via Wired
Being a rapper requires a certain level of bravado. But it’s hard to be badass with a name like Aubrey Graham. Not every hip-hop artist is as blessed as Kanye West, which is why most of them don pseudonyms for the sake of upping their swag.
Thing is, the hip-hop name game is a mess. There’s innumerable Lil Thises and a million Big Thats, with a few Slim Somethings thrown in for good measure. After a while, they all sort of blend into one blurry size-related adjective. Cue Pop Chart Lab. The prolific infographic producers have boiled it down for us, neatly mapping the moniker landscape into a manageable chart that looks a lot like a tangled family tree full of the offspring begotten from a house party where sizzurp was the only drink on hand.
The more than 1,000 rap figures are separated into overarching themes like Crime (Ghostface Killah), Alphanumeric (Juicy J), Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral (Yelawolf, Magnolia Shorty). The designers even break it down further into sub-categories like Audacious Misspellings (Xzibit) and Distasteful Qualities (Naughty by Nature). Naturally, there’s a wealth of artists who make use of the dollar bill sign, but there’s a disappointing lack of MCs who choose to utilize the cent symbol. It’s all semantics here, but studying the color-coded chart, it becomes clear that the rap game is nothing if not creative with nomenclature.
The Massive Map of Hip-Hop Monikers is a continuation of Pop Chart’s obsession with rappers’ names, and it’s their most ambitious yet. First there was the Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names, which boasted 282 monikers, then they worked their way up to 636 with the Magnificent Map of Rap Names. The Massive Map lives up to its name— at 6040 inches, this chart is a wall-sized reminder that there really is a difference between Lil’ Fizz and Lil’ Twist.
You can purchase the Massive Map of Hip-Hop Monikers for $90 US over at Pop Chart Lab.
