Rap Genius site lets crowd decode hip-hop lyrics

When the rapper Lil Wayne, a.k.a. Dwayne Michael Carter, was released from prison last year after doing time for attempted gun possession, he disappeared into the studio to work on his comeback album, "Tha Carter IV." The rap star sent his fans into a frenzy with the release of the first single, "6 Foot 7 Foot," packed with densely woven boasts, threats and drug references. There was one line, however, that confounded everybody: "Real Gs run in silence like lasagna."

While some rap aficionados assumed Lil Wayne had blazed one joint too many, the founders of Rap Genius, a 2-year-old website that uses the Internet's hive mind to explore the deeper meanings of hip-hop wordplay, were determined to unravel the mystery. They posted the lyrics to "6 Foot 7 Foot" and soon they had an answer.

"When you pronounce 'lasagna' this G is silent," Rap Genius contributor "vmoney" wrote on the site. "We certainly had that up before Yahoo Answers or Cha Cha," boasts Mahbod Moghadam, one of the site's founders.

Rap Genius bills itself as a "thug Wikipedia." Yet Moghadam and his co-creators, Tom Lehman and Ilan Zechory, left corporate jobs to devote themselves full time to rap lyric demystification. Moghadam, 28, worked at Dewey & LeBoeuf, a law firm. Zechory, 27, is a former Google product manager. Lehman, 27, was a programmer at hedge fund D.E. Shaw in New York.

The founders of Rap Genius, who met at Yale, rolled out the site in September 2009 from the living room of the apartment Lehman and Zechory shared in New York's East Village. It now attracts 732,798 unique visitors monthly, according to Compete, a company that tracks website usage.

While they aren't making much money yet, they say record companies such as Universal Music Group are interested in using the site to promote their acts and digital music companies such as Spotify are considering weaving Rap Genius' lyrical analysis into their services.

"I personally think Rap Genius is onto something," says Tom Mullen, dire! ctor of digital marketing for EMI Music, which currently has no business tie-up with the site. "If only I had this when I wrote out every lyric from a tape cassette of Public Enemy's 'Fear of a Black Planet.' " In other words, the site could morph from a hobby into a modestly profitable business.

The founders say their service can be expanded beyond rap.

"I think the long-term play for them is to go into more verticals and add new content," says Elizabeth Spiers, founding editor of the website Gawker.

This article appeared on page D - 3 of the SanFranciscoChronicle