Rap Genius: If you don’t know, now you know
I was surfing the net and stumbled across this web site, Rap Genius. The premise of the site is very simple, they take lyrics from Rap songs and decipher them in plain English, hence the name of the site; Rap Genius. Although many hip-hop fans wouldn’t admit they don’t understand the lyrics of their favorite songs because they don’t want to lose their street cred, some lyrics just don’t make sense.
This is where Rap Genius comes in. Rap Genius lists a song’s lyrics in their entirety with hyperlinks that you can click on and explanations pop up in an easily readable format. You can absolutely get lost in this site, I challenge you to look up some of your favorite hip-hop songs and take a gander at some of their lyrical meanings and you might be surprised at what you find. You may have been listening to a song for months, or even years without knowing what the true meaning of its lyrics was.
One of the coolest features on the Rap Genius site is their Video Breakdown where they play the music video for the song and while the song is playing the meaning of the lyrics are deciphered in detail off to the side. This is such an awesome fucking feature and it reminds me of Pop-Up Video on VH1 back in the 90′s. Check out the Video Breakdown of Tyler the Creator’s lyrics for his MTV VMA nominated song “Yonkers” to get an idea of what I’m talking about.
