Born as a crowdsourced lyric site, Rap Genius is not just anymore that but now it'a an important brick of the hip hop culture. Few days ago former Camper Van Beethoven's David Lowery put it at the top of the "50 Undesireble lyrics sites" and National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) declared legal warfare against them. "Rap Genius is something that has never existed before, a ‘case of first impression' and right now we are negotiating our legal fit in society" told us Mahbod Maghadam (Rap Genius Founder with Tom Lehman and Ilan Zechory). With Maghadam Fanpage talked (via mail) about Rap Genius world, the 15M Horowitz investment, crowdsourcing, Pharrell Williams and many more. Well, Hi Mahbod, how are you? Waddupppp! I am chillaxin, coolin… What is Rap Genius and what's his major strength and his major lack? Rap Genius is a Cathedral and a bazaar – Cathedral in the sense that it compiles all of human knowledge, the annotations are written by God – bazaar in the sense that ANYONE can join, anyone can annotate – you can sign up right now and join us! The biggest problems with the crowdsourse are credibility, corrections and control in general. How do you manage them? I read you have 500 contributors… We have over 1 million contributors, but they have 6 different levels of power. 5000 of them are editors, 1000 are moderators. We also have 4000 verified artists – rappers annotating their own lyrics – including Nas, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar – everyone important.
Rap, Crouwdsourcing, Pharrell, Copyright and much more in the interview Fanpage made to Mahbod Maghadam, lyric site Rap Genius Founder (with Tom Lehman and Ilan Zechory)