Apparently, some rube recently invested million of dollars in this Rap Genius website, which is basically a rip-off of OHHLA . A few months ago these characters had approached Oh Word founder Rafi Kam to do some coding work, and based on his experiences it’s fair to say that these guys are pretty clueless about hip-hop in general. When Rafi brought Dallas Penn with him to one of the meetings, the honchos insisted that he write-up an explanation for one of his rap songs, being that he was a black guy wearing Polo and Nikes and was therefore a rapper dude.
According to Rafi:
I asked Maboo if he’s the community manager & he said indignantly “Thats a title for a 22 year old asian female from UC Davis”. When I mentioned that, “I read you have a unique revenue plan that doesn’t involve advertising”, another Rap Genius honcho replied, “The secret sauce is get more investors.”
Byron Crawford (aka a “one eyed black man who works at k-mart”) posted an article titled Rap Genius has a private chat room that’s filled with racism, which was picked-up by Gawker and Beta Beat. When the Rap Genius crew were alerted to Bol’s post, they took to the chat room again and started making death threats.
Amusingly, the Beta Beat article was later updated with claims that the racist chats were the work of “hackers”, (much like the Mobb Deep Twitter beef excuse), despite already sporting a comment from someone claiming to be a moderator, who claimed: ‘These two editors (of African American descent) were “joking around” with their statements’.
Admittedly, a comment on a website is hardly concrete evidence. However a quick Google search uncovered this Tumblr post, which claimed the same story about the jesting black editors, with the added bonus of chastising Byron for “perpetuating a pretty fucked-up perception our society has about terrorism”.
I this just another case of privileged douchebags cashing-in on white people’s obsession with Ebonics? Regardless, this is the most entertaining thing that the Rap Internet has seen in years…
Never heard of any of these garbage sites. Thankfully.
Rap who? Lyrics are on the decline anyway…
A farewell, in advance, to the late Rap Genius. How useless.
sums it up nicely
They’re not “basically” a rip-off, but a direct stealer from OHHLA. They copied my direct submissions to OHHLA, everything but my credit. I don’t really care about that for myself, but it lets me say how they get their content with with certainty.
…Still, that just makes them one among many. And a lot of the criticisms suddenly being lobbied against them seem a little thin, conceived just because of this $15 mil story. At least RapGenius has the groundwork to be a site that provides something for providing, which is a lot more than can be said for plenty (most?) of other sites that have managed to eek big checks from investors.
Q “I read you have a unique revenue plan that doesn’t involve advertising” A “The secret sauce is get more investors.” http://t.co/9HQkSVdO
youre just as bad as they are with this shit. look at the way you speak and write, it reeks of the same privilege you’re licking your chops to point out. with the exception of about four people, rap writers are the scum of the hipster constellation. i hate you so much please run away and die early this morning, thx.
Ashoka…sounds like there’s some sand in that vaginal entrance of yours, pilgrim?
The funniest thing about it is on my shitty blog I daily call white people cracker ass crackers and reference antisemitic conspiracies, calling Jews “tall israelis”. I hate Jews and white people and talk shit about them all day long. But I am overly sensitive to racism myself, it makes me shocked offended and outraged! Especially when it’s from a guy with a really successful website while mine has gone to shit. Where is Al Sharpton to rectify this egregious injustice? I am offended by all racism except the racism I direct at crackers kikes and sand-niggers. How dare you all!
Ashoka couldn’t get his music on any websites and has resorted to getting fucked through a glory hole at caltex. Suck dicks Ashoka! Haha!
Btw the whole western world reeks of privilege.