New Jersey White Boy's Rap of the Week: Rap Genius

I’ve finally gotten off my high horse of analyzing and opinionizing (yes, “opinionize” is a word in my dictionary) hip-hop so ridiculously close. However, you’re not going to get a new artist this week; rather, you’re going to get an introduction into the greatest music-related website to ever be thought of and created.

Rap Genius was created in October of 2009, with the idea that rap lyrics, while banal and stupid on many occasions, can still hold much cryptic and poetic depth to them. It’s a crowd-sourced website, where anyone can make an account, post lyrics to any song by any artist, and explain any lines they can. As their Facebook logo says, it’s a mixture of Urban Dictionary, Wikipedia, and rap lyrics. It is one of the most helpful tools you can have if you feel that rap is a just bad rhyming and braggadocio.

As a white boy from New Jersey (which you may not have known) who only got into rap a few years ago (and even then it was limited to a very select group of emcees), Rap Genius is my bible. So many times I hear a song that will make reference to an artist, song, or lyric from a decade ago, or, in a rare case, reference something like Plato’s Euthyphro or 50 year old art-house films that I have no knowledge about. Other times a rapper will make use of some street language that you don’t hear and/or understand growing up in middle-class suburbia, and on occasion, some word play that can only be described as subtly genius. And of course, due to the crowd-sourcing, they have easily the most accurate, comprehensive, and varied lyrical databases in the world, making it easy to understand what the fastest rapper in the world is saying and allowing me to analyze unknown rappers like OnCue and Yung Jake (oops, did I just spoil next week’s article? I’m so silly).

Recently, they’ve started up the “Verified” system. If that doesn’t explain it well enough, I will now – it allows the actual rapper to explain their lyrics. And it’s not just some lame dude whose Lil Wayne-inspired mixtape was posted by himself; actual rappers like Immortal Technique, RZA, and Nas have accounts and will explain a couple of their lyrics. To me, it’s pretty damn cool to see the actual artists explaining their lyrics to their fans. How many times have you wished to be able know exactly what your favorite rapper meant when he said this or that line? This solves it.

But they just don’t just stop at explaining lyrics. They conduct interviews with some of the greatest names in hip-hop, including RZA and Nas, or with up and coming artists like A$AP Rocky. And it’s not like these are poorly made emailed interviews with basic, stupid questions (which you’ll never find here); these are engaging, one-on-one video interviews. And let’s not forget about the blogs. While some of them aren’t written as well as a professional journalist/editor who was a communications major, they are certainly insightful and interesting (which you will find here). They discuss various topics ranging from fun discussions on who would make up the Hip-Hop Cabinet to more serious introspective pieces about Ronald Reagan’s effects on the lower-class economy, and by extension rap. Every once in a while, they’ll inform and inspire parts of my articles, such as the one I did on Kendrick Lamar.

Stepping away from the website itself, its Facebook page and blog posts introduces me to new artists (what, you want me to do a lot of research to find new rappers?). They will post a link to an interesting, thought-provoking, or fun lyric that they just happened to listen to (or just got explained), along with topical songs (like the recent holographic appearance of the rapper who releases more music after his death than before). It’s really handy for writing these articles, but also for just expanding my own knowledge and appreciation of rap. And let’s not forget about the funny rap related statuses they post.

Remember those horrible rock/rap mash-ups of yesteryear? (I know Limp Bizkit only came out a few years ago, but bear with me). Well, this website is another one of those, only it doesn’t suck. They created an offspring called Stereo IQ, which does the same thing as Rap Genius, just for rock songs. Right now, they’re still pigbacking off of Rap Genius’s servers and domain name. It’s a great tool, given its proven accuracy with rap lyrics and many cryptic rock lyrics (ironically, much like rap, it’s drugs. Always drugs). However, Stereo IQ is taking off, and will hopefully get its own site soon.

I’m sorry this was a break from introducing a new artist, or writing about an interesting article about some insight my untrained ears have, but I use and love Rap Genius so much that it seems only right to give them an article. At the very least, you didn’t have to suffer through a 2,000 word article about someone/something you don’t care about. But in case you miss the music, here's one of my favorite songs, "Family Business".