I've done a couple of projects where I built a database of every rap song mentioning a certain term.
The first of these was a timeline I created with a graphic design friend of every hip hop song a rapper dedicated to their mother. She did some awesome flowery illustrations of rappers and we made a playlist embedded in the site.
For the second, I created a database of every rap song mentioning Cal Ripken for the Baltimore Sun. We embedded sound clips and made infographics showing how the trend of namedropping cal Ripken rose and fell over the years as well as a map showing how references were coming from all over the nation.
Both of these projects were time-consuming but SUPER fun. Seeing my data work come to life through illustrations felt like a home run (pun intended).