109 Cent
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By lanewinfield 2025-10-1717:2610 reply hi, i made this. thank you for posting.
unfortunately due to the government shutdown, the BLS inflation data for September 2025 is delayed from October 15 (as it normally is) until October 24[1], so please check back then to see if he is >109 Cent.
assuming future stability, the site will automatically update on the 15th of every month.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/bls/092025-cpi-reschedule-notice.htm
This is a powerful visual representation. I would suggest that the impact could be even stronger if you provided side-by-side images of 50 Cent, where the second is scaled up proportionately.
By brk 2025-10-1718:42 If you scroll across it displays multiples of the image representative to the inflation at the time point.
Quick self nerd snipe:
I think the area should be scaled proportionally, so the new width and height should be multiplied by sqrt(cents/50)
If we're going to be pedantic about it, his name hasn't changed, so really he should be shrinking proportionally rather than growing over time
By janderson215 2025-10-1922:08 Agreed. Op needs to add a toggle for Shrinkflation Mode.
By lanewinfield 2025-10-1718:59 that’s a good idea. in future versions, i might need to consider multiple renderings as different economists likely prefer alternative visualizations of 50’s monetary adjustments
By kemiller 2025-10-1723:16 You should extend it into the past. Hapenny hit hard.
By femiagbabiaka 2025-10-1717:36 You're doing a public service, thank you.
By earlyriser 2025-10-1717:405 reply Conversions to Nickelback, Poundz, Los Pesos, DJ Euro and Yen.
By dmurray 2025-10-1722:43 Since this goes back to 1995 I'd also like to request Franc Sinatra, Nick Gilder, and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.
By kayge 2025-10-1718:38 Don't forget Johnny Cash and Eddie Money :D
By at-fates-hands 2025-10-1718:373 reply Or to Robert Deniro's
By edbaskerville 2025-10-1720:31 Robert Dinero?
By Razengan 2025-10-185:42 Robert Dinar
Keepin It Riyal
By sellmesoap 2025-10-1820:021 reply Buck sixty five
By W4nn4B_h4x0r 2025-10-216:10 There's also Rupee [1]
By analog31 2025-10-1815:29 Also Dimebag Darrell
By jimt1234 2025-10-184:54 Cash Money Millionaires!
By rubyfan 2025-10-1723:23 to Stanley Nickels and Schrute Bucks
By b112 2025-10-189:50 It would be even funnier with exceedingly long fractionals.
EG, 109.453452 cent or 109 113363/250000 or some such.
By petermcneeley 2025-10-1814:452 reply I think the big mac index is far more accurate gauge of inflation than the B(L)S numbers published by the government.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/apr/how-big-m...
By zeroonetwothree 2025-10-1815:21 Unless you primarily spend your money on Big Macs (in which case you have bigger problems) I don’t see how that’s true.
By huhtenberg 2025-10-1815:311 reply By the same metric, but using Arizona Iced Tea, there was no inflation for ages.
By petermcneeley 2025-10-1816:162 reply I dont mean to contradict myself but big mac index also doesnt show the true inflation either. This is because it should be easier to make a big make in 2025 than in 1995 due to automation.
By kristianp 2025-10-198:11 Have big macs shrunken over time? They never seemed very large.
By huhtenberg 2025-10-1818:56 ... and the need for actual beef :)
Love it. I think there's an off-by-one calculating the images at the top. (100-cent gives a single pixel slice of the third image.)
I think they are rounding a float for the number display and not rounding for the image as you can see different sized image segments for the months where the number remains at 100 cents. You could still be correct, I have no way of verifying.
By tempestn 2025-10-1818:21 Ah, yeah, you're probably right.
Curious how you set it up. Do you have to manually update it when inflation data comes out, or is it automatic?
By lanewinfield 2025-10-1717:55 it's on a scheduled workflow with github actions that rebuilds the site on the 15th, 30 minutes after the data is released.
cron: '0 13 15 * *'
By triwats 2025-10-1811:04 This is brilliant
By jerf 2025-10-1717:49 1. Go to, let's say, a video like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qm8PH4xAss [1] Start it playing.
2. Copy and paste this into your browser location bar: javascript:void(document.getElementsByTagName("video")[0].playbackRate = 50/prompt("Inflation-adjusted 50 Cent value:"))
3. Enter the inflation-adjusted 50 Cent value, which as we are talking about this today, is 109.
Et voila, inflation-adjusted 50 Cent music, and anyone finding this later can adjust it to their current inflation-adjusted value.
I believe there are limits on how slow the browsers will playback video. This code is not guaranteed to work past any possible hyperinflations or massive deflations that may occur in the future.
If you're curious how that may sound with a more careful job done then the browsers will do with stretching, consider Beethoven's 9th symphony stretched to 24 hours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSJ9Bkhb1Q4&list=PLMEcbs3sHQ... Some of you may well legitimately love this. Obviously the frequency profile of doing this to a 50 Cent piece will be quite different but it at least gives the idea.
[1]: It is sheer coincidence that this video ID ends in "Ass". This is "50 Cent - In Da Club (Official Music Video)" for those wondering.
I love it. If you track your mouse over the graph, the image of 50 Cent expands with inflation.
It reminds me of another great interactive rapper graph: "rappers, sorted by the size of their vocabulary":
Using the first 35,000 words is a bit unfair for a rapper such as Lil Wayne who's been releasing work since he was 14.
Also I wonder if this is including proper nouns and other references. (I'd think it should, but it's hard to account for the fact that referencing seven different Chris's would be counted as one token used seven times. Similarly, many words have many meanings, and those are all being lumped together as well, so no accounting here can probably ever be perfect).
If you had all the lyrics for all the rappers I think I'd - aggregate word counts - combine variations - remove most commonly used words in each language (I, I'm, You, You're, etc)
Then see who came out ahead. You shouldn't get penalized for releasing more.
You could probably do a bunch of cool analysis with that data.
edit: Oh no, there's actually a Genius API isn't there. No no no no. I have no time!
The original author was pretty clear about the limitations of his work. I certainly would like to see an updated version, so I'm glad you got nerd sniped and not me. I look forward to see your super accurate updated version in a few months ;)
I've wanted to see a version that segmented rappers by topic clusters of what they rap about, with fine enough details that you could take something like "drugs" and drill down or aggregate specific ones, and even have some sentiment data as well like pot good/X bad. It'd be fun to see who has the most unique general topics and topics only covered by one rapper. I can see how that might be biased in favor of total lifetime output, but perhaps not. My favorite dead rapper is Eyedea, his album output didn't exceed the 35k word minimum for the vocab list but his topic breadth was pretty wide. I've thought LLMs might be good enough to do that for a lot of songs now, if they don't have a panic attack over the language anyway, but I haven't experimented. Maybe someone else can be sniped into doing it~
I too have always been curious about the volumetric comparison of rap lyrics about Edgar Allan Poe Vs those about the people in the front row.
Aesop Rock's first on that graph, I think his track about going to the drive-through is pretty poetic:
https://genius.com/Aesop-rock-time-moves-differently-here-ly...
By defrost 2025-10-183:52 Moving forward to the B's there are lyrics that are poetic, specific, expand the vocabulary breadth of rap and don't see much in the way of overlap:
Brother boys, Yolŋu boys, all the way from Arnhem Land räwakpuy yindi djäl napurr dhuwal giritjinyaraw Yolŋu balanda buŋgul go dhumurr'yurra ŋanya marrtji go napurr ga djälthirr napurr dhu wiripukum walalaŋ maŋutji marr ga manapanmirr wiripu wiripu miṯtji go babu'yurrnha ŋanya marrtji go
By giancarlostoro 2025-10-182:30 Lil Wayne also has an insane amount of mixtapes and freestyles.
By defraudbah 2025-10-1717:34 yeah, no wonder cunninglinguist was pretty high in that list :)
By giancarlostoro 2025-10-182:28 I'm surprised Twista isn't much higher, if you listen to his lyrics he's always busting out different words like a thesaurus (I think he's one who mentioned reading one as a kid or something?) but I guess this just means he's not released as many songs. I do like that MF Doom is listed as well, big respect to him, I never listened to him heavily.
One thing to note, you don't need every word on the planet to convey amazing lessons with lyrics, some of the more profound lyrics (I can't remember, but it certainly felt that way to me 15+ years ago) were by artists somewhere in the middle of your graph for me.
Just looked up Tech N9ne on there, really surprised he's in the middle. Immortal Technique more to the right with the list of people who really use an insane amount of words in their lyrics, not surprised honestly.
Edit: Just realized its the first 35,000 words... Man... this needs to do its best to get all of them. Unfortunately, there's songs by artists I can't find on ANY lyrics sites, so I fear this list will never be 100% but a close enough ballpark.
By jihadjihad 2025-10-1719:55 Blackalicious near the top of the pack checks out.
By elestor 2025-10-1819:17 NF being there right at the back needs to be shown to the NF fans
By jjpones 2025-10-206:37 Of course that's where Busdriver would be!
By HPsquared 2025-10-1717:41 And "0 Cent" before June 1994 :)
By yunwal 2025-10-183:38 Would love to see playboi carti on here.
By mk_stjames 2025-10-1717:241 reply I would argue that valuation of '50 Cent' (real name Curtis James Jackson III) was essentially flat leading up to immediately before the release of Get Rich or Die Tryin', his debut album released February 6, 2003.
Which, undeniable, is an * all-time banger * that substantially increased the valuation of 50 Cent to something far surpassing US dollar inflation.
Seriously, go listen that that album again; total game changer. Top cut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D3crqpClPY
If you're into AI music I leave this without comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4GrSKMzQg0
By qingcharles 2025-10-1723:54 I came to post the exact same link. So instead I leave this Motown Soul version of Eminem which is equally as wild:
By mk_stjames 2025-10-1717:394 reply I was prepared to be absolutely fucking disgusted by such a comment but I.... shit. I mean... this is.... this is wild
I gotta go contemplate 'where we're at' again it seems. If that is truly a straight generative audio diffusion model.... wait, how did they get the same verse by verse chord progressions to match? this has to be professionally post-produced, right? AI models aren't able to do this end-to-end yet, right?
By yellowapple 2025-10-1722:12 > wait, how did they get the same verse by verse chord progressions to match?
Usually these AI covers don't use AI for the whole thing, but rather specifically for melding the to-be-impersonated voice into some given melody. That's been possible for a couple years now with decent results; one of my favorite examples is that of Plankton from Spongebob singing Disturbed's cover of “Sound of Silence”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eLRsw9mkmY
Possible that these newer ones are also using AI to generate other musical elements, but it's probably all being combined after-the-fact rather than being generated all at once.
By cma256 2025-10-1720:10 I had similar emotions. The cover of 21 Questions by the same YouTuber is even better. And other covers of Mario's "Let Me Love You" and Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" are equally mind blowing.
I'm ashamed to say I prefer these to the originals so much so that its difficult for me to listen to them any more. Make of that what you will...
By kayge 2025-10-1718:50 As a big fan of Chris Cornell I went through the same stream of emotions with their Motown version of Like a Stone[0]. And if you can get past the thumbnail, check out the 2000s Rock version of Many Men[1]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_88Qg8FGrqY [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gFKREP3gPg
By conception 2025-10-1718:03 Probably not end to end, no. But you can make something similar to just about any pop song on suno.com now.
