Today on the internet, there is an interview with Erik Nielson, a professor of literature and hip-hop at the University of Richmond, on the subject of rap lyrics being used against young men of color in criminal trials across the country. Nielson has written about the phenomenon and has served as an expert witness for…
In January, Sasha Frere-Jones, the longtime music critic at the New Yorker, left the fabled magazine for a job at Genius (neé Rap Genius), the annotation website that sticks bad jokes next to your favorite rap lyrics. The honeymoon, though, appears to have been short: Frere-Jones recently moved from full-time to…
Ilan Zechory and Tom Lehman are, amongst other things, co-founders of the website formerly known as Rap Genius. They are also best friends. Sometimes it is hard to be these things, and sometimes they have fights. Now, they’re in couples therapy. That’s good!
Sasha Frere-Jones, who is not a black French woman, has accepted a job with annotation start-up and ephemeral website Genius (formerly known as Rap Genius), leaving his comfortable perch as pop music critic at analog paper magazine the New Yorker. Presumably, Genius offered Frere-Jones the promise of an intellectually…
According to reports, long-time New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones is leaving the magazine to join Genius, an annotation website with generous VC funding and a vast database of rap lyrics.
Tech rainmaker Marc Andreessen once boasted that Rap Genius would one day "annotate the world." If you needed yet another reminder of how utterly worthless that would be, read the creepy and weird annotations left by company cofounder Mahbod Moghadam on the memoir of UCSB spree killer Elliot Rodger.
Rap Genius, the lyric-explanation site, made a lot of money for three guys from Yale. It is not, however, universally popular among actual rappers. Some rappers would prefer that their lyrics be written down correctly.
Don't hate-read the New York Times "Weddings and Celebrations" section without Wedding Crunchers, a new database that lets you search through 60,000 announcements from 1981 to 2013, and watch status symbols rise and fall, like a curtseying debutante, over time.
#Yeezus drops today. Check out the @ACLU's analysis of #privateprisons in @KanyeWest's "New Slaves" via @RapGenius: http://t.co/0hdgbNiiKE
This month's world-changing tech innovation: a rap lyrics website. Lyric-annotation site RapGenius.com just landed a $15 million investment, leading to a press blitz this week as tech and entertainment sites rushed to profile the three kids who are going to change the game. But why'd they land so much money? And why…
