As we wait on Kendrick's response, let's see if we can leverage sentiment analysis to understand the tone of diss record lyrics and their influence on winning a beef. Sentiment analysis determines the emotional tone or sentiment expressed in a text by analyzing words and phrases and classifying them as positive, negative, or neutral. Social media monitoring, market research, and customer feedback analysis are a few business areas where sentiment analysis is used.
Despite the various artists who seem to be throwing lyrical jabs at Drake today, I've only included 1v1 Drake beefs for this study (Drake vs. Pusha T & Drake vs. Meek Mill), as I can attribute all the jabs in the song lyrics of these beefs to the respective artists.
The two beefs consist of the following songs:
Drake vs Pusha T
- The Story of Adidon (Pusha T)
- Exodus 23:1 (Pusha T)
- Infrared (Pusha T)
- Tuscan Leather (Drake)
Drake vs Meek Mill
- Wanna Know (Meek Mill)
- War Pain (Meek Mill)
- Charged Up (Drake)
- Back to Back (Drake)
Summer Sixteen (Drake)
The tone for the majority of the lyrical content in all the songs is classified as negative by the sentiment analyzer. 76% of the lyrics are classified as negative, while 24% are classified as positive.
Now let's look at negative and positive sentiment percentages for the individual artists.
Drake's diss records contain about 4.4% fewer negative-toned lyrics than the other rappers. Let's look at this ratio as it pertains to specific beefs that Drake has been involved in over the years, starting with the Pusha T beef.
Tuscan Leather, Drake's only official diss record in this beef, contains about 5.7% fewer negative lyrics than Pusha T's three diss records. According to a report by Rap Radar in 2019, Drake conceded that he had lost his feud with Pusha T. Was Drake's loss due to his lack of aggressiveness in Tuscan Leather or his lack of responses?
Pusha T was more aggressive and delivered more lyrics.
Now, let's look at the Drake vs. Meek Mill beef, where Drake created 3 songs to Meek Mill's 2.
Drake's Summer Sixteen, which was as negative in sentiment as Meek Mill's two songs in this beef). Meek Mill's lyrics contained about 9% more negative lyrics than Drake's. Overall, Drake was considered the winner of this beef, and the two rappers eventually made peace in 2018 when Drake brought Meek out on stage to perform at one of his shows in Boston.
Negative sentiment within diss track lyrics seems to have had less influence than lyric quantity when deciding a winner for these beefs. In both beefs, the rapper with more lyrics won despite their opponent's lyrical aggressiveness.
Drake already has two diss tracks aimed directly at Kendrick Lamar (Drop and Give Me 50 and Taylor Made). Kendrick will need to channel some of Pusha T's energy and deliver more lyrics and a fair amount of aggression to come out of this beef as the "Big Me" he claims to be.
Here's a word cloud of some of the most used words in the diss records.
