By virtue of the internet, the millennial generation has developed a unique relationship to music. Its distribution, its production, and its consumption have all been revolutionized by the digital market. Many artists bemoan this transformation, decrying services like Spotify for not fairly compensating musicians for their work. However, for almost every harmful aspect of the digitization of the music industry, a remedy seems to follow. For example, sites like Bandcamp have emerged as champions for artistic control, especially for young, self-produced musicians who are able to control the price of their work. Similarly, lyric-sites like Genius are giving power to the people and giving you more control over your music-listening experience.
Genius started out in 2009 as Rap Genius, a site devoted to explaining every reference and every instance of wordplay in the entire hip-hop genre. However, it quickly expanded beyond hip-hop and became a place for all music, poetry, and literature. “Rap” Genius was no longer sufficient: it had become a website for all cultural content worth analyzing.
The defining feature of Genius is that it’s a community-powered tool. There is no single person telling you what to think about a song or a poem; it’s up to you and your peers to interpret the work yourselves. The best interpretations are upvoted, and only the most agreed upon opinions make it to the top. This is true democratization. This is critical analysis for and by the people. You are encouraged (demanded, even) to analyze the lyrics for yourself, provide your own interpretation and present to the community a new reading that they will either accept or reject.
There is power in this new era of democratic criticism. Consider, for example, T. S. Eliot’s modernist tour de force, The Waste Land. This poem (like the lyrics to many modern rap songs) is overburdened with allusions and references. To the uninitiated, the poem’s allusive significance would pass completely unnoticed. Without the internet, the best hope you’d have to understand The Waste Land completely would be to purchase a published text with footnotes. However, these footnotes would be collected and organized by a single person who would have been chosen by the publishing industry to proclaim to you exactly what you should think about a line as subjective as “April is the cruellest month.” This is absurd. One man, in the footnotes of a dusty book of poems, would really presume to tell you everything you need to know about a piece of art. Genius offers you, instead, the opinions of an entire community of readers, as well as a chance to provide your own knowledge and to make your voice heard by voting on the interpretations that make the most sense to you. You can finally participate in criticism, rather than suffer through it.
Genius even gives authors the ability to provide input on their own work. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the literal genius behind Hamilton, has commented on multiple songs from the soundtrack providing authorial verification of historicity and intended meanings. Although, in the post-mortem age of the author, Miranda’s highlighted comments are certainly not the end-all-be-all of interpretation.
On Genius, you are entitled to your own opinion and everyone wants to hear it. Well, maybe not everyone, but it at least gives you the chance to be heard. Your unique reading could clearly describe a line that no one else could explain. This is your chance to be a critic, without the grossly hierarchical institution of print publishing. This is your chance to be a Genius.