Columnist Luke Furman details how Rap Genius (now called Genius) improved lyric analysis and diversified critical voices.
Lyric websites at their most basic forms have existed for almost as long as the Internet has been around.
Eventually, someone along the way decided that it would be cool to have a forum for interpretation of the songs along with the lyrics, thus producing Songmeanings.com.
However, it wasn’t until 2009 when Rap Genius (now rebranded as “Genius”) took the concept of a lyric website one step further by allowing users to not only post annotations to individual lyrics but also vote on the best, most probable interpretations.
For this specifi user annotation, the website and mobile apps are pretty much the less stuffy equivalent to a used Shakespearean-play paperback in a high school English class. And, also for this reason, Genius has become one of the best supplementary tools when listening to music.
Following along with the individual lyrics to especially hazy, cryptic or incomprehensible artists can be a huge advantage when trying to understand what songs are really about. I’m not sure I would fully understand a Young Thug or Beach House verse if not for it.
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Furthermore, some of the annotations have interviews and related performances that can change how a song or album is viewed. The added insight gives listeners the ability to analyze the frame of mind of the artist when they wrote a composition, no matter how long ago. And now that it’s been rebranded for music in general, non-hip hop artists are now just as prevalent with Bob Dylan and Radiohead songs full of observant comments.
But aside from all the deeper stuff, Genius is really just a useful resource when trying to understand the meaning of songs, poetry or speeches and other written works. And it can also lead to cool stuff like this graph of rappers’ vocabularies. So let’s just hope the site doesn’t get bumped from Google search again.
Luke Furman is a sophomore studying journalism and a reporter for The Post. Do you use Genius when looking up lyrics? Tweet him @LukeFurmanOU or email him at lf491413@ohio.edu.
