An artist named Tahir Hemphill wants to datamine 30 years of hip-hop lyrics to provide a searchable index of the genre’s lexicon.

The project analyzes the lyrics of over 40,000 songs for metaphors, similes, cultural references, phrases, memes and socio-political ideas. For each, it registers a date and a geographical location. Hemphill has raised more than $8,000 in funding for the project on Kickstarter, from 349 people.

The idea is so that important questions can be answered, like who was the first to mention “haters,” or which is the most popular champagne/sneakers/porn star to rap about? T...