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How Rap Genius dupes rappers into doing its bidding

Here's Sean Price on Twitter the other day assuring the world that Rap Genius is not racist. He had been up to the Rap Genius offices the day before to type in his own lyrics, for free. He's got an album coming out tomorrow, and he probably figured it would help boost sales. CACs are sometimes reluctant to buy rap albums, if they feel they won't be able to understand the lyrics.

Rap Genius has been known to invite rappers into their offices to type in their own lyrics. It saves them from having to listen to the albums themselves and try to figure out what rappers are saying, or having to pay someone to do that. (If it's an older release, they can of course just copy and paste the lyrics from OHHLA.) You'll recall that they tried to get Chief Keef to do it, in a video that's since disappeared from the Internets, but come to find out he doesn't know how to read.

“@dallas_penn: @jimmyvalentime @byroncrawford @rafikam @noz Gotta salute the @rapgenius clowns 4 gettin rappers 2 work 4 them 4 no $ at all”

— Reggie Ossé (@Combat_Jack) October 28, 2012

That night, Sean Price was a guest in the same private chat room where, a mere matter of hours before, editors discussed whose ancestors belonged to whom during slavery, whose ancestors were house dreaded n-words as opposed to field dreaded n-words, whose female ancestors had sex with everyone on the plantation thus causing their vagine to go loose, so on and so forth, and in fact he spoke with some of the same people. Of course there wasn't any racist talk while Sean P was there, nor when he was in the Rap Genius offices, which is why he can assure us that Rap Genius is not racist.

Also, they may have plied him with weed. When he said it was like an adult version of 3, 2, 1 Contact, he may have been referring to a contact high, from the amount of weed smoke lingering in the air. I suspect that Rap Genius is supplying rappers with free marijuana in exchange for doing data entry work, and in fact, I wonder if you have to be a rapper to take them up on that deal. You could probably just tell them you're a rapper. How would they know?

Rafi Kam from Internets Celebrities was there earlier this year with Dallas Penn. He says they asked Dallas a couple of times to transcribe his lyrics, because they thought he was a rapper. Rafi says there was a big bag of weed and flat screen TV that maybe someone could steal.

@lilybenson @jawnita and at the very least, there's a giant bag of weed and flat screen tv there.

— Rafi Kam (@rafikam) October 27, 2012

Remember, if/when you steal from the Rap Genius offices, you're not just stealing from Maboo and the rest of those d-bags, you're stealing from Mitt Romney and the Republicans. You're doing the entire black community a favor. If you get caught, maybe Obama will pardon you.

They tried to ply Willy Staley with weed, via Twitter, after he criticized Rap Genius in that article in the New York Times about the word fanute. He could have gotten in trouble for that. Times writers aren't allowed to accept weed as a bribe from people they're writing about. There was a minor dust-up a few weeks ago when Zadie Smith accepted a free fish sandwich from Jay-Z - and that was just a fish sandwich.

the privilege of rap genius is apparent in their ability to repeatedly make jokes about drugs without being checked by their backers.

— noz scaggs (@noz) October 29, 2012

@noz I politely declined, for the record.

— willy (@willystaley) October 29, 2012