I run across Rap Genius now and then and have always considered it to be spam, just like yahoo answers, ehow, and mahalo pages.
The main driving force behind it is that anyone can edit the lyrics, and even better, anyone can ANNOTATE the lyrics to explain what certain sections mean.
Let's take for example the lyrics for Mumford & Sons' "The Cave": http://rock.rapgenius.com/Mumford-and-sons-the-cave-lyrics
I looked up this song one day trying to understand more of the allusions made in the song; I know the title itself alludes to Plato's 'The Cave' and wanted to delve deeper. Because of this site, I can see that Verse 3:
> So come out of your cave walking on your hands
> And see the world hanging upside down
> You can understand dependence
> When you know the maker's hand
is an allusion to St. Francis.
Most of the time when Rap Genius ISN'T the top result for lyrics when I google, I facepalm and go directly to their site.
I should emphasize here that this overly positive post isn't intended to condone their shady, spammy blackhat SEO tactics, but damnit if they aren't the BEST lyrics site by a fair margin.
Maybe I looked at the wrong lyrics, but I saw precious few explanations, instead most lines had jokes and/or totally unrelated pictures attached to them. Often enough the jokes is to simply restate what was said in rapper slang in plain english, which is funny for exactly the first time you read it, then it's just spam.
They have had some legal troubles, but are trying to sign licensing deals http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/business/media/rap-genius-...
However, if their licensing deals are anything like what other sites have to pay for lyrics, it's going to significantly (entirely?) cut into their profit margin.
Is anyone else getting more and more suspicious of the scorn that people have been gratuitously heaping on RG? Like, did they run over everyone's dog?
Why? You've no doubt read 10x reasons people here have said so (in the other threads). Do you just want to argue? If you don't agree, fine, but clearly a large and vocal group does. So what? Move along - find other things to care about.
Rap Genius [...] and have always considered it to be spam