The works of Kanye West and Bob Dylan might seem like complete opposites at first glance. But using corpus linguistics, we can draw comparisons between artists across eras and genres. Take a journey through the language that both artists use in the infographic below, which looks at Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) and Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited (1965).
Use This Infographic In Your Class
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Lesson Plan Inspiration
After presenting the infographic and discussing it with your ELLs, consider asking them to apply their new knowledge to this engaging follow-up activity.
Task
1. Students should choose one song from both Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited.
Kanye lyrics: http://www.killerhiphop.com/my-beautiful-dark-twisted-fantasy-lyrics/
Dylan lyrics: http://www.bobdylan.com/music/highway-61-revisited
2. Students will then compare the lyrics of these two songs by generating word clouds in Wordle.
Note to teachers with young learners: Profanities will most likely appear in the Kanye word clouds. While they will – in most cases – only show up in small doses, it is up to you to decide if this is an appropriate activity for your students.
Speaking & Critical Thinking Practice
Questions to ask your students about their word clouds:
1. What emotional “state” was each artist in at the time of writing his song? Was he happy? Sad? Scared? Confident? What could have been going on in his life at this time? Why do you think this?
2. How would you compare the lyrics of these two artists with those of your favorite band/singer? Think about the conclusions you’ve drawn from your own word clouds as well as those of your classmates.
Writing Challenge
Ask your students to re-write one of the songs based on the words in their word clouds – and the implied frequency of these words. Students can also imagine that Kanye is featuring Bob Dylan in one of his songs – e.g. “See Me Now” (ft. Bob Dylan). Students would then use both word clouds to draft verses for each artist.
If you have musically-inclined, outgoing students, give them the opportunity to sing and/or rap their song for the rest of the class! This is a great way to foster a fun learning environment and to lower introverted students’ affective filters – provided that you don’t force this latter bunch to sing or rap, of course.
What a waste of time! 30 years from now, Kanye will be a footnote. Dylan is a visionary, Kanye is mostly hype.
Hilarious! I love this… not only as a music fan, but as a graphic designer, it gives me ideas…
Obviously you may be a great graphic designer, but as a music fan you dont understand sh*t.
Here is the problem with this “infographic”: It makes Kanye West seem worthy of a comparison to Dylan: You don’t need a pseudo guage like this to see that Dylan’s “The winter time is coming/The windows are filled with frost/I went to tell everybody/But I could not get across/Well I wanna be your lover baby/I don’t wanna be your boss/Don’t say I never warned you/If your train gets lost” is great–while West’s “Fossil/fossil” couplet is banal shit. What is the use anyway of diagramming sentences and songs and artists like this?
Kanye is a hip hop genius people can’t deny what he bring to hip hop just because of the taylorgate or his ego issue.
Nobody cares about his ego. Simply DONT compare whatever talent he MAY have to the greatest poet of the 20th century. Dont be absurd.
This comparison is an insult to Bob and to all people intelligent enough to recognize the difference between real poetry with actual meaningful imagery and repetitive meaningless flat vulgarity parading as lyrics.
It’s not a very good comparison for an infograph, but nobodyy here has obviously listened to a Kanye West record the whole way through.
I agree. Yet some of us simply can’t take that much nonsense in one shot. Get real. KW lyrics are basic simple crap talk, have zero poetic and/or intellectual value. Show me his best example of good interesting poetry-lyrics from KW and I will pull a song out of the worst Dylan album (SP) that totally humbles the KW piece.
Self Portrait is basically a cover album, and a rather good one.
The worst Dylan album would be Knocked Out Loaded or Empire Burlesque 
why would anyone listen to his crap all the way through?
the people discrediting kanye west as an artist obviously are the same people that consider dogs playing poker as art. if you can’t quote and give honest criticism, you fulfill the old saying of it being like assholes, everyone has them and they stink
Read the reply above. It applies to you. KW MAY have some kind of talent, But surely NOT as a lyricist.
Cool to look at, and I definitely agree with the previous two comments. Have the people saying Kanye can’t be in any way compared to Dylan even given “My Twisted Dark Fantasy” a chance? Even if it may not be in your taste, if you picked apart the lyrics a bit more you’d realize that both these artists are poetic in their own rights. Keep in mind these are two completely different generations, 40 years apart, and both artists have revolutionized their genres in their own ways. The writer here isn’t saying that Kanye can be compared with what Dylan has done the past 40 years for music, because Dylan’s a legend, and Kanye has a LONG way to go to obtain that status. If people wouldn’t look at this so narrow minded they would see that both artists are lyrical geniuses!
YOU MUST BE JOKING !!! This is the CRAP you pretend to compare to DYLAN ????? This is not even proper phrasing. It is not english. It is nothing but random words and slurrs without any serious meaniing. So he got head and did some blo. WHO F….G CARES ?:
I Fantasized about this back in Chicago
mercy mercy me that mercy yalago thats me the first year that i blow
how you say broke in Spanish? me no hablo
me drown sorrow in that diablo
me found bravery in my bravado
Dj needs to listen to the models
you aint got no fucking Yeezy in your serados?! (you ain’t got no Yeezy nigga?)
stupid, But what the fuck do i know?
i’m just a Chi-town nigga with a Nas flow
and my bitch and that new bebe follow
so much head i woke up in sleepy hollow
NOW This:
Darkness at the break of noon (this is a reference to the novel darkness at noon by Kessler, read it),
Shadows even the silver spoon (I hope for your sake you know that means an unpredictable accident can happen even to the rich)
The hand made blade the child’s ballon (he means intentional or accidental)
Eclipses both the sun and moon (It can happen to the bright or not so bright)
To understand you know too soon (He means when you understand how malicious humankind can be, you will be very depressed, like after hearing a KW song, so dont),
There is no sense in trying (please dont – yet you do).
NOW REALLY:
Can these two things be compared ? I would say apples and oranges, but that would not apply here. More like dog sh*t and sturgeon caviar…. It can be the same color but the comparison stops there.
I would say that bob is a lot better and that there this is stopes to put they’d to people together. I know that they are both attest but they are from different times and a hole different stiyol all together.
Kanye is great when it comes to making beats or sampling tracks but lyrically he is on a 3rd grade rhyming scheme. You are never going to have literary scholars dissecting Kanye’s lyrics nor will he ever be nominated for a Pulitzer prize. Lyrically there is no comparison Dylan is infinitely more poetic. Dylan has been compared to the likes of Shakespeare and Whitman with regards to language, Kanye not so much.
I do not see the similarities in values expressed. I see the physical manifestations as possibly similar, but the spiritual understandings are diametrically opposed. Kanye invokes revulsion in me whereas Dylan invokes compassion and struggle for the common man. Kanye elicits understanding for himself as a black kid who made enough money to fulfill his dreams. All about him.
Too many compliments too ltilte space, thanks!