Cool work! Glad to see someone else finds the theory of slant rhymes fascinating. This is a pretty decent introductory article on the subject, but it's definitely missing a 'phonetic distance' measure to tie it all together. If you add one of those and you choose well, you can literally calculate 'how close' of a rhyme it is.<p>I also think that this could use an analysis of rebound phonetics in it as well -- often what feels good and easy to say is so because the 'release' of each phoneme is the same as the 'start' of the next phoneme. Especially once you start to go 'far' from the original phoneme in terms of where/how it is produced from the mouth, these sorts of considerations start to dominate how pleasant the flow is over strict rhyming and distance.
Rakim and Nas are another set of rappers with this genius-level lyrical/grammatical flow.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M34OelgSlKI">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M34OelgSlKI</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI8A14Qcv68">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI8A14Qcv68</a><p>It really seems like most of this lyrical talent exited rap by the early 2000s, not that I listen much anymore. There's some decent artists these days but it seems like the raw peak talent is gone because you don't need it anymore to make top dollar.