Nature publishes an analysis re the collaborative nature of rappers.
He finds that on average it takes a chain of just 2.9 people in the network to connect one rapper to another; that is, three degrees of separation. This compares with 2.5 people for the network of movie actors (popularized in the Kevin Bacon game ), 3.6 for company board directors, and 5.9 for collaborations between high-energy physicists.
The feuds and rivalries well known in the rap world make this an interesting assortativity (think prisoners’ dilemma) study.
Where the rap network differs from these others, however, is in a property called assortativity. This is a measure of how mixed the collaborations are between highly connected and less connected people. In assortative networks, well-connected individuals tend to prefer to make links with others similar to themselves. “This is a pattern we’ve seen in most social networks”, says Mark Newman, a physicist at the University of Michigan who has studied scientific collaboration networks.
Bottom line, the most connected rapper: Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr.
