Sinatra

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Elvis Presley	0.442
Dionne Warwick	0.422
Taylor Swift	0.420
Stevie Wonder	0.401
Neil Diamond	0.400

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 39

Justin Bieber

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Ariana Grande	0.615
Taylor Swift	0.615
Chris Brown	0.610
The Weekend	0.606
Drake	0.599

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 97

Katy Perry

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Taylor Swift	0.462
Justin Bieber	0.447
Drake	0.424
Kanye West	0.424
Chris Brown	0.414

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 34

Madonna

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Taylor Swift	0.541
Justin Bieber	0.522
Stevie Wonder	0.508
Diana Ross	0.507
Aretha Franklin	0.498

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 53

Michael Jackson

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Aretha Franklin	0.494
Stevie Wonder	0.488
Justin Bieber	0.486
The Temptations	0.482
Diana Ross	0.473

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 47

Miley Cyrus

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Justin Bieber	0.517
Taylor Swift	0.510
Drake	0.479
The Weekend	0.476
Chris Brown	0.475

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 33

Taylor Swift

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Justin Bieber	0.615
Keith Urban	0.589
Kenny Chesney	0.578
Tim Mcgraw	0.578
Ed Sheeran	0.575

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 161

R&B

Aretha Franklin

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Marvin Gaye	0.593
Elvis Presley	0.567
Stevie Wonder	0.565
The Temptations	0.555
Diana Ross	0.549

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 68

Chris Brown

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Drake	0.722
Lil Wayne	0.704
Nicki Minaj	0.677
T-Pain	0.659
Kanye West	0.656

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 102

James Brown

Most similar artists	Similarity score
The Famous Flames	0.789
Aretha Franklin	0.459
Stevie Wonder	0.418
Wilson Pickett	0.417
The Temptations	0.409

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 69

Marvin Gaye

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Tammi Terrell	0.667
Aretha Franklin	0.593
Diana Ross	0.556
Stevie Wonder	0.528
The Four Tops	0.528

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 52

Prince

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Stevie Wonder	0.478
Aretha Franklin	0.477
Taylor Swift	0.468
Justin Bieber	0.459
The Temptations	0.444

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 27

Stevie Wonder

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Aretha Franklin	0.565
Taylor Swift	0.555
Dionne Warwick	0.540
Elvis Presley	0.539
The Temptations	0.538

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 65

The Weeknd

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Drake	0.661
Chris Brown	0.635
Kanye West	0.619
Justin Bieber	0.606
Ariana Grande	0.594

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 94

Rap

DJ Khaled

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Rick Ross	0.685
Lil Wayne	0.648
Drake	0.627
Chris Brown	0.601
Lil Baby	0.591

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 43

Drake

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Lil Wayne	0.784
Kanye West	0.753
Lil Baby	0.736
Future	0.725
Nicki Minaj	0.722

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 253

Eminem

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Drake	0.661
Lil Wayne	0.649
kanye West	0.633
Jay-Z	0.598
50 Cent	0.595

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 89

Future

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Lil Baby	0.764
Young Thug	0.754
Lil Uzi Vert	0.736
Drake	0.725
Gunna	0.719

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 126

J. Cole

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Drake	0.688
Kanye West	0.646
Lil Wayne	0.635
Jay-Z	0.603
Lil Baby	0.602

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 51

Jay-Z

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Kanye West	0.713
Drake	0.694
Lil Wayne	0.676
Rick Ross	0.636
Nicki Minaj	0.620

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 95

Juice Wrld

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Drake	0.646
Future	0.637
Lil Wayne	0.613
Lil Uzi Vert	0.609
Lil Baby	0.607

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 70

Kanye West

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Drake	0.753
Jay-Z	0.713
Lil Wayne	0.692
Big Sean	0.685
Chris Brown	0.656

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 132

Lil Baby

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Lil Durk	0.802
Gunna	0.780
Future	0.764
Meek Mill	0.748
Drake	0.736

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 97

Lil Durk

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Lil Baby	0.802
Polo G	0.710
Meek Mill	0.675
Drake	0.661
Youngnoy Never Broke Again	0.660

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 71

Lil Uzi Vert

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Future	0.736
Young Thug	0.714
Lil Baby	0.686
Gunna	0.674
Travis Scott	0.647

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 80

Lil Wayne

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Drake	0.784
Nicki Minaj	0.753
Rick Ross	0.708
Chris Brown	0.704
Kanye West	0.692

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 169

Nicki Minaj

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Lil Wayne	0.753
Drake	0.722
Chris Brown	0.677
Kanye West	0.647
Future	0.645

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 112

Snoop Dogg

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Dr. Dre	0.587
Nate Dogg	0.586
Lil Wayne	0.543
Drake	0.537
Pharrell Williams	0.534

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 50

Travis Scott

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Future	0.693
Young Thug	0.683
Drake	0.679
Lil Baby	0.672
Gunna	0.651

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 76

Young Thug

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Gunna	0.780
Future	0.754
Lil Baby	0.721
Lil Uzi Vert	0.714
Travis Scott	0.683

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 70

Youngboy Never Broke Again

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Lil Baby	0.692
Dababy	0.662
Polo G	0.661
Lil Durk	0.660
Drake	0.645

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 79

Rock

Elvis Presley

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Aretha Franklin	0.567
taylor Swift	0.558
Dionne Warwick	0.555
Stevie Wonder	0.539
Cher	0.538

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 89

Queen

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Aretha Franklin	0.401
Justin Bieber	0.393
Stevie Wonder	0.390
The Temptations	0.389
Bee Gees	0.382

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 22

The Beatles

Most similar artists	Similarity score
Aretha Franklin	0.516
Taylor Swift	0.488
Stevie Wonder	0.486
Elvis Presley	0.484
Ray Charles	0.484

Number of songs on 'Hot-100': 65