According to California student Virgil Griffith, listening to Lil' Wayne makes you stupid.
Alright, you caught me. That's a complete misrepresentation of Mr. Griffith's conclusions. I was just trying to get your attention. Now that I have it, here's a more accurate summary of Griffith's "research":
Griffith compared aggregated Facebook data about favorite bands among students at 1,352 colleges with the average SAT scores at those schools creating an utterly unscientific but very entertaining statistical analysis of taste and intelligence. Here's what he found:
Students who listed "Beethoven" as their "favorite music" on their Facebook page have an average SAT score of 1371. Students who listed "Lil Wayne" have an average SAT score of 889. Other notable artists/bands in the top 10 are Counting Crows with an average SAT score of 1247, Radiohead with an average SAT score of 1220 and Bob Dylan with an average SAT score of 1197. The bottom 10 included Beyonce (avg. SAT score: 932) and T.I. (avg. SAT score: 926).
Outkast is the highest ranking "hip-hop" artist on the list at number 36 with fans sporting an average SAT score of 1104. (Griffith lifted his genres directly from Last.fm.) The lowest ranking "rock" band is Aerosmith at number 117. Their fans had an average SAT score of 987.
This article appears in Mar 11-17, 2009.