RapGenius recently rolled out Rap Map.
Biography, lyric interpretation, rap sample history…to delve into the secondary content of music is one of the great joys in life. To see the smile creep across someones face when Lil Wayne says that he’s “a vegetarian, [he] only eat[s] beats, wear[s] a lot of karats and [he] smokes the best greens,” it’s as if someone broke their funny bone in two and impressed them with top notch poetics. Today I found RapGenius and I’m just knocked out. The site presents the lyrics to rap songs. By clicking on any metaphoric lyrics, you’re given a new window that gives you an interpretive analysis, lets you listen to the song, lets you comment on it, like it on facebook, and give “props” to the interpreter. The interpreter is a user on the site, a RapGenius, who increases her standing by explaining more and more lyrics.
The Rap Map is a new product by the RapGenius crew. It’s a Google Map broken down by city (NYC, Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Fayetteville, Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, Miami, New Orleans, Philly, San Francisco and VA Beach thus far). In each city, the map shows you clickable icons with pop-up, possibly crowdsourced histories of places that make up the legends, myths, stories, and real histories of rap.
With certain musical niches and artists (recently, Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs), there’s room to greatly enhance the experience music consumption. Think about an Android app that would allow the listener to cruise in a car from the Bronx, through Harlem, down through Manhattan, and hear tracks in which the lyrics reference nearby locations. Think, also, of the Layar app that would encourage self-guided walking tours of rap. Also, think of the future augmented reality app that allows you to walk around a city, and dig down through history in general, checking off categories and presenting you with places of significance ranging from archaeological findings of antiquity, to movie locations from Francis Ford Coppola, to, well, famous places from rap lyrics.
The Rap Map is a convenient way to learn about rap music. It’s good for remembering the great tracks you’ve already heard, and it could be even better for digital music discovery. Check it out.
