4 ms·

The example it uses of a good annotation, When Nas speaks about “sleep [being] the cousin of death”, Genius tells me the line is ‘perhaps inspired by the Talmu

The example it uses of a good annotation, When Nas speaks about “sleep [being] the cousin of death”, Genius tells me the line is ‘perhaps inspired by the Talmud (which tells us that sleep is 1/60th of death) or the Iliad (where Hypnos and Thanatos – i.e. “sleep” and “death” – are described as brothers)’. is more like an example of a bad annotation. Really, we're supposed to believe that 19 year old Nas was referencing the Talmud? This is basically the stereotype of Rap Genius, that it contains a bunch of contrived ridiculous explanations for the meaning of lyrics that are very unlikely to be accurate. Another problem on Rap Genius is that sometimes the annotations are more jokes than explanations. Judging by the downvotes people get here for posting Reddit-like jokes, I think we are all aware of the near-universal problem of jokes being upvoted over "real" content. And one more comment... Annotations work particularly well in two contexts; first, when explaining the meaning of a single word I don't know if that is true. It depends on what assumptions you make about the reader. Obviously it would be bad to annotate every single word with its definition, that would be overkill. But where do you draw the line? There's no universal answer. For example, I'm sure that many people have heard the word "ratchet" in rap songs without knowing what it means, but if you look up songs with that word on Rap Genius, the annotation is most likely not a definition. Probably either no annotation or a joke, since contributors to Rap Genius all already know what "ratchet" means.

blt 12y ago
> it contains a bunch of contrived ridiculous explanations for the meaning of lyrics that are very unlikely to be accurate Yeah, x100. I'd say less than half the annotations I've read on there are even close to plausible, and most of the rest are too obvious to add any value. I still prefer it over any other lyrics site because it's less 'sketchy' and you occasionally find a good annotation.
minikites 12y ago
Why couldn't 19 year old Nas reference the Talmud? The goal of any critical reading isn't necessarily to reverse engineer the author's intended meaning, it's to examine the work in context: ------------------ http://johngreenbooks.com/questions-about-the-fault-in-our-stars-spoilers/ http://johngreenbooks.com/questions-about-the-fault-in-our-s... Q. Isn’t authorial intent important in terms of communication between reader and writer? A. But it ISN’T a conversation between you and me if all you’re doing is attempting to understand what I’m saying. That’s just you LISTENING to me, which is kind of boring. Like, don’t get me wrong, that act of listening to art/media can be pleasantly distracting and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. That’s essentially what watching an episode of NCIS is, I’d argue: The show knows who killed the person and you don’t and then at the end they tell you. But I think what happens when you read a book—ideally, anyway—is much more complicated and beautiful and collaborative. My intent as an author matters some, but you as the reader get some agency, too. You get to discover meaning within the story, and sometimes the meaning you discover will be meaning I hoped you would discover, and sometimes it will be meaning I could never have imagined you discovering. But together, we get to build something that matters to you (hopefully), and that brings you pleasure and consolation and a feeling of unaloneness that you can never get from merely listening.
- magicalist 12y ago
  Authorial intent isn't privileged in a critical reading of a text, except when you use phrases like "perhaps inspired by the Talmud", at which point you're making comments about authorial intent. I'm going to have to go with the GP on this (though the article itself isn't very good). A very large percentage of Rap Genius annotations are just useless, and that's just out of the ones that are trying to be helpful instead of making a joke or providing information that's plain wrong. Even forgiving for direct appeal to what the lyricist supposedly meant, annotations seem to jump to the very first connection the annotator thought of, and the number of annotations for the same line (and the number of votes weighing the alternative annotations) is so low that a signal isn't rising out of the noise. Maybe that's just for the entries I end up looking at on there, but they aren't exactly obscure songs.
tmarthal 12y ago
Annotations work particularly well in two contexts; first, when explaining the meaning of a single word It's almost like people do not remember the mid-2000's where the New York times had the dictionary popups on their website. The worst user-interface that ever existed - double clicking (or highlighting? I don't remember) would display a modal popup with the word definition. This happened on every word, so oftentimes they would popup definitions for 'for', 'and', etc. It was highly intrusive (the NY Times removed the behavior after widespread consternation, turned it into a small '?' behavior). Maybe if everyone expects that behavior all of the time, it would be worthwhile, and people could get used to it. As it stood on a single website, it was not very valuable. If you are curious, here is an article from 2011 about the types of words that were looked up using the service: http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/07/nytimes-coms-most-looked-up-words-for-2011-even-more-morose-than-last-years-list/ http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/07/nytimes-coms-most-looked-up...
myusernameranou 12y ago
I came across this lyric recently and was curious if it was a reference: > Lyrics hear it fear it can’t get near it > Got a sample didn’t clear it > Point blank says "fuck 5-0!" That’s the spirit The annotation on rapgenius referenced NWA's popular song, rather than provide any real context. A quick google search showed that Point Blank was a rap group and that they had a track with a common lyric being "fuck 5-0", it may have even been the name of the track. It's frustrating to see someone put a half-assed guess that is quickly shown to be wrong rather than providing context to an otherwise obvious reference.

blt 12y ago

> it contains a bunch of contrived ridiculous explanations for the meaning of lyrics that are very unlikely to be accurate Yeah, x100. I'd say less than half the annotations I've read on there are even close to plausible, and most of the rest are too obvious to add any value. I still prefer it over any other lyrics site because it's less 'sketchy' and you occasionally find a good annotation.

minikites 12y ago

Why couldn't 19 year old Nas reference the Talmud? The goal of any critical reading isn't necessarily to reverse engineer the author's intended meaning, it's to examine the work in context: ------------------ http://johngreenbooks.com/questions-about-the-fault-in-our-stars-spoilers/ http://johngreenbooks.com/questions-about-the-fault-in-our-s... Q. Isn’t authorial intent important in terms of communication between reader and writer? A. But it ISN’T a conversation between you and me if all you’re doing is attempting to understand what I’m saying. That’s just you LISTENING to me, which is kind of boring. Like, don’t get me wrong, that act of listening to art/media can be pleasantly distracting and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. That’s essentially what watching an episode of NCIS is, I’d argue: The show knows who killed the person and you don’t and then at the end they tell you. But I think what happens when you read a book—ideally, anyway—is much more complicated and beautiful and collaborative. My intent as an author matters some, but you as the reader get some agency, too. You get to discover meaning within the story, and sometimes the meaning you discover will be meaning I hoped you would discover, and sometimes it will be meaning I could never have imagined you discovering. But together, we get to build something that matters to you (hopefully), and that brings you pleasure and consolation and a feeling of unaloneness that you can never get from merely listening.

magicalist 12y ago
Authorial intent isn't privileged in a critical reading of a text, except when you use phrases like "perhaps inspired by the Talmud", at which point you're making comments about authorial intent. I'm going to have to go with the GP on this (though the article itself isn't very good). A very large percentage of Rap Genius annotations are just useless, and that's just out of the ones that are trying to be helpful instead of making a joke or providing information that's plain wrong. Even forgiving for direct appeal to what the lyricist supposedly meant, annotations seem to jump to the very first connection the annotator thought of, and the number of annotations for the same line (and the number of votes weighing the alternative annotations) is so low that a signal isn't rising out of the noise. Maybe that's just for the entries I end up looking at on there, but they aren't exactly obscure songs.

tmarthal 12y ago

Annotations work particularly well in two contexts; first, when explaining the meaning of a single word It's almost like people do not remember the mid-2000's where the New York times had the dictionary popups on their website. The worst user-interface that ever existed - double clicking (or highlighting? I don't remember) would display a modal popup with the word definition. This happened on every word, so oftentimes they would popup definitions for 'for', 'and', etc. It was highly intrusive (the NY Times removed the behavior after widespread consternation, turned it into a small '?' behavior). Maybe if everyone expects that behavior all of the time, it would be worthwhile, and people could get used to it. As it stood on a single website, it was not very valuable. If you are curious, here is an article from 2011 about the types of words that were looked up using the service: http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/07/nytimes-coms-most-looked-up-words-for-2011-even-more-morose-than-last-years-list/ http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/07/nytimes-coms-most-looked-up...

myusernameranou 12y ago

I came across this lyric recently and was curious if it was a reference: > Lyrics hear it fear it can’t get near it > Got a sample didn’t clear it > Point blank says "fuck 5-0!" That’s the spirit The annotation on rapgenius referenced NWA's popular song, rather than provide any real context. A quick google search showed that Point Blank was a rap group and that they had a track with a common lyric being "fuck 5-0", it may have even been the name of the track. It's frustrating to see someone put a half-assed guess that is quickly shown to be wrong rather than providing context to an otherwise obvious reference.