Hyperbole is, I guess, to be expected. After all, it is a classical rhetorical device, and pretty easy to pull off without fucking anything up.
Qualifying hyperbole weakens the effect of exaggeration, which is pretty much all it has going for it anyway.
Doing so at random is just confusing.
(Susan Pena, Reading Eagle, Concert Review: Philip Glass &c)
Philip Glass, the world's best known...living composer of classical music...
Really? I mean: possibly, sure, I guess. Maybe. But, hey. Hyperbole, am I right, folks?
Philip Glass, the world's best known and possibly most prolific living composer of classical music...
"Possibly" the most prolific, but the unqualified best-known [sic, or anti-sic(?)] composer?
Sheesh.
Also, and not for nothing: it seems like "most prolific" is actually, you know, researchable and verifiable. Unlike "best known" [sic].
Doo dee doo dee do.
Figure 1: Philip Glass Cutty Sark advertisment, Newsweek, 1982