RapGenius thread

trees, i don't think anyone is hating on the idea of annotating lyrics or unpacking the meaning of rap lyrics in particular.

let me sum up what the problems might be:

-- a lot of the lyrics are transcribed poorly and contain errors.
-- many of the annotations are corny jokes
-- many of the annotations reveal a misunderstanding of the lyrics or the point of annotating lyrics
-- the business model of getting internet people to generate content for free leads to mostly bullshit content and some goofy kids from yale got rich off it

sometimes when i google for rap lyrics and find some bunk misheard bullshit i wonder why someone would 1) be feeling a track that they can't even understand the lyrics to, 2) bother putting their bullshit transcription online

rap genius is often useful but it was also founded by a bunch of dopes who built up the site using shitty tactics and now fosters a user base of white kids who want to be able to say the n word

let the first person to stop bitching about these kind of internet creatures cast the first stone. kevin and lex, you are not those people.

that all makes sense, but i think it's hard to say what the quality of the site will look like in a few years, as the community grows and becomes more vigilantly self-policing. wikipedia is a lot less amateurish now, i think, than it was when it started, and a similar thing might happen with rapgenius.

there is an upper limit to the # of people interested in annotating rap lyrics

in fact most of those people are probably already familiar with the site

if its readership grows large enough, i am thinking that the artists' publicists might get involved, which is what happens with wikipedia entries. this would make the annotations drier, but perhaps it would clear up some of the more glaring errors.

that all makes sense, but i think it's hard to say what the quality of the site will look like in a few years, as the community grows and becomes more vigilantly self-policing. wikipedia is a lot less amateurish now, i think, than it was when it started, and a similar thing might happen with rapgenius.

― Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the (Treeship), Sunday, June 30, 2013 2:22 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

academics recognized the value in wikipedia, whereas the analogues in the rap community dgaf

but no upper limit to the # of people interesting in clicking on lyrics pages and producing ad impressions

also anyone saying wikipedia artist pages are highly policed publicist-bolstered things has never looked at one lately. (PRs do edit like you wouldn't believe but generally it's, like, copying and pasting the press release for your podunk startup and passing it off as an article that lasts either 5 days if it's caught early or forever otherwise)

the fucked up thing is that rap lyrics are written in pretty transparent idiomatic modern american english. if you're a native english speaker under the age of 45, unless you've intentionally avoided popular music made after 1995, it should be pretty easy to figure out the basics of rap lyrics.

i might not catch every take it back to 88 the year crack ruled naming names on a cormega track and from time to time, i gotta play a yo gotti track a few times to figure out some deep newspaper on the floor crack rap allusions or memphis accented phrases but shit like that never even gets accurately transcribed or accurately annotated.

i just looked for the lyrics to a new styles track... http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/stylesp/takeitback.html and i know a few days from now, the same error-ridden transcription will show up on rapgenius with like nothing annotated except for like "2pac" annotated with a picture of spongebob with a thuglife tattoo.

fix it then. be the change you want to see in the world.

is it wrong if the change i want to see in the world is properly transcribed styles p lyrics?

that's up to you. i would say it's a fine thing to want, as a world with properly transcribed styles p lyrics is better than a world with improperly transcribed styles p lyrics, if only 0.00000000000000000000001% better.

lol at how chill things have been lately literally right up until whiney starts making threads again

Haha n/m I thought he started this thread sorry

Styles P should be one of the easiest MCs to transcribe wtf

Haha n/m I thought he started this thread sorry

― some dude, Sunday, June 30, 2013 3:15 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

i mean whatever there are some lines in that might take a few listens but

I used to keep money in the shoebox
Knockin if I die,
The night from two Pac.
Or into the stage from buckshot
Dream of the Europeans standing at the bus stop
Headed to a fuck ass stop job
Never seen a fuck boy I would not rob

i used to keep money in the shoebox
knockin 'if i die 2nite' from tupac
or 'enta da stage' from buckshot
dreamin of europeans, standin at the bus stop
headed to a fuck-ass stock job
never seen a fuck boy i would not rob

pretty hard to fuck up if you stop and think for a second, "does this even make sense? is he dreaming about austrian tourists waiting for a bus?"

I used to keep honey in a shoe, box
Knocking, if I die,
Tonight by two Pacs
Or into the stage by buck
Shot dream of Europeans standing at the bus stop
Headed to a fuck ass, stop-- job
Never seen a fuck, boy I would not rob

well yeah. I just mean Styles P, especially the last few releases (like World's Most Hardest MC Project), has predicated himself on being simple and effective, and he enunciates pretty well. Middle section suggest to me more that the transcriber hasn't heard Me Against the World or the Black Moon album (or at least not enough to quickly pick up on the references).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53qSLP2A8zQ

rap genius annotations just followed me on twitter. they seem to tweet the "best" rap genius annotations, but i am not sure if this means they tweet inept annotations in order to make fun of them. in any case, is this one of y'all?

where do you stand on haze vs. sour?

i had a bad time on what someone said was sour once. always been biased against it since then.

sometimes when i google for rap lyrics and find some bunk misheard bullshit i wonder why someone would 1) be feeling a track that they can't even understand the lyrics to

Wait, isn't this why people google for rap lyrics?

nah i mean dudes that are sitting there listening to a styles p song and are feeling it enough to type out the lyrics. "'knockin everyday, struggle with BI / malcolm rake one ghost-face purple tape' man styles got bars. i gotta get this on the internet."

Very tempted to start a site called crapgenius.com, a WebMD/rapgenius hybrid where users can submit stool samples for others to examine for their medical significance.

i wonder why someone would 1) be feeling a track that they can't even understand the lyrics to

pretty much my entire relationship to pop music for pretty much my entire life has been feeling tracks i don't understand the lyrics to,

BUT WHY WOULD YOU BE FEELING A STYLES TRACK THAT YOU CAN'T EVEN UNDERSTAND
IT'S NOT KESHA OKAY IT'S SERIOUS RAP MUSIC

this is like a perfect storm of bad internet: rapper that Rap Genius editors don't care about has lots of sloppy inaccurate RG lyric transcriptions, Buzzfeed does listicle of cuh-razy lyrics by that rapper that are mostly completely wrong RG transcriptions

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/14-bizarre-lyrics-that-prove-flo-rida-knows-no-one-can-under

yeezus wept ;_;

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/fashion/anger-management-why-the-genius-founders-turned-to-couples-therapy.html

music streaming services like spotify integrate their own lyrics into the programs now, like spotify with musicmatch, taking a huge chunk of hits away. the annotations thing is very good when done well though, obviously.

lol the mogador. mess

I guess we can put this here (disclaimer: the review in question was written by me) http://themuse.jezebel.com/genius-annotates-a-pitchfork-review-and-every-music-cri-1755277152

wow

When you come under a microscope that assholish, you must be doing something right. Keep up the good work, Katherine!

that all makes sense, but i think it's hard to say what the quality of the site will look like in a few years, as the community grows and becomes more vigilantly self-policing. wikipedia is a lot less amateurish now, i think, than it was when it started, and a similar thing might happen with rapgenius.

― Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the (Treeship), Sunday, June 30, 2013 8:22 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is it just me or in the 2 and a half years since this comment has rap genius actually gotten much much worse?

It seems like with unpopular artists the annotations are super thin (same with pop music that doesn't even need annotating but is on the site for some reason anyways) , and with popular artists its all a race to fill up the song as fast as possible so that many things get overlooked, hooks that change throughout a song now all get the same annotation, entire verses are lumped together under a singer annotation that only explains a single line, etc etc

And then nobody bothers to go back and flesh out annotations because the song is now "done"

I think I made a similar comment recently in another Genius thread. Yes, it seems worse.

def seems like there was a time when it was relatively useful, like you could actually use it to help do a good close reading of lyrics, and now it's just this ridiculous free-for-all.

http://genius.com/Twaimz-llama-song-annotated

yes, I am that llama, that llama you despise, with those big ass eyes, and them luscious thighs.

Jesus motherfucking christ

I see they are now doing bizarre videos too
https://youtu.be/g3c_AXMR5CE

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a22709637/sacha-baron-cohen-genius-founder-mahbod-moghadam/