Genius (company)
Genius is an American digital media company founded on August 27, 2009, by Tom Lehman, Ilan Zechory, and Mahbod Moghadam. The company's eponymous website serves as a database for song lyrics, news stories, sources, poetry, and documents, in which users can provide annotations and interpretations for.
Originally launched as Rap Genius, with a focus on hip-hop music, the company attracted the attention and support of celebrities, and venture capital enabling further growth. The site expanded in 2014 to cover other forms of media, such as pop, literature, and R&B, and added an annotation-embedded platform. That same year, an iPhone app was released. To reflect these new goals, the site relaunched as Genius in July 2014. An Android version was released in August 2015, and in 2016 and 2017, the company began producing music-focused original video content and hosting live events and concerts.
History
Lyric sites before Rap Exegesis (2000s)
Prior to the creation of this site, there were websites specifically for searching up lyrics, such as AZLyrics or SongMeanings, some were meant for specific genres, others include guitar tabs or MIDI with them. Few lyric sites of the time actually embedded the songs that are meant to be transcribed, and even fewer had annotations to explain subtleties like samples, interpolations, references to other lyrics, wordplay, double-entendres or rhyme-schemes.Genius first started as a crowdsourced hip-hop focused lyric site, and was originally named Rap Exegesis. The site changed its name to Rap Genius in December 2009 because "exegesis" was difficult for users to spell.
Founding and early years (2009–2012)
It was created in August 2009 by founders Tom Lehman, Ilan Zechory, and Mahbod Moghadam, the three of whom met during their undergraduate years at Yale University. Lehman and Moghadam came up with the idea for the site in the summer of 2009 when Lehman asked Moghadam about the meaning of a Cam'ron lyric. After Lehman built the earliest version of the site, he—along with cofounders Moghadam and Zechory—decided to leave their jobs at D.E. Shaw and Google to pursue the idea full-time and bring it to fruition.Initial funding
In 2011, with the site "drawing over 1 million unique visitors per month", Rap Genius applied to start-up incubator Y Combinator, and "became the fastest-growing start-up in Y Combinator history", obtaining $1.8 million in seed funding, which enabled the founders to occupy offices in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In 2012, the company received an additional $15 million investment from Silicon Valley–based venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, prompted in part by partner Marc Andreessen's own past effort to build a group annotation feature into a web browser. Ben Horowitz described Genius as "one of the most important things we've ever funded". The company's three co-founders were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 in December 2012.Establishment of verified accounts
The popular success of the venture was exemplified by the participation of artists like Queensbridge rapper Nas, 50 Cent, RZA, and A$AP Rocky, prompting the company to create a "Verified Artists" designation. Verified accounts are offered to established artists, where they annotate, moderate, and edit their own lyrics. Such annotations are highlighted in yellow, rather than the usual gray. Nas became the first verified artist, using the platform to post numerous explanations of his lyrics and dispel some misinterpretations, as well as to comment on the lyrics of other rappers he admired. As part of his support for the website, Nas "released the lyrics to his new single 'The Don' on Rap Genius the day before putting out the song itself".Masta Killa, Inspectah Deck, RZA, GZA, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon, members of the American hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan, also obtained verified accounts on Genius. In late 2012, novelist Bacchus Paine became the first current release prose author to voluntarily annotate part of her own work.
Early controversies (2013–2014)
In an effort to extend the concept into other genres of culture, Genius launched several new channels in 2013 including Rock Genius and Poetry Genius. The service also added the ability for outside publishers to integrate Rap Genius's platform into other websites to create annotated articles. However, the company also experienced some issues familiar to the online content field.Music publishing dispute
In October 2013, Rap Genius was one of fifty sites targeted with notices by the National Music Publishers Association for the unlicensed online publication of song lyrics. Unlike Genius, most of the sites that were targeted were ad-supported. In response, Zechory stated that they "can't wait to have a conversation with them about how all writers can participate in and benefit from the Rap Genius knowledge project". In 2014, Rap Genius entered into a licensing agreement with music publishers covering both past and future publishing of music lyrics.Google search penalty
In December 2013, Google penalized Rap Genius for violating their backlinks guidelines,—particularly involvement with blog networks—by removing them from its top search results. Even with the search query "rap genius", results from rapgenius.com did not appear in the top results. Instead, the top results showed Rap Genius' Twitter, Facebook, and Wikipedia pages, as well as news related to the penalty. This happened after blogger and Rap Genius contributor John Marbach exposed its link scheme to manipulate Google search results by offering Tweets or Facebook shares in exchange for linking to Rap Genius with keyword rich texts. Rap Genius posted an apology, promising to stop and reverse the practice. Rap Genius also pointed out that its competitors were participating in similar or worse practices, and asked Google to look at "the whole lyrics search landscape" and improve its lyric search results.Ten days later, after removing links in violation of Google's Quality Guidelines, Rap Genius partially recovered from their penalty.
Resignation of Mahbod Moghadam
Fast Company featured Rap Genius co-founder Mahbod Moghadam in its list of the Most Creative People of 2013. By early 2014, however, Moghadam had reduced his involvement in Genius to a part-time role, due to complications from his surgery for meningioma, a benign brain tumor. In May 2014, Moghadam resigned after annotating the manifesto of Isla Vista spree killer Elliot Rodger in ways labeled as inappropriate. Moghadam died in March 2024 due to complications from a brain tumor.Expansion and rebranding (2014–2015)
New apps and features
The company rebounded with the release of an iOS app on January 28, 2014, also called "Genius". Genius co-founder Tom Lehman said at launch: "This is the true launch of Rap Genius. Right now, more than half of our traffic comes from mobile devices. Soon, it will be 100%".In March 2014, Genius launched a feature allowing users to "embed" annotated texts on other websites. Felix Salmon of Reuters was a noted early user, using the platform to create an annotated breakdown of Janet Yellen's first FOMC statement. Nas embedded the entire annotated Illmatic album onto his website to promote the release of Illmatic XX.
Relaunch as "Genius" and expanded funding
On July 12, 2014, reflecting its recent expansions and growth into a platform, Rap Genius relaunched as Genius. The co-founders said that the change was because most internet users fail to "dive into" stories they find in greater detail, and that Genius aimed to "help us all realize the richness and depth in every line of text". The company also raised an additional $40 million in series B funding led by investor Dan Gilbert, chairman of Quicken Loans and owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers. With its operations expanding, Genius relocated from Williamsburg, Brooklyn to Gowanus, Brooklyn. Genius also obtained buy-in from artists, including investments by Eminem, Nas, and Pharrell Williams.At one point, rapper Kanye West, a fan of the site, submitted a mockup of a redesign to investor Ben Horowitz. Although Lehman was impressed, telling Business Insider that future redesigns could use elements from it, the redesign was not used. In mid-2015, along with its redesigned logo and webpage, Genius released its Android app, which initially allowed users to search for and vote on annotations.
Staff expansion and new partnerships
Hip-hop journalist Rob Markman was hired by Genius as its manager of artist relations. In September 2015, Genius partnered with The Washington Post to annotate the various presidential debates being held at that time. The following month, Genius announced the hiring of Brendan Frederick, formerly of Complex, as director of content.In 2015, Rick Rubin, A-Trak, The-Dream and Eminem were among those who created verified accounts. Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon has also been verified and has contributed several annotations. Composer and Lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda also has a verified account with which he frequently joined discussions on the lyrics from his musicals In the Heights and Hamilton.
News Genius
News Genius is a web annotation platform which was launched in late 2015 or early 2016. In January 2016, the White House began using Genius to provide annotations for its online postings of President Barack Obama's State of the Union addresses. The News Genius platform was controversial because it allowed annotations to be added to websites, including personal websites, without the webmaster's consent and without an option to opt out of having annotations.As of 2023, the News Genius website is still up but has not been updated since 2016; it is no longer possible to log in and leave new annotations.