What is the Rap Research Lab?
We are a cross-functional team of radical archivists, artists, educators, narrative designers, software developers and researchers who use rap as an analytic tool for use in pedagogy, entertainment applications, art, and play. Through innovative web-based tools, and VR and AR visualizations we can engage and better understand popular and youth culture, explore questions of social justice, and facilitate empowerment through community data projects.
The Rap Almanac is the world’s largest, and ever-growing, Hiphop database, a research data archive that uses natural language processing analysis and associated data - such as artist name, song title, release date, geolocation, lyric content, sentiment analysis and rhyme pattern - from over 500,000 Hiphop songs from 1979 to the present day.