Who Are The Most Foul-Mouthed Artists In Music? This New Study Has The Answers

Hip hop has the most profanities (big surprise there!), with Lil Wayne having “the highest count of swear words in his lyrics” (beating Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes and T.I.) and Chief Keef uses them “most frequently”, averaging one every 20 words.

Heavy metal is the second most potty-mouthed genre, with Korn winning over Slipknot and Children Of Bodom. Diplo leads in EDM with one every 21 words (a genre with not a lot of words, mind), followed by Deadmau5 and Hardwell. Green Day and Red Hot Chili Peppers represent rock.

Charli XCX is the pop music act you wouldn’t take home to Mum, and that stands for Tove Lo and Mark Ronson. The Neighbourhood swear most of the indie acts surveyed, then Modest Mouse and Kings Of Leon. Folk has Loudon Wainwright III and Joni Mitchell and country – the least profane genre – has Justin Moore, Eric Church and Miranda Lambert.

It’s not a definitive list, as Musixmatch only chose from a pool of the most-Googled 361 artists, 3,573 studio albums and close to 10,000,000 words. ‘Motherfucker’ was the most-used swear word, followed by the N-word (or variations of it), ‘shit’, ‘fuck’ and ‘bitch’. An average of 0.66 per cent, or one in every 152 words, in lyrics by these artists are swear words. This is higher than the percentage of profanities in everyday speech (which is around 0.5%).