Rapgenius is seriously wonderful. I've been listening to more and more rap recently and using rapgenius to find and understand lyrics, the fact that they have the people writing the tracks commenting on the interpretations (via videos) makes it even better.

I finally got to contribute to the site a few weeks ago and I was super happy when they accepted my contribution, I don't know why I was happy, I only got to fix a typo, but it still felt great.

I have no idea how they can make money and the idea seemed silly to me the first time I heard about it ("a site where people explain lyrics is part of yc?") but after using it I'm in love. My enjoyment of rap music has increased thanks to rapgenius.

Rapgenius is good in the way StackOverflow is good: A novel, well-executed UI to a kind of website that has been done to death (in this case its lyrics sites). Not to mention good SEO.

It also suffers from the same problem, which is that the users that are most engaged are often not the best people to give explanations. I pretty frequently see tracks that have bad annotations, misunderstand lines (not to mention just straight out wrong lyrics), or break the context.

Here's an example: http://rapgenius.com/Aesop-rock-were-famous-lyrics#note-7597...

That entire stanza the "favorite" is totally sarcastic, he's specifically calling out another MC (Esoteric) for just doing lame songs about transformers. In fact, the 2 marks after that block (which are part of the same verse) are properly noting who he is targeting. So in this case, the the lyrics are wrong, the selected lines are breaking the context, and the explanation is totally contrary to whats even being discussed.

There is no "crowdsourced" way of fixing this, just a note that the "staff" hasn't verified it. I see this pretty frequently, actually on pretty much every track I've looked up there.

I think its a great idea, but it should take a lesson from SO or even wikipedia on how to actually correct problems like this, rather than just leaving it to the first person to post it.

Edit: This may be a factor of this stuff being a bit more obscure and dense than your average Kanye or Rick Ross track, as well as being unpopular, but I've put in several suggestions over the last year and never heard back anything about things being accepted or being able to actually make corrections.

Gods they must be cray

Lyrics over HTTP?

What would Kool Herc say?

Venture valuation

Drifting to the perihelion

Maboo with the Bently scout

Now Marissa's got her checkbook out

Annotations the new cream

Even writin up your daydreams

Like Cobb with one last job

Wakin up before you scream

A Venn diagram intersection

"Seems like a bad idea"

"No really is a good idea"

Priceless like a loan rejection

Copyright in Fringe mint

Walter Bishop eating Thin Mints

Don't require six senses

To see text bubbles everywhere

Maybe time to give up the ghost

Or upgrade to a $7 sponsored post

ilan, one of the founders of rap genius here..

we're ready to blow up the bank accounts of brilliant engineers (rails, ios) and designers who want to help us create the internet talmud™

if you're interested, send links to stuff you've built or any work you're proud of! jobs@rapgenius.com

<3

I love Rap Genius, but haven't lyrics websites been repeatedly shut down in the past for copyright infringement? For instance, http://news.cnet.com/lyrics-sites-out-of-tune-with-copyright...

I always assumed that this was why all the lyrics websites were shitty and ad-infested - get money while you can, before you get shut down. And I also assumed that was why Google or Yahoo or some other competent people didn't make a nice lyrics website to outcompete them.

So what's different about Rap Genius?

I've been impressed by Andreedsen Horowitz's approach of recognizing winners in large markets and putting large amounts of money to work. It's gutsy and smart.

However, I'm concerned about putting large amounts of money into startups that have yet to become businesses. An over-abundance of resources is often detrimental to realizing a vision and finding a market.

Anyway, I remain a fan of A16Z and suspect they've seen something compelling not yet visibile to the outside observer.

Read the official announcement on Rap Genius: http://rapgenius.com/Marc-andreessen-why-andreessen-horowitz...

Intriguing. It's hard to imagine any creative work of art or engineering that couldn't benefit from well-curated annotation. Browsing around Rap Genius, I can't help but wish for a digital copy of Ulysses with this kind of interface to crowd-sourced commentary.

But outside of big traffic draws like song lyrics, I'm not sure what the monetization potential is.

Awesome news! I've been a fan of rapgenius for a while and its nice to see Mahbod getting props. I hadn't considered the possibilities outside of hip hop lyrics, but as the article points out there is a huge potential within legal text, academic papers, etc (hopefully not the bible or other religious text... I can imagine that becoming a huge clusterf*ck).

This is awesome. I remember when the name of rapgenius was decided on the two plus two forums between rapopedia, rapexegesis and rapgenius.

The initial traction really came from the high stakes online poker player community and two plus two generally. I wonder why one of the first guys to be involved, Ariel Schneller (Foxwoodsfiend/Daevils/MikeVickisGod on poker sites) dropped out of the adventure.

This is him commenting on the funding on 2p2: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=35110971...

Interesting. I saw the founders at ycombinator's Work for a Startup day, where a bunch of YC companies basically pitched their companies, but to engineers instead of investors. The rap genius guys were there, but with handmade signs, and didn't present. Honestly, at the time I thought they had snuck in or something. They were hustling people all night trying to convince them to come work for them; gotta respect the dedication.

I first learned of Rap Genius in the Yale Alumni Magazine earlier this year, and concluded that the idea was clever but the business opportunity small.[1] Now that Rap Genius is expanding its target market to general text annotation, the business opportunity looks substantial to me. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking analysis of textbooks, critiques of literary works, and commentary on the news -- the potential uses are many. Hats off to the team.

--

[1] http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2012_05/feature_rap...

RapGenius is a nice site for viewing lyrics and understanding obscure (to you) references. But a tally sheet of line-by-line references is not really an "explanation" of a rap/song/poem. Literary allusion has a long history and it can deepen the intellectual/emotional experience of a work, but people can get too obsessed with understanding "references" while missing the forest from the trees.

It's great the site isn't limited to rap, though. No one has tackled explaining Howl yet :) http://rapgenius.com/Alan-ginsberg-howl-lyrics

Not a bad investment for a little white devil sophistry. (Re: http://rapgenius.com/Das-racist-middle-of-the-cake-lyrics)

I've seen this done with specific bands, but this is a great idea for a website. Regardless of how well they execute, it's just a great idea. Lyric sites are huge, but many of them are rather crappy (I guess because they try too hard to monetize). Annotations of lyrics are scattered across many sites. It would be great to have them all in one place.

But let's hope it doesn't become like a CDDB fiasco.

I secretly hope that this startup ends up producing many gems similar to the "Rap Battle Translated" video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6H0i1RAdHk

This would make it like a "meme in motion" generator. Like moot's Canvas but for video.

I had no idea Rap Genius was a YC company. I listen to _alot_ of rap while working, and often look up the more intricate lyrics/phrases I haven't heard of.

Rap Genius is far and way the best site, the next step down the ladder is things like Yahoo Answers...

The idea that it could turn into a large music-oriented social network (a next-gen MySpace) or some kind of scalable annotation platform could make this not insane. Big opportunity + big risk = perfect YC/AH investment.

I have a feeling that the SEO battle for their keywords is about to get a lot more fierce though. I doubt they've solidified their spot in Google yet, so any tweak on Google's part or a blackhat SEO could seriously set them back.

We think this is a great day for annotation. But we had a few questions. So we wrote an open letter to Marc Andreessen and Rap Genius.

https://blog.hypothes.is/a-letter-to-marc-andreessen-and-rap...

I always feel I'd get on with Ben Horowitz, given his apparent liking for a) hip-hop, b) boxing and c) technology and business (although mfar ore successful at it than me).

If I found he liked fly-fishing as well we'd be like blood brothers or something.

They should apply the Rapgenius magic to Shakespeare. Crowdsourced Cliff Notes++.

I guess "Spray and pray" strategy at works. Now if Rap Genius can figure out how to steer clear of potential copyright violations and come up with a revenue model, they could be successful.

how do you avoid licensing all the content you're making available for annotation? If you're going to annotate literature that's under copyright (for example) won't you pretty much have to provide the base work to anyone looking for annotations?

Or is the idea to build up content until you get slapped and then license it back to existing licensees like amazon or rhapsody?

Looks a bit like the latter given the pretty broad sublicensing in the TOU, "Hip Hop Wikipedia" except, you know, for the part where everyone can use the information.

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Another win for NYC tech.

What a simple, hindsightedly obvious idea with tons of appeal.

How is Rap Genius different from songmeanings.net?

Really, does nobody else read the logo as "rapegenius"?

Honestly not being crude or puerile here - I choked on tea when I saw it...

A tiny little bit of spacing between the words would go a long way here I feel.