Three friends that attended Yale University started a website that translates rap lyrics into words that some may understand. Investors have put 15 million towards this website that receives a total of 500,000 views per day! They really made something out of trying to understand what some artists are trying to convey in their rap songs, hit the jump for more details.
Steph B
What started as a fun weekend project between three Yale classmates to translate rap lyrics for the common man has attracted millions in investments.
Early last week, tech investment firm Andreessen Horowitz put $15 million into the site Rap Genius, created three years ago by friends Mahbod Moghadam, Tom Lehman, and Ilan Zechory.
Thrown together as ‘something you can look at in your dorm, when you’re on drugs,’ as one founder put it, the site now attracts up to 500,000 pageviews a day.
Trailing pornography and Facebook, lyrics are among the most searched content on the internet.
The site takes lyrics and allows users to annotate the language and explain its real meaning, much as literary scholars would do with a classic novel.
For instance, rapper Jay-Z’S song 99 Problems is revealed to explore the artist’s complicated relationships between himself, the law, money, media, and men of low character.
That song contains the lyrics ‘Got two choices y’all, pull over the car or / Bounce on the devil, put the pedal to the floor,’ which could be totally misinterpreted if one was unfamiliar with rap idioms and metaphor.
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