Rap Genius Illuminates Lyrics
Ever wonder what a particular rap lyric is all about? So have the developers of Rap Genius. Dubbing it a 'hip-hop Wikipedia', the site was created to help illuminate the world of rap lyrics. It's also begun to rival to The Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive, established in 1992.
Rap Genius features background info such as why Kendrick Lamar often shouts "Yawk! Yawk! Yawk! Yawk!", why Common calls out Quentin Tarantino in '1, 2 Many', and where Bob Marley quotes Marcus Garvey in 'Redemption Song'. Like Wiki, each listing is crowd-sourced: anyone can be an author, not just the artist.
Given that there's listings on the site for Adele, Aerosmith, Alan Ginsberg and Alanis Morisette (no, we didn't get past the A's: it's a MASSIVE codex), we predict this could become the site for lyric elaboration with all music artists... or the platform for creating one. Give it a go and let us know what you think!