The 1st Commandment of Rap Genius: make your annotations interesting!
This really is the golden rule. Most editors will fix your typos and even add links to your annotations if you give them something worth reading. There are all kinds of ways to pimp your annotations. Here are a few ideas:
Whatever approach you take, try to provide some insight into the lyrics rather than just rewording them. Like RZA said, go into the context beyond the text.
Finally, if you can’t write something that you would be genuinely interested to read, then please don’t write anything. Think quality not quantity.
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Avoid annotating trivial or self-explanatory lines. Not everything needs to be explained and it actually takes more effort to say interesting things about uninteresting lyrics.
Basic lines may seem easier to explain but they’re much harder to explain well. If you’re not careful you end up with annotations that are:
These are all tell-tale signs that you’re trying to explain something that doesn’t really need explaining. They’re also the kind of annotations that get rejected en masse. Choose lines that are already interesting — it’s a much safer strategy.
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It can be frustrating to see an annotation completely miss the point of one of your favourite lyrics. Or a tenuous annotation on an incorrect lyric. Or an inane troll getting mad thumbs up.
But resist the temptation to call your fellow RG users dumbasses, fucking retards, bitch ass niggas, white devil sophists, or Ivy League hipsters.
Save the ignorance for YouTube. On Rap Genius show a little humility and be glad of the opportunity to drop some jewels. Each one teach one…
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Before adding a new song to Rap Genius always check that it hasn’t been posted already. We want to avoid situations like this:
where annotations are split between multiple versions of the same lyrics. There’s no way to merge songs so extra copies are usually just deleted. The site loses annotations, users lose Rap IQ — it’s a mess.
Keep Rap Genius tidy:
Never add songs without searching for them first. Especially songs by major artists. The chances of your Kanye, Eminem or Wu-Tang lyrics not already being on the site are slim.
Don’t add remixes, live versions or radio edits with identical or near-identical lyrics to the original version. Unless there are brand new verses they’re not worth their own page.
Don’t create copies of songs just because of a problem with the original. If there’s a typo in the artist’s name or the song was added to the wrong album, leave a comment and the editors will fix it.
Note: If you come across a duplicate song on the site, don’t just explain it all over again. Leave a song comment or a forum post and it will be taken care of.
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Suggestions are for making Rap Genius better by correcting or improving song lyrics and explanations. They’re not meant for random comments, questions about the site, or self-promotion.
Please don’t leave ‘suggestions’ like these:
Before leaving a suggestion ask yourself what the editors are supposed to do with it. If the answer is nothing, your comment belongs somewhere else.
To discuss songs, ask questions about the site, or show off your music, hit up the Rap Genius Forum. Save any other random comments for YouTube or your Tumblr.
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Even if it’s well-written, your work might still be deleted under certain circumstances, such as:
† Wrong meaning either offensive or factually incorrect (double entendre don’t even ask me how…)
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Always leave corrections to lyrics as suggestions, either on an existing annotation† or the song itself.
Never highlight incorrect lyrics and leave the correct ones as your annotation. When the lyrics are corrected we’ll be left with an annotation that just repeats the lyrics. Obviously this will be deleted by the editors (along with your Rap IQ credit).
Of course if you want to explain the lyrics as well as correct them, an annotation is fine.
† Careful though. If the corrected lyric invalidates the annotation, it may be deleted (along with your Rap IQ credit).
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So you’ve got an interesting annotation with links to your references, perhaps supplemented by a well-chosen image. Don’t ruin it by writing like a five year old.
Editors will do their best to correct errors (not everyone’s first language is English after all), but there are way more explanations to review than there are editors. You can help by keeping your pen game on point.
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Avoid cherry-picking one or two words in a line and annotating them out of context. Annotations like this have the same drawbacks as picture annotations: they’re dull, repetitive, and often don’t even explain the lyrics properly.
Worse still, they block other users from annotating the whole line. They’re forced to highlight the rest of the line and work on that. So instead of one solid annotation we end up with two or three lesser, partially overlapping ones. In cases like this, your one or two words risk being deleted merged into the larger annotation.
Example 1: “Takeover” by Jay-Z
This short line used to be split into THREE separate annotations: one for the word “Tec”, one for “Large Professor”, and one for “on tour with”.
Not only was this overkill for a single line, only one of the annotations had anything to do with the song. The others were just generic definitions. Expanding the scope to the whole line encourages a fuller, more relevant, more interesting annotation.
Example 2: “Patience (Sabali)” by Nas and Damian Marley
Sabali, sabali, sabali yonkote
Sabali, sabali, sabali kiye
Ni kêra môgô
These few lines, which only contain six different words, were originally carved up into FOUR annotations, none of which even mentioned the origin of the lyrics. By slicing the phrase into such tiny pieces, the overall context of the words was lost.
So use your common sense. There’s a difference between annotating a line and just defining the words in it. Before going in on all of the Glocks, Macs, Mollys and leans in a song, ask yourself whether you could make your annotations more interesting by tackling longer phrases.
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Images are really useful. Like links, they make your annotations more interesting and keep your writing succinct.
But they work best when used to supplement annotations, not as annotations in their own right. Avoid using images on their own without any words. Often they are:
Uninteresting. Every time I click on “[Verse 1: Rapper X]” and see a picture of Rapper X I want to put my fist through the screen. Pictures of people, cars and guns are a flagrant violation of the first rule of Rap Genius.
Repetitive. What’s more asinine than a picture of a rapper? That same picture posted at the top of every verse of every song by that artist. Completely pointless.
Unhelpful. If I don’t know who a particular person is, showing me a picture of them isn’t much use. It doesn’t tell me who they are or why they’re being mentioned in the song (exactly what an annotation should do).
There are times when picture annotations do work, but they should be used sparingly. If they make up the bulk of your profile you’re doing it wrong.
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