Rap is bigger than The Beatles? A New Study

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The folks at the University of London, who obviously have too much grant money and time on their hands, have come up with a nifty "computerized" study that states the impact of Rap music outweighs the rock music of the British Invasion movement of the early 60s (ie., bands like The Beatles, The Who, The Stones, etc.). The article can be found here:

https://www.yahoo.com/music/raps-impact-outweighs-influence-of-the-beatles-118315147221.html

I read the article a few times and scratched my head. The gist of how the study was conducted is as follows:

 The researchers analyzed 30-second snippets of roughly 17,000 songs from the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 charts from 1960 to 2010.
Computer programs were used to categorize each song based on musical properties, instrumentation used, chord patterns and other elements.
Naturally, one of my first thoughts was what musical properties and instrumentation go into a rap song, as opposed to, say, The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby", which features a classical string ensemble (an octet of strings)? It's valid because "Eleanor Rigby" was on the Billboard charts.

Another thought would be that the researchers did not take into account the borrowed music samples that serve as the basis for many rap songs. Zeppelin's "Kashmir" was not a single when the album Physical Graffiti was released, but it is basically the entire rap song "Come With Me" with Puff Daddy (P Diddy-dum-diddy-doo) basically muttering guttural inanities over the repeating "Kashmir" sample.

And a final thought regards the statement "The authors also rejected the assertion that today’s pop music is increasingly homogenized." To me, that assertion renders the study flawed beyond redemption, because it is a valid concern. Not to mention that they looked strictly at "Top 100" hits, which would eliminate hundreds of landmark albums from the process, as well as songs like "Stairway to Heaven", "Aqualung" and other important compositions that were never available as singles.

What are your thoughts, other than beating the Brit researchers over the head with Flavor Flav's alarm clock? 

Edited by The Dark Elf - May 08 2015 at 08:06

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