Each year brings us a new list of words that, once hip or subcultural, signal their admission into the mainstream by entering the pages—print or online—of the Oxford English Dictionary or Merriam Webster’s.
Many of those come from the world of hip hop. The form is a veritable laboratory of linguistic innovation, spawning dozens of region-specific argots that mutate and evolve beyond the capacity of hip lexicographers to document. One data scientist, Matt Daniels, has made an interesting attempt, however, in a project he calls “The Largest Vocabulary in Hip Hop.