Genius - About Genius lyrics

What is Genius? Genius breaks down text with line-by-line annotations, added and edited by anyone in the world. It's your interactive guide to human culture. For example, in the first act of Shakespeare's “Much Ado About Nothing,” Benedick declaims that if he ever changes his mind about the untrustworthiness of women and the foolishness of love, he'll let his friend Don Pedro “hang him in a bottle like a cat and shoot at him.” Hanging in a bottle like a cat?? In “Good Morning,” Kanye raps the line, “I'm like the fly Malcolm X, buy any jeans necessary.” Again: it sounds cool, but what's he talking about? In her first official visit to Congress, the new Fed chair Janet Yellen said (among a lot of other confusing things), “We expect to issue proposals for a risk-based capital surcharge for those banks as well as for a long-term debt requirement to help ensure that these organizations can be resolved.” “Can be resolved”? It seems like she's saying something important—but how can we be sure? Genius layers answers to questions like these over the text itself, enabling you to answer them as you read. Whenever you're confused by or interested in a pa**age, you can click it to read an annotation that explains in plain language what you're reading and why it's important. Try it on one of the lines above! How does it work? Who writes the annotations? Why? Texts on Genius are living documents. Over time, they transform into definitive guides as people just like you from around the world add bits of knowledge to them. In the GIF below, watch that accretive magic in action as Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" is gradually annotated: There is no single genius who writes all the annotations—anyone can contribute. Genius is powered by the community, and that's what makes it special. Annotations are like miniature Wikipedia pages: constantly-improving distillations of the combined wisdom of potentially dozens of scholars: These annotations are informative, first and foremost, but often also playful. It's like a slightly more organized version of the thing that happens when a group of friends picks their favorite artist's work apart, debates its meaning, relates it to other writing and art and music and TV shows, and eventually settles on the “best” interpretation. Genius too is a conversation built around texts and the interpretations of those texts, where you and your Internet-friends debate and converge on good annotations. You can follow other scholars and artists, and you'll get notified whenever they add to the site. When you spruce up someone else's work, or suggest a way to make it better, they'll get notified, too. But Genius isn't just the world's largest public knowledge project—it's also a game. On Genius you earn points for all the good stuff you do. When you write an annotation, when someone upvotes your annotation, when you moderate someone else's work, etc., your Genius IQ goes up. Earn enough IQ and you might even make the leaderboard or become the Top Scholar on your favorite artist or author. As you make more good contributions to Genius, you'll get more powers: Editors, for instance, can edit and delete other people's annotations, and accept and reject suggestions; Moderators can do everything editors can do, but they can also make editors, and they get early access to new site features. I thought famous people annotate too? Most annotations on Genius are written by a bunch of different authors whose contributions combine into one big stew of knowledge. “Verified” annotations are different—the goal of verified annotations is to give people who are closely a**ociated with a piece of text a platform to explain their perspective. Often verified annotations come from the author of the document—as when Pulitzer prize-winner Junot Díaz added commentary to his novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao—but they can just as easily be written by its subject. Check out all of Genius's verified artists here. Wait, I thought this was a rap lyrics website! You may have heard that “Genius” started as “Rap Genius.” True story! When we created Rap Genius in 2009, we had no plans to expand beyond rap lyrics. But the community had a bigger vision, and it wasn't long before “Rap” Genius housed the collected works of Shakespeare and Jane Austen, the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, poetry by T.S. Eliot and Langston Hughes, TV and movie scripts, Chipotle's menu, the back of a Tylenol bottle, the roster of the 1986 New York Mets, and that dream you keep having where your teeth fall out—all lovingly and carefully annotated. In retrospect this was inevitable. Any text can be as layered, as allusive and cryptic, as worthy of careful exegesis as rap lyrics. Furthermore, it's simply not possible to create a website that annotates rap alone, just as it's not possible to create a website that annotates any individual slice of human culture—because no slice of human culture stands on its own. Start on a Run D.M.C song and you'll soon find your way to Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," which will propel you toward the Declaration of Independence, where you'll discover that Thomas Jefferson's style influenced Walt Whitman, who would go on to play a pivotal role in Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad.. and on and on through time and genre. You can get a sense for the breadth of Genius by looking at our 8 biggest channels: Rap Rock Pop Lit News History Sports Screen Annotate the world? Genius goes way beyond genius.com. For one thing, it's also a beautiful, really-well-reviewed iPhone app and Android app—your pocket guide to human culture. But Genius is also a platform. You can embed any text on Genius anywhere on the web, annotations and all. Also, with the Genius Web Annotator, you can annotate most pages without downloading or embeding anything! Just add the prefix "genius.it/" before most websites and it should work. If it doesn't, grab the Chrome plugin to get going. Who works at the company? How can I work there? Genius's world-cla** engineering, design, and community leadership teams are headquartered in Gowan*s, Brooklyn. Get in touch if you're interested in a job! Who runs the site? Our most talented and dedicated contributors run the site, starting with our Moderators (See more here), editors, and staff. Press & Branding For all inquiries please contact press@genius.com. Click here for links to Genius visual a**ets (logos etc)