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.

Homeboy Sandman, a New York MC (and Gawker author) on Stones Throw Records, with 48 of his songs annotated on Rap Genius, wrote this on Facebook today:

please no tagging or posting any alleged "homeboy sandman lyrics" from rapgenius to this page. those disrespectful irresponsible dicks seemingly purposefully publish "lyrics" to my songs that are so horrifically incorrect that it seems whoever transcribed them was listening to two songs at once. i have never written a a single lyric that makes no sense when written as prose. not even one. so, certainly not most. those clowns will have you think i'm just blurting out random words. they create "verified artist" pages without ever contacting the artists that people then think have verified something. they have no concern whatsoever for grossly misrepresenting people's art. if you want homeboy sandman lyrics, listen to the song and figure them out. (and if what you figure out makes no fuckin sense, then listen closer) or wait until i post them here as i often do. or buy First of a Living Breed that comes with a lyric book, or Chimera that has all of the lyrics superimposed on the cover. these rapgenius assholes are so disrespectful that even though so many of my lyrics are readily available because i myself have made them public, they don't even care to double check. "who cares if we're making it appear like homeboy sandman makes no fuckin sense. as long as we're getting site clicks."

He also wrote, "if rapgenius cares about lyrics, they need to care about getting the lyrics right. i know it takes way more time and effort to actually get artists to verify stuff, and then of course that would mean that rapgenius would need to share some of their proceeds with the artists who make their entire site possible, but that's what it would take for this to be a legitimate site. if you're going to have a site based on what rappers say (which is a good idea), the very FIRST thing you have to make sure that you have is, what the rappers actually say."

Crazy idea.

[Pic via]