Death by genre

From psychologist Dianna Theadora Kenny (via):

For male musicians across all genres, accidental death (including all vehicular incidents and accidental overdose) accounted for almost 20% of all deaths. But accidental death for rock musicians was higher than this (24.4%) and for metal musicians higher still (36.2%).

Suicide accounted for almost 7% of all deaths in the total sample. However, for punk musicians, suicide accounted for 11% of deaths; for metal musicians, a staggering 19.3%. At just 0.9%, gospel musicians had the lowest suicide rate of all the genres studied.

Murder accounted for 6.0% of deaths across the sample, but was the cause of 51% of deaths in rap musicians and 51.5% of deaths for hip hop musicians, to date.

Those high homicide rates for rap and hip hop artists may be eye-catching, but, with rap a relatively new genre, not many have yet reached the age where cancer and heart disease begin to take their toll. There aren't yet that many old rappers sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, reminiscing about the old days.

Metal and suicide, on the other hand, does seem like an interesting statistic. 

What we really want to know, though, is: what's the difference between rap and hip hop? 

Comments

[Dward]

Rap is usually considered to be the spoken word and wordplay element within a wider hip-hop culture

[Mick H]

Yes, I thought it was something like that. I*'m just a little surprised that the authors of the study managed to separate them out so neatly - one or the other.